Feeder Birds Saved From ISO 1600

[Scottes]

I shot these off the deck today. Light was getting low, and an earlier post about ISO 800 prompted me to pop this to ISO 1600 and test.

Pretty aggressive noise removal using Neat Image, a hint of contrast, resized to web, and some very mild sharpening (Intellisharpen Level 2)

Did it come out OK?

http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/finch_7587.jpg


Here's a before and after comparison at 100% crop. Bits of noise are still apparent but you'd never guess this started at ISO 1600. Some of the small detail was lost - it would take effort to get them back without re-noising the bird. Sharpening was adjusted for the size - USM 180/0.8/4. But artifacts started showing up because the histogram was edge-to-edge from the start - they're too much for the web, but this would probably print OK so I left it. Some work with Curves before sharpening might help, but I was lazy and this was just a test.

Anyway, it seems a fairly dramatic difference.

http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/finch-compare-iso1600.jpg


And a bonus image, also at ISO 1600, similar processing:

http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/chickadee_7591.jpg
:)

[JZaun]

Wow I wodda never guessed ISO 1600 or even 400 for that matter. Excellent PS job on nice pic's. Great job Scottes.


JZ

[PhotosGuy]

Looks good! Your sharpening is a lot more aggressive than mine. I usually am around 135/.3-.5/2 Maybe I'll try pushing it a bit more.

[djudes]

Very nice . The green background really compliments the bird.

[Scottes]

Looks good! Your sharpening is a lot more aggressive than mine. I usually am around 135/.3-.5/2 Maybe I'll try pushing it a bit more.

I push it a little for print - this is too strong for web. It may be too strong for print, really, as sharpening artifacts are apparent.


So I gave it another shot using an edge mask. I found the channel with the most contrast and duplicated it. I then ran Find Edges on that channel. I used the pencil and erased (painted white), kinda roughly, around the bird and then lasso'd the entire background and erased that. I was left with a edge mask for the bird details only. I guassian blurred that a little. I magic wand selected the background, and Expanded that by 3 pixels, thus leaving the mask about 1 pixel smaller than the bird. I de-selected, ran Select Color range on the solid white background and ran the fuzziness up to 200, and deleted to white. Now I had a very black mask concentrating on the bird details - feather edges and stuff. I loaded the mask and ran an aggressive Neat Image to remove noise from everything except the bird details. Edges got ignored, but the background and any areas more than a few pixels wide got noise removed.

Phew! That sounds like a lot, but it took about 5 minutes in reality. The toughest part is erasing around the edge of the bird, and I didn't need complete precision because of the blurring and selection expansion. I figure that I could run this process on the entire picture in about 15 or 20 minutes. That's too much for every day use, but it's OK to pull back a keeper from the brink of hell.

So here's the end result - again the original on the left, the end result on the right. This time I did not do any sharpening at all. Since the mask saved so much detail from being lost in noise removal it barely needs sharpening. And when I do sharpen it I'll use the same mask, but I'd blur it a bit more and make it darker so that sharpening actually happens.

http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/finch-compare-iso1600-2.jpg

Note the beak, eye, and the larger feathers near the bottom - no noise. But now look at the ring around the eye and the tiny feathers below and to the right of the eye - they're still quite apparent and almost completely untouched. Compare those areas to my first try and it's much better.

Again, not worth running on every image, but the process does do pretty well.


Hmmm. This topic should probably go into Post Processing...

[who10]

Beautiful work Scottes, you have developed a real finesse with your tool set... I love the composition and background on this one.

David

[PhotosGuy]

Very nice!
In your copious free time, :lol: maybe you could post a tutorial?

[Scottes]

Very nice!
In your copious free time, :lol: maybe you could post a tutorial?

I was thinking about it as I went through the explanation. Alas, I have so very little time lately. What daylight I have goes to the yard or the rare shoot. Night time is taken by the occasional process, posts like this, and the web site.

I figure that I'll have time for more tutorials some time at the end of October - after the web site, migration, and foliage are done.

But I *am* getting a lot of good ideas for more tutorials!

[Scottes]

By the way, I dedicate this topic to CDS.

Some time ago he mentioned using the history brush to undo noise removal within detail areas. I've been doing that - and still will most of the time - but he got me to thinking about making it even better. Given my anal-retentive nature this leads to methodical testing and trials.The end result - so far - is here.


Now I just need one of the PS gurus to come along and perfect it for me. (Glenn? Woody? Leo? Where are you guys?)

[SENster7]

Wow very nice work Scottes! Which lens did you use for these bird shots?

[Scottes]

Thanks.

This was using my venerable 100-400 L IS with a 20mm extension tube. I have a feeder set up about 7 or 8 feet away from my deck and I tied some sticks to the top bar to get "natural" shots like this.

[drisley]

Very nice job!
However, when an image is resized for web, or printed even as large as 8x10, maybe larger, noise even from an ISO1600 image is usually not noticable.
Some sharpening algorithms actually ADD noise to images to give an illusion of sharpness. That is why I rarely use my Ninja anymore.
I can only see SLIGHT noise on an ISO1600 image at full resolution on my monitor, and that is equivalent to looking at a 28x42 inch image.

However, very nice job indeed!

[John_T]

Excellent Scott! Wish I had your experience, patience and eye.

Slightly OT, have you tried KnockOut 2 for cut outs?

I have it, but haven't gotten into it yet.

[Scottes]

Thanks John. And thanks to you I can actually print these correctly!

It's not so much patience as it is anal-retentive desire for perfection and an eye that points out the slightest little annoyances that most people can't see. I'm not so sure that either is a blessing... :)

I've always liked playing with Photoshop - the digital camera gives me thousands of excuses to play some more. And due to that playing - with the help of many here and elsewhere - I think my PS skills have gone up a couple levels in the last 6 months.


As to KnockOut, I tried the demo, and it wasn't perfect enough for me. :) However I think it has a lot of hope, but requires some more knowledge with blending edges and such. Since I don't do that many extractions I don't have much use for it so the occasional extraction is done by hand and a 1-pixel Pencil.

However, there must be a way to use that for masking, too, right? I always thought of it as an extraction tool, but an extraction is simply a use of masking. I may have to play with it again with that idea. Masking is *so* powerful.

[PacAce]

Great stuff you have here, Scott. You did an excellent job of getting rid of the annoying color and iso noises while still retaining the details of the image. I'll have to bookmark this thread so that I can go back and study what you did here more in detail when I have a little more time to spare. Things have been so hectic for me these last few weeks.

[CyberDyneSystems]

Scott,

The results are fantastic and speak for themselves.. definatley a great techniche to help out those "would be" framers that happend to suffer from low lighting when the image was taken.

(wow.. this is the first thing I have typed in 8 days,.. you all should have seen all the tyoing errors!!! It made my usual gobbledeegook look positively skilled)

[robertwgross]

(wow.. this is the first thing I have typed in 8 days,.. you all should have seen all the tyoing errors!!! It made my usual gobbledeegook look positively skilled)

"Have seen" is past tense. What we see now is present tense.

---Bob Gross---

[PacAce]

(wow.. this is the first thing I have typed in 8 days,.. you all should have seen all the tyoing errors!!! It made my usual gobbledeegook look positively skilled)

"Have seen" is past tense. What we see now is present tense.

---Bob Gross---

Unless, of course, what he was implying is that he REALLY had a LOT more typos than what we can see now. :mrgreen: :lol:

[CyberDyneSystems]

I was speaking in past tense Mr. English Teacher... you should have seen it.. before I retyped...

That was in the past.

I had to leave one or two booboos so you'd know it was still me and not some imposter!

[Penguin_101_1]

(wow.. this is the first thing I have typed in 8 days,.. you all should have seen all the tyoing errors!!! It made my usual gobbledeegook look positively skilled)

"Have seen" is past tense. What we see now is present tense.

---Bob Gross---

Don't corect mee on mine inglish or spelln'? :mrgreen:

English has always been my downfall. Now on the other hand math, science and history...

:lol: