help guys. why do my images look so grainy.

[jamaican_sole]

here's an example:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3035/2926593709_3dc30a00f5_o.jpg
Camera:Canon EOS 30D (http://www.flickr.com/cameras/canon/eos_30d/)Exposure:0.013 sec (1/80)Aperture:f/2.8Focal Length:28 mmISO Speed:100Exposure Bias:0/3 EVFlash:Flash did not fire

whenever i look at other people's images, they seem to be very smoothe. my images on the other hand tend to be a bit rough and grainy. and i'm not sure what it is that i'm doing wrong. is it something that's in the camera settings that i'm forgetting about. is it something that i should be doing when composing the shot, or is it during pp. my images, at least to me, tend to look a bit soft when i get them out of the camera. whenever i use USM it just seems to amplify the noise in the image. bottom line is that i'm coming to you guys for help....oh and any C&C that you may have to offerr wouldn't hurt either :D

[Jim G]

Did you shoot RAW and underexpose a bit so the converter pulled it up, creating quite a lot of noise?

[jamaican_sole]

here's a shot of the original image as it was going in to camera raw, so that you can see the histogram
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3011/2930052528_584c4c93a7_b.jpg

[chauncey]

My friend, I enlarged your image to 400% in my browser and saw no noise in your RAW image and lots in your processed image.

How about a screen shot of changes in ACR and workflow in PS.
Also, how much sharpening was applied?

[GeoffSobering]

I agree that it's likely your workflow. Looking at the jeans (for example), I immediately see they've been pulled up quite a bit, and also probably fairly high saturation (?). Both of those operations can enhance noise pretty substantially.

If you like the look in your final shot (and FWIW I think it's nice), I'd suggest working to create flatter lighting when you shoot (i.e. a histogram without quite such a large bump at the low end) and then push the areas you want to be darker down in post-processing. That way when you bump up the saturation you won't be enhancing the noise so much.

In this case, I think some fill (esp. from the right) would help open up the shadows on the jeans and shoe so the capture looks more like the final product. It would also let you keep the background darker.

Also, I'd shift your working color-space (in ACR) to ProPhoto with 16-bits to reduce quantization noise.

[acchildress]

I know you're looking for answers to your problem, but for this image the "grain" works. I know that being there your eyes did not see any grain, but after looking and taking lots of shots like this in film using asa 400 and maybe pushing it to 800 or 1200, I am used to seeing grain in photographs and this looks right on to me.

[masayako]

Looks like the grain are caused by post processing. I agree with others. Show us your workflow in camera raw and photoshop, we probably can find out why.

[jamaican_sole]

sorry i haven't been able to reply guys. my computer crashed and i'm in the process of reformatting right now. as soon as i'm back up and running i'll be sure to get the screenshots of the changes that i made in ACR and what i did in pp.

but there is something that i would like to discuss right now, and that's sharpening. now first i would like to you to keep in mind that i am very new to photography and definitely new to digital photography on a whole. but typically when i sharpen an image i use USM with a radius of anywhere from 1.5 to 2.2 and the percent ranges from about 80-150%. i rarely use the threshold slider. are those settings to much? should i be using something else, maybe smartsharpen instead?

after reading how so many of you targeted my pp as the potional culprit of my noise issues i began to think that it my be my sharpening technique that might be problem.

and geoff could you explain a bit more the "shift" that you mentioned

[sethmo]

Thats probably your problem. Usually anything over 1.0 radius will cause that grain. On mine, I usually use .4-.5% radius and an amount of 300%. I leave the threshold at 0.

[Edit]
I just realised you are probably using the ACR sharpening and not the USM filter. Those settings I use for the USM filter.

[jamaican_sole]

no. i actually pull back the sharpening and noise reduction sliders in ACR. i rely PS for sharpening

[jamaican_sole]

what about using smartsharpen? is it as smart as advertised?

[chauncey]

Got your back on this one my friend,
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=466333

You will be amazed at the amount of quality information located in those "stickys" at the top of most of the different sections herein.

[watchtherocks]

Duplicate layer > filter > blur > gaussian blur. Set layer blending mode to 'overlay.' Reduce opacity to between 10 and 60%, depending on what you like.

[Croasdail]

Your pumping the colors so high, they are clipping - you can see that easily in the charts. Add to that anything but the most gentle USM, and your going to get grain/noise showing up. And remember, USM always last. BTW, not always a bad thing - though it sounds like your not happy with the end result. If you want to pump colors without clipping, learn to use curves... don't do all your editing in your RAW converter. Curves allows for much tighter control of what is going on and you can easily work each channel that way.

[jamaican_sole]

Got your back on this one my friend,
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=466333

You will be amazed at the amount of quality information located in those "stickys" at the top of most of the different sections herein.


thanks bud, maybe i should pay a bit more attention to those "stickies" :lol:

[Bill Boehme]

sorry i haven't been able to reply guys. my computer crashed and i'm in the process of reformatting right now. as soon as i'm back up and running i'll be sure to get the screenshots of the changes that i made in ACR and what i did in pp.

but there is something that i would like to discuss right now, and that's sharpening. now first i would like to you to keep in mind that i am very new to photography and definitely new to digital photography on a whole. but typically when i sharpen an image i use USM with a radius of anywhere from 1.5 to 2.2 and the percent ranges from about 80-150%. i rarely use the threshold slider. are those settings to much? should i be using something else, maybe smartsharpen instead?

after reading how so many of you targeted my pp as the potional culprit of my noise issues i began to think that it my be my sharpening technique that might be problem.

and geoff could you explain a bit more the "shift" that you mentioned

That is definitely way too much sharpening, especially if the final destination for the image is to be viewed on a computer monitor. For printing, more aggressive sharpening is used, but still not that much. You mentioned not doing sharpening in ACR, but it is critical that you DO "capture sharpening" which should be done just enough to recover from the loss of sharpness that occurs during the interpolation part of demosaicing the RAW image. I typically use amount = 45, radius = 0.7, detail = 30, and masking set between 10 and 40. Sometime creative sharpening is done during normal processing, but it is normally localized and minimal. Output sharpening varies depending on the image and its intended purpose. An image destined for web viewing need little ouptut sharpening. for printing, the image might be sharpened to the point that it appears to be a bit crunchy when viewed on a monitor.

I noticed some things that should not have been done during RAW processing: vibrance (100), brightness(91), contrast(79), Also the positive exposure compensation along with the large amount of brightness adjustment are both counter to the large amount of highlight recovery that was added. Those all appear to be rather extreme adjustments. My take is that the image started out very underexposed and that the post processing to try to recover the image also revealed the noise that lurks in the shadowy areas. I think that you could have achieved much better results if you had opened the converted file as a smart object in Photoshop and then used layer masking to creatively work on selected areas of the image rather than applying all of the corrections globally.

[Bill Boehme]

I just noticed from your screen shot that there are a couple serious issues. The most significant is that you are doing your RAW processing in 8 bits which is going to very significantly effect the output results. You need to change the ACR setting so that you are doing the RAW processing in 16 bits. I would also suggest using ProPhoto as your color space during the RAW conversion in ACR, but that is not related to your current problems. The second observation is that the image appears to have started out reasonably well exposed, but the strong tonal adjustments coupled with working in 8 bits have caused the noise problems.

[Right Cranium Imaging]

This is something I see quite often, not the issue, but just the fact there is so much PP going on. This appears to be a set up shot and posed.

1. Use a tripod.

2. Expose properly (use a grey/white card and do a custom white balance) If possible use a hand held light meter rather than your camera meter. If you are on the fly that is one thing, but at least this image seems to be posed and set up.

If you do these things, you will need almost Zero post processing and certainly no sharpening.

Good luck and happy practicing.

[chauncey]

One last thing, I took two months of www.lynda.com (http://www.lynda.com) and studied my butt off.
Time and money well spent.

[Photon Phil]

Over radius sharpened, over color pumped. = not "faithful" to the original....also equals uncrossprocessed "lomo" look....also equals sales to younger folks and great looking wallet sized pics. True.

[jamaican_sole]

I just noticed from your screen shot that there are a couple serious issues. The most significant is that you are doing your RAW processing in 8 bits which is going to very significantly effect the output results. You need to change the ACR setting so that you are doing the RAW processing in 16 bits. I would also suggest using ProPhoto as your color space during the RAW conversion in ACR, but that is not related to your current problems. The second observation is that the image appears to have started out reasonably well exposed, but the strong tonal adjustments coupled with working in 8 bits have caused the noise problems.



well, how would i go about making that change to 16 bit
in ACR?

[Bill Boehme]

well, how would i go about making that change to 16 bit
in ACR?

Click on the link in your ACR window as shown in the screen shot below.

311782

It will cause a menu to open that allows you to set the image resolution, size, color space, and bit depth.

A great book for learning all of the features of ACR is "Real World Adobe Camera RAW". There is a lot more to ACR than what meets the eye and the book will explain how to apply the various tools for maximum benefit.