Free Noise reduction Programs

Roy1961

Senior Member
Contributor
Can anyone recommend one or am i better getting PS CC for the $10 per month, i have been putting this of forever, i just use the free NX-i, its good enough for my needs.
 

Woodyg3

Senior Member
Contributor
Roy, I would just get PS and Lightroom. Everything in one place right where you need it. There is a learning curve, but you can get up and running very quickly. Just my viewpoint, and there are other good apps out there.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
Can anyone recommend one or am i better getting PS CC for the $10 per month, i have been putting this of forever, i just use the free NX-i, its good enough for my needs.

Like Texas suggested, The Nik Collection has DFine which is superb in its ability to reduce noise. It's better than Photoshop or Lightroom, and it's

FREE!!!
It is a plug-in for PCC so you can use it within Photoshop.
 

Bikerbrent

Senior Member
Like Texas suggested, The Nik Collection has DFine which is superb in its ability to reduce noise. It's better than Photoshop or Lightroom, and it's

FREE!!!
It is a plug-in for PCC so you can use it within Photoshop.

I agree fully with Cindy. DFine is one great program and fortunately I still have my Photoshop CS6 so am not held hostage by Adobe.
 

hark

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Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
It's a shame I wasn't aware you don't have Photoshop...just within the past couple of weeks (or days), Photoshop Elements 18 was only sale for $59.99. I started out with Elements and used it for years (updated to a newer version every few years). It can do a lot of things that PCC offers, but obviously not everything. If Elements goes on sale again, I'd suggest starting with it. It will take some time for you to learn the ropes and most likely will save you a little money in the long run--especially if you can snag it for $59.99. That's comparable to 6 months of PCC except with Elements, you can use it indefinitely unless you upgrade to a non-compatible operating system.

Once you learn the basics, then you could switch to the PCC subscription.
 

Texas

Senior Member
To do 'em stand-alone, in windows you drag the picture file onto the nik program executable name (shown in a file explorer listing)
works ok, but you have to want it pretty bad to do many this way
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
@Roy1961 B&H has Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements 2018 as a Deal of the Day for $79.99 today only. It's available either as a disc for Windows/Mac or as downloads for one or the other. I *think* Premiere Elements does video editing. You may not need that, but right now the combo is cheaper than Photoshop Elements 2018 alone.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/find/dealZone.jsp
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
dFine 2 will work stand alone but also works in the most popular editing software. As it is integrated into DxO's editor it will probably not be free anymore. dFine2 works well but if often overused due to pixel peeping, the bane of all photography. Do you really need noise reduction, if pixel peeping you would probably answer "yes" but if viewing images as intended b viewing distance and size, most of the time it is not worth the reduction in detail and edge contrast that NR introduces? Why are images too noisy? The most common cause is using auto exposure modes that do not know the speed of the object so assumes a higher shutter speed than really needed, which causes ISO to be elevated.

The question about the Adobe bundle can be answered only after knowing the number of images a week processed and what you are doing with them after processing. If you are doing a lot of images and they are being used for anything other than memory triggers, my suggestion is the PS/LR bundle is a great deal. The software is the most versatile and effective available but Photoshop is easy for basics but its real power takes a lot of study and practice. To be able to do a lot, might take a year of study and to be a master it might require a number of years to get the most out of it. But nothing else does what it can. Being the industry standard, there are hundreds of training video courses and thousands of tutorials on YouTube. Lightroom is a lot easier to master and can do what the majority seek to do with very little learning curve. For $9.99 a month any active photographer can justify it. Always having the latest version updated automatically has a lot of benefits so everyone is on the same page in version, support becomes easier. They provide a lot of incentive to keep up with the free upgrades by adding great features in almost every update.
Elements is good if you are not processing many images and are not interested in new features to learn but it is pretty limited.
 

cwgrizz

Senior Member
Challenge Team
I have PS Elements 15? and NIK tools. It works good. I recently purchased ON1 Raw 2018 and like it for photos I really want to “play” with. It had HDR, Panorama, and tethering capabilities also as well as other features common to PS CC.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

Texas

Senior Member
I'm having good luck with DXO, but have not mastered the NIK control points yet, I thought they would select odd shapes sort of automatically but the circular deal is better than nothing I suppose..

My friends use Adobe products but after several looks and a few questions I still cannot tell you why it takes Camera Raw, Lightroom, and PhotoShop to get the job done. I know my resistance to watching youtube stars on the PC costs me in knowledge.
 
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