I need help with NOISE

[vanessaweber]

i'm new to this forum, so forgive me if i don't get this completely right. my name is vanessa, and i'm a brand spanking new stock photographer having problems with noise. mostly a bit of compression and jaggies. if you have any suggestions to help me that would be great. i'm aware of a few things, like keeping a low ISO , and using a faster shutter speed, and of programs such as noise ninja and so on. but if there is anything else i'm missing, please fill me in! i posted two images that were rejected because of noise. not sure if you will be able to see it because the upload size is small. thanks for your help!

[crashthenet44]

You need to post bigger examples that have EXIF data left intact.

[Bill Boehme]

Compression artifacts and edge jaggies aren't really noise in the normal sense that we think of noise as being something from the captured image.

In the case of jaggies, you may be seeing jaggies that are not really there depending on the scale that you view the image on your monitor. Also, you may be creating jaggies if you save images at the wrong scale factor of the original image. When viewing images at reduced scale, do not use integral divisors of three and the same thing goes when downsizing an image. The best results are obtained when using integral divisors of two. Also, there are several different algorithms for downsizing an image and my personal preference is the bicubic sharper. However, for smooth edges, you should look at using the various options to see which you prefer.

The way to avoid compression artifacts is to never let them happen in the first place. Noiseware such as Noise Ninja and Neat Image can't undo the damage done by heavy jpg compression. If EXIF and other meta data are not essential, I would suggest retaining only the ICC profile information along with the file. Photoshop allows this option when "Saving for web and devices". This will help to keep the file size small.

Finally, if you do any image editing at all, it is far better to shoot in RAW and do all the editing that you can in 16 bits before converting to 8 bits at the end of the editing process. If you start off with an 8 bit jpg file and try to edit it, the image quality will often noticeably suffer.

[joedlh]

Make sure you look at your images at 100% magnification before you start worrying about jaggies. In my experience, Photoshop at lower magnifications will show jaggies that are not really there.

[vanessaweber]

sorry, i don't know how to post a larger image

[Bill Boehme]

sorry, i don't know how to post a larger image

I think that you described the problem well enough that seeing actual examples of what you described probably is not necessary.

Concerning the size of the images mentioned in a previous post, I can think of two reasons to explain it:

If the images that you posted here look the same size as the originals that you see on your monitor when viewed at full size, then you would not be able to post a larger image because it is already full size.
The original image was reduced in size in your image editing program in order for it to meet the 150K file size limit. If this is the case then it may be that your image editing software is not being very efficient at minimizing file size while maintaining good image quality. My suggestion is to look into the various image saving options of your software to see what can be done to minimize file size.

[jetcode]

Can't help with noise but I am a fan of power and telephone poles.