Originally posted by ivoire Excellent job and post. This should help me with my high iso shots... i'd be very grateful if you would post your noise reduction technique also. This is some of the best high iso tweaking i've seen
Originally posted by wll What is your technique for noise removal, you did a great job !
wll
I use noisware professional plug-in for photoshop. It is ~$70, but IMO worth it.
-With this software, you can choose how much noise you want to remove form the shadows, how much you want to remove form the mid tones and how much you want to remove from the highlights. (My reason for picking this program)
-Also, you can choose to remove noise form certain colors as well (I don't use this but I will find use with certain images).
-Then you can choose how much detail you want to keep without introducing more noise. You choose the proper sharpness and contrast (maximum possible without adding more noise). You can also choose the level of edge smoothing .
- You can choose to reduce noise in the different frequencies too. The program analyzes the image and tells you which frequency has the most noise so you can choose to reduce more noise in those frequencies that has the most noise.
If you don't want to mess around with all this, then there is a pull down menu with varying noise reduction options with all this settings chosen for you. So you can pick one and the program will do it for you.
The individual controls may sound complex but very easy to use. They are done with sliders and you see changes in real time.
So, open the file, choose the luminance and chroma noise reduction amount to taste. Then go to tonal range and pick no noise reduction for highlights and medium for midtones (need to play around and see the image - look at areas with most noise and areas with fine detail) and choose close to max. reduction for shadows (again, check the noisy dark areas and fine detail areas and move the slider to taste). You can change the percentage of luminance noise and chroma noise as well as you do this. So, you go back and forth with these sliders constantly checking the dark zones for noise and fine detail areas for loss of detail.
Then you can change sharpness, contrast to taste as well. Going back and forth with these sliders until the darkest areas have most noise gone and yet the fine detail, area has detail left.
choosing noise reduction for various frequencies don't show much change. but as the program analyzes this, I just see the graph and reduce more in the frequencies that show the most noise.
Then I go to edge smoothing and see a sharp line in a dark area and chose the correct setting.
I am not that great at putting things into word as instructions. But, hopefully this helps.