Noise reduction

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
I know its been covered over and over,I for one have read some very good pieces on here, the problem i have is it never works for me the way it does for others,possibly my lack of understanding of the subject but honestly i have tried.I decided to ignore the tried and tested methods and see if i could find a way that works for me and i could have some understanding of why.
So the question is am i on the right track in the samples below or am i missing something in the final result,not bothered about 100% noise removal just to be able to on occasion clean an image up.

No noise removal

DSC_4855.jpg


My attempt

DSC_48515.jpg
 

Scott Murray

Senior Member
To me it looks like you are on the right track, with NR there is no right way always to do it. It all depends on the image you are processing and factors like cropping, amount of darks etc. I think you have done a great job with this.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
To me it looks like you are on the right track, with NR there is no right way always to do it. It all depends on the image you are processing and factors like cropping, amount of darks etc. I think you have done a great job with this.

Thank you Scott,from you that is great encouragement

 

Ironwood

Senior Member
Ahh Mike !! I thought you would have the answer for me when I saw this thread.

I just got back from a walk around with the new Tamron 150-600, every shot was overly noisy, deleted the lot in disgust :(.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Ahh Mike !! I thought you would have the answer for me when I saw this thread.

I just got back from a walk around with the new Tamron 150-600, every shot was overly noisy, deleted the lot in disgust :(.

Sorry to hear that,unfortunately with my problems i have to up the ISO to stand any chance so noise becomes a way of life.
 

Scott Murray

Senior Member
Ahh Mike !! I thought you would have the answer for me when I saw this thread.

I just got back from a walk around with the new Tamron 150-600, every shot was overly noisy, deleted the lot in disgust :(.
What ISO's? And were you cropping them? You should have saved a few so we could offer advice. Onething I know is that these big zooms like light and lots of it. I also read that f8 is their sweet spot ;)
 

Lawrence

Senior Member
Definitely on the right track to my untrained eye.

Like Brad when I first read the title I was hoping you had the solution!

Its a very good point that Scott makes about cropping/not cropping. Trouble is remembering it when shooting and framing accordingly because most of the time the subject is a way off and long lenses and a good crop are the order of the day.

For what it's worth Mike I tried something yesterday which I thought improved a very grainy photo.
First I did my LightRoom thing including noise reduction and then I opened it in PhotShop. I went straight to the Camera Raw filter and treated it as a brand new RAW file (although of course it had the LR adjustments) with even more noise reduction. Click Open and process as normal, including unsharp filter.
It worked on that one photos so ... ???
Definitely worth a try if you haven't tried it already.
 

Ironwood

Senior Member
What ISO's? And were you cropping them? You should have saved a few so we could offer advice. Onething I know is that these big zooms like light and lots of it. I also read that f8 is their sweet spot ;)

I don't want to hijack Mikes thread with my problems, but I guess it is related, so,,,,,

Still learning with this lens, but I set my camera to 1/1000th, f6.3, auto iso 100-3200.
Because the sun was getting low by the time I got to shoot, the iso was always between 1600 & 3200.
No cropping, just viewing on full screen (27" mac).

I think I just need to do my practicing when the sun is a bit higher, though its a bit hard with my job.

I did get a few shots that I was moderately happy with the other day in similar conditions, with those I had VC on, today I tried it with VC off.
 

J-see

Senior Member
It looks good noise-wise.

I have a very simple approach to noise. If I don't really notice it as the size I'll be using the shot, I don't bother about noise. There's always some somewhere especially when you start zooming in or looking for it.

But if it doesn't directly bother me at viewing size, it doesn't bother me enough to remove it.
 

jay_dean

Senior Member
I don't want to hijack Mikes thread with my problems, but I guess it is related, so,,,,,

Still learning with this lens, but I set my camera to 1/1000th, f6.3, auto iso 100-3200.
Because the sun was getting low by the time I got to shoot, the iso was always between 1600 & 3200.
No cropping, just viewing on full screen (27" mac).

I think I just need to do my practicing when the sun is a bit higher, though its a bit hard with my job.

I did get a few shots that I was moderately happy with the other day in similar conditions, with those I had VC on, today I tried it with VC off.

These superzooms excel, but in the daylight, and the brighter the better. Stopping down like Scott said to f8-f11 hits the sweet spot on most of these type of lenses. If youre at 1/1000th, turning off the VR is advisable. But you see the light problems stacking up here, f8, high shutter speeds, hence higher ISO's, hence more noise.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
The problem is with my wildlife situation i need to crop most of the time,to use the 600mm i need a high shutter speed,the light in the UK is often not the best so i need higher ISO,vicious circle as they say,most of the time noise does not bother me i just want to be able to reduce it if the mood takes me.
 

J-see

Senior Member
The problem is with my wildlife situation i need to crop most of the time,to use the 600mm i need a high shutter speed,the light in the UK is often not the best so i need higher ISO,vicious circle as they say,most of the time noise does not bother me i just want to be able to reduce it if the mood takes me.

Here I have the same issue with light but I use RT which allows me to address noise a bit different from most editors. My only issue with noise reduction is that it simultaneously affects sharpness at other parts of the shot. I could get around that by blending two shots and work the sharp part into the noise-low version but that's an awful lot of work if I have to do that for most shots.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
Definitely on the right track to my untrained eye.

Like Brad when I first read the title I was hoping you had the solution!

Its a very good point that Scott makes about cropping/not cropping. Trouble is remembering it when shooting and framing accordingly because most of the time the subject is a way off and long lenses and a good crop are the order of the day.

For what it's worth Mike I tried something yesterday which I thought improved a very grainy photo.
First I did my LightRoom thing including noise reduction and then I opened it in PhotShop. I went straight to the Camera Raw filter and treated it as a brand new RAW file (although of course it had the LR adjustments) with even more noise reduction. Click Open and process as normal, including unsharp filter.
It worked on that one photos so ... ???
Definitely worth a try if you haven't tried it already.

Some similarities,i open into ACR do the basic adjustments but no noise reduction,then straight into elements to do the final adjustments but still no noise reduction,this time i saved it as a high quality Jpeg,then reopened the Jpeg in ACR as a raw file,did the noise reduction back into elements some selective sharpening then saved as a Jpeg again.
If i do the noise reduction the first time in ACR i can get a great looking image but as soon as i move it to elements it looks crap,this time i thought start with what you want the final image to look like and then reduce the noise,stopping just before it changes the image to something i dont want.
 

dennybeall

Senior Member
The things I do to deal with noise is first try for low ISO, then avoid dark areas and then deal with noise in Camera Raw for jpg and raw files.
 

Horoscope Fish

Senior Member
I use NIK Tools Dfine tool personally, and find it works really well. It also has Control Point technology which allows you to tailor the noise removal.

Another good app for noise removal is DeNoise from Topaz Labs. It's $80, though, if not bought on sale.
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