D30 High ISO Noise

[KHogan]

Hi,

I'm interested in finding out more about dealing with high-ISO noise. I've been browsing various D30 galleries lately and notice there is quite a variety of noise levels in high-ISO images taken with a D30. Since not all galleries provide full technical information with each shot, it is hard to determine what exactly is the reason for the differences in noise levels. As a result, I'm wondering how people are getting such clean and noise-free images at 400 and 800 ISO in particular and also whether there is anything that can be done for 1600 ISO images.

For example, looking at Pekka's gallery, his 400 and 800 ISO images are virtually noise-free. Are these coming straight out of the camera like that or is there some post-processing being done? If the latter, how are you cleaning up the images? Any insight anyone could offer would be most appreciated. (I did email Pekka directly on his particular images but haven't heard back yet. Maybe he's away or busy so perhaps some of you know how he and others are doing it).

I recently moved up to the D30 from a consumer digicam (Sony S75) so am still learning about it. One of my reasons for upgrading was the compellingly clean high-ISO shots I'd seen in various galleries. Since this was something I couldn't get with my S75, especially in low-light and long exposures, it was an attractive feature. This wasn't the main reason for going to the D30 but I'd love to learn how to clean up ISO noise so thanks in advance for any insight into this issue.

Regards,
Kharim Hogan

[Roger_Cavanagh]

Kharim,

Fred Miranda has a Photoshop action for noise reduction that seems quite effective. I haven't used it a lot , however, as I don't shoot much at 800/1600.

You can find the info page here:
www.fredmiranda.com/D30_isoR_PRO/index.html

Actually, having checked the URL I have discovered that he has released a whole new set of actions that I'm happy to buy on the strength of his previous good stuff.

Regards,

Roger
www.rogercavanagh.com

[KHogan]

Hi Roger,

Thanks, I did look at Fred's ISO actions recently and they look quite compelling from what I've read on his site. Actually, I was about to buy them when I found out that it takes a month to become verified with PayPal for us international clients (I'm in Canada). So given that I now don't have a choice but to wait, I thought I'd look into how others are treating ISO noise. Also, another little thing that's holding me back from jumping on Fred's actions is that I'd like to see more examples. The examples on his site are small and there aren't very many. Also, I was wondering if there were any other methods/actions/etc. that people were using successfully to reduce ISO noise and/or if there are shooting tips (ie. camera settings) that are best to use with the D30 at higher ISO settings.

Do you have any examples up in your gallery that I could look at where you've used Fred's action? Very nice gallery BTW. Loved the Banff Gallery as I lived there for awhile. :)

Thanks again!
Kharim

[charles beasley]

Kharim. Fred accepts money orders and personal checks. Contact: sales@fredmiranda.com

[sasc]

I am starting to prefer the free program NeatImage for noise removal.

sample:
http://www.pbase.com/image/843519

[KHogan]

Charles,

Thanks, I wrote to Fred at that very address 10 days ago and haven't heard a peep back. So I'm waiting... :)

SASC,

Wow, thanks for the sample. It's definitely compelling. Can you explain why you prefer it over Fred's actions? If you have any side-by-side comparison images (i.e. Fred's action vs NeatImage), I'd love to see that too.

Thanks again!
Kharim

[Pekka]

KHogan wrote:
For example, looking at Pekka's gallery, his 400 and 800 ISO images are virtually noise-free. Are these coming straight out of the camera like that or is there some post-processing being done? If the latter, how are you cleaning up the images? Any insight anyone could offer would be most appreciated. (I did email Pekka directly on his particular images but haven't heard back yet. Maybe he's away or busy so perhaps some of you know how he and others are doing it).

Hi Kharim,

Sorry about not replying but I've been indeed so busy that I've lost count of my mail....

I have used NeatImage noise reduction for some print images and it works really well if used moderately. But in my gallery I have not applied any noise reduction to any new photo.

Maybe the noise variations you've noticed come from differences in global brightness of the exposure. If you expose the subject brightly, you get very little noise there even with ISO800. The noise is more apparent on smooth and dark flat surfaces and disappears in black. This explains why shots like http://photography-on-the.net/gallery/photo.php?photo=88&size=default&exhibition=1 or http://photography-on-the.net/gallery/photo.php?photo=317&size=default&exhibition=1 look very noise free and that you see the noise clearly in some areas of http://photography-on-the.net/gallery/photo.php?photo=180&size=quarter&exhibition=1

Fred's noise reduction actions are fast but they work by blurring the noise away and that always eats some detail. But they're fast and easy to use and results are nevertheless quite good (price/performace ratio is good).

NeatImage works by sampling the noise (which is different for each photo) and then it "negates" (by fourier analysis?) the noise components from the image. You can't do it like that in Photoshop. You can set very exact parameters how it should do it. It really requires that you read its manual, and it is very CPU intensive, but the results are truly amazing.

[sasc]

Kharim, I think Pekka explained why I prefer the neat image better than I could have. It does take a long time to work. You can make different settings for different photos and I really dont understand all the extra adjustments it has and stick pretty much to the basics. I made a profile for my Pro90 and D30 for different ISO.

In all fairness I dont have Freds latest D30 actions. I have the earlier free ones and the ISOr ones for generic cameras. For sharpening I prefer the sharpener Pro 5. I have also found a couple free actions by searching the actions on the web that do a good job with sharpening. I am sorry but I no longer remember where I got them.

[oops]

I also experienced high noise levels at even iso400 which were exagerated by the LinearSharpen action to the point of unuseable images. These were not improved at all by Fred's noise action which I purchased in desperation. With the help of another member and lots of experimentation, I concluded it was a simple "newbie" error which could be easily avoided by paying attention to detail, or histograms in this case.

As Pekka points out, my experimentation showed that exposures resulting in a good, center loaded histogram produced breathtaking clarity at iso400 as long as I didn't break the "long exposure" barrier. I didn't go beyond iso400 in my tests since, to me, this is flirting with the digital devil anyway with my limited experience.

Before this problem I was contented with a left, or dark loaded histogram because I knew I could lighten it in post-processing. That was true at iso100 but iso400, which I had never tried, reached out and bit me.

I have tried Fred's other iso actions and, while they helped some, they didn't do what they did to Fred's images. However, I applied them to some poorly exposed images (heavy dark loaded histograms) so I don't think it was a fair evaluation. An experienced photographer would not have let some of my exposures survive in the first place and would have improved the initial exposure before moving on.

So, the moral to this longassed story is until you can see the original histogram showing how the image was accepted into the camera in the first place it may be impossible to judge the outcome of any action, LinearSharpen included. :D

[KHogan]

Hi Pekka,

Glad you stopped in. I suspected you might be busy. Thanks for the details about your images. I'm actually quite happy to hear that you haven't done any processing on those images. It gives me something to work towards with the D30. I did get some high ISO shots, even at 1600 to come out virtually noise-free and you're right (and as Oops also points out), there definitely seems to be a correlation between noise and exposure. On the other hand, I have some shots even at lower ISOs that are exhibiting noise. I will have to figure out the best scenarios as I like to shoot alot in low-light situations, very low-light.

Meanwhile, since you and Sarah have both mentioned the NeatImage program, I did go and download it today and have just spent several hours with it. Wow!! I'm quite impressed and fascinated by that program. I think your theory is right about the Fourrier Transforms. This idea of theirs to allow you to tweak the various spectral components of the noise is fabulous. I don't have it down to any science yet and only played with a handful of images but that solution has alot of potential. I would like to have an opportunity to play with Fred's actions as well to see what kinds of results his solution yields but as you say, the price is right on the NeatImage. Also, I don't know how one could go about actually tweaking the various frequencies of only the noise in Photoshop. I like this NeatImage so far. While it's a bit slow on my machine, in the end, if I can get what I want, I can deal with the lack of speed.

I also found your Linear action Pekka and was experimenting with it as well. How exciting! The results are very compelling. I took a RAW image, converted it to linear tiff, ran your linear action without sharpening, then took it into NeatImage and removed noise and sharpened, and finally back to Photoshop for some colour adjustments and final sharpening. Despite the fact that it took 20 minutes for NeatImage to crunch my image, the whole process took about 30 minutes to get a fabulous result from an image that was otherwise unusable. Prior to this I'd spent over 3 hours tweaking the image to try to remove the noise and it still didn't look anywhere near as good.

oops, yes, you are right, getting a good exposure from the onset is paramount.

Sarah, thanks again for clarifying. I'm okay with sharpening in general. It was really the high ISO's that I was interested in resolving. I may still get Fred's actions eventually mostly because I'm curious, but I really do like this algorithm and interface of NeatImage. Your sample image was just too compelling not to have a look. :)

Oh and Pekka, the colours on your Dorretta Carter image are stunning!!! I hope that after a bit more time with my new D30 that I will be able to get similar results. :)

Thanks again all!!
Kharim

[Roger_Cavanagh]

WRT to NeatImage, I looked at the documentation, which says it only works on JPG and BMP files. Is this correct? And if so, does this not mean you'd have to use NI as the very last step in editing workflow to avoid introducing JPG artefacts?

Regards,

Roger
www.rogercavanagh.com

[Pekka]

BMP is a good lossless 24-bit format. You can save that for NeatImage and then save again as BMP after noisereduction.
But still it would be nice to have more file format options in NeatImage.

[beach512]

I had purchased all of Fred's noise reduction actions. while they did remove some noise, they still did not do all that much to improve the image. I did not get results like Fred had showed.

I have to spend more time with Neat Image as there is much to read up on and you cannot really just download it and "wing it".

I enjoyed Pekka's comments about exposing for the bright subject and will try that on higher ISO's next time.

Like always, it is better to think ahead, plan and expose in the best way possible and not really look for all these enhancements for post processing.

Dave

[KHogan]

Roger_Cavanagh wrote:
WRT to NeatImage, I looked at the documentation, which says it only works on JPG and BMP files. Is this correct? And if so, does this not mean you'd have to use NI as the very last step in editing workflow to avoid introducing JPG artefacts?


Hi Roger,

I used the BMP format which, as Pekka pointed out, is lossless. I'd prefer being able to import and export TIFF from NeatImage but for now, BMP seemed to work fine. I was reading up on the NeatImage forums and it looks like TIFF and perhaps a couple of other formats are planned for the next release of NeatImage so there's hope on that end. For now though, saving my TIFF file out as BMP and then taking it back into PS after running NI didn't seem to yield and artifacts that I could see. I didn't try the same workflow with any JPG files though. That might yield artifacts due to all the extra saving of the file.


beach512 wrote:
I had purchased all of Fred's noise reduction actions. while they did remove some noise, they still did not do all that much to improve the image. I did not get results like Fred had showed.


That's interesting Dave. Thanks for the feedback. This is why I think it would be interesting to have a chance to do some comparisons, preferably on the same image. I've read a number of comments from users of Fred's actions. Some say they've gotten amazing results while others are not getting near the quality of result that Fred's samples show. I wonder if there is a "type" of noise that is ideal for Fred's actions or why there is such a discrepency in user reports???


beach512 wrote:
I have to spend more time with Neat Image as there is much to read up on and you cannot really just download it and "wing it".

I enjoyed Pekka's comments about exposing for the bright subject and will try that on higher ISO's next time.

Like always, it is better to think ahead, plan and expose in the best way possible and not really look for all these enhancements for post processing.


I agree, this is the ideal situation. If time and conditions permit, planning and properly setting up the shot is the way to go. Sometimes though, some of these elements aren't in your control. It's for those times that it's nice to know that you have some methods/techniques to fall back on in post. Hopefully though these situations will be more the exception than the rule. :)

As for NeatImage, I certainly wouldn't have been able to wing it. The manual is quite good though and not that long. If you have the time to sit down with a couple of images and slowly go through all the settings and options, I think you'll get a good idea quite quickly of how it works. If you do get around to it, I'd certainly be interested in hearing about how you make out processing the same image in both NI and Fred's actions.


Thanks,
Kharim

[sasc]

NeatImage is still in beta. I read the forums and they are planning to put a tif format in it. Keep an eye on the site for newer versions. I still have a bit older one than the latest. He also says that they are trying to speed it up but the algorithyms are so complicated that it will be slow no matter what. good excuse for that new 2gigabite computer huh?

I also meant to say above that i use Ultra-Sharpen 5 Pro.