Best way to de-noisify a high ISO image?

[kds315*]

I have a special setup which requires high ISO
setting to get somewhat decent exposure since
I cannot use longer exposure times. This leads to
some chrominance noise I would like to get rid of.
Any idea what might work best?

[Jesito]

I use the Noise Ninja plugin in photoshop and it's very useful. You can profile the pictures and choose which kind of noise to reduce (the chroma noise in your case). For the case you won't be using PS, I think there is a standalone version as well.

But for sure there are other tools.Maybe someone else could tell us their opinions.

Regards.

Jes.

[kds315*]

Thanks Jes, I have the basic version of it as part of Bibble Pro I'm using - maybe an upgrade would help. I'll have a look into this. Thanks!

[Carlsson]

Hi Klaus,
yes Noise Ninja is a very powerful tool, next option is NIK DFine, easy to use, not 100% as Noise Ninja, but worth a try, in my opinion. It's a PS plugin.

[LucisPictor]

+1 for NoiseNinja. I do not have it myself, but I was working with it in an office once - excellent results.

[darosk]

I use Imagenomic's Noiseware Pro. They have "community edition" which is free (requires registration) and has slightly less features.

http://www.imagenomic.com/download.aspx

(It's at the bottom)

[Jieffe]

+1 for Noise Ninja.

You can also decompose the picture in LAB mode, add a heavy Gaussian blur to the A & B channels, eventually sharpen the L channel and then recompose the picture.

[CarbonR]

Just turn off your speakers, there will be less noise

[kds315*]

[PaulC]

Alamy used to recommend running a modest gaussian blur on it in PS and then selecting "fade" and "by color" and fading 100%. It works to some extent.

[Orio]

I have noise ninja pro, and it's excellent for me.
so +1 on it.

But I also like the chroma reduction algorhythm in Lightroom (luminance reduction sucks however)

[Esox lucius]

+1, another Noise Ninja standalone software user reporting

[kuuan]

I have been using 'neat image', there is a free version which so far has done all I have needed: http://www.neatimage.com/

[bob955i]

Noise Ninja.

[Anu]

For me NeatImage - the free version - has produced better results more easily than NoiseNinja. Banding noise is problematic for both - if I need to get rid of some, then I use ImageJ or some such program and use the FFT-method.

Most of the time however, I don't find noise to be a problem, but instead it gives character to the images, way more than the sterile plastic feel the noise reduction programs tend to give.

Btw, the beta version of Lightroom 3 has rather nice chroma noise reduction - much improved over earlier. I recommend to try it.

[tobbsman]

I am fan of Noisware Professional plugin for PS.
What I always do with noisreduction:

- I make a layer duplicate
- run the plugin with proper options over above layer
- gum (mask) away the areas where you do not need the denoise effect, especially areas where you need detail.

Cheers
Tobias

[haley]

NoiseNinja is great for general photos. NeatImage performs better for me when I'm working on infrareds or other photos that end up suffering from more than the standard camera noise (artifacts, etc). So, I use both.

[Rolf]

For me it is Topaz DeNoise from www.topazlabs.com.

There is a comparision between Topaz DeNoise and others too.

[fatdeeman]

+1 for Topaz

Nik Dfine is good for some situations too

Topaz seems to retain the most detail but I use Dfine or Noise Ninja for when there is less detail to be preserved like in skies because it gives a smoother look.

Also if you are able to ever take several shots it might be worth looking at photoacute because it can stack the images and then subtract the random noise that is not consistent in each frame and you end up with a much cleaner image, the more frames you add the cleaner the output is. It's a similar method to what is used for restoring old film footage such as the star wars remasters.

[Himself]

I have Ninja and Nik ( Dfine I guess is the name, I'm not at home right now).

I used Nik last time because it worked better ( to my surprise) than Ninja.

[fatdeeman]

The newest version of Dfine is amazing, it still gets it wrong now and then but when it gets it right, it's ability to tell the difference from noise and detail is astounding, even better than he already impressive previous versions.

I was so disappointed by the noise in raw files even at iso100 with my panny G1 but this software almost totally makes up for it and I can enjoy an otherwise fantastic camera.

I still recommend having more than one type of noise software, some seem to work better for different pictures.

[ZeiEizh]

Noiseware professional and neatimage. Noiseware is ok.

Have to test ninja and Dfine.

[Scheimpflug]

[integrale]

The noise reduction engine i Lightroom 3 from Adobe is very very good.

You can download a trial version here and test it out: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshoplightroom/

[tikkathree]