High ISO Noise and Photoshop

[jfaller]

I have been reading, with great interest, about the Photoshop actions that
have been developed for reducing high ISO noise in digital images.
Unfortunately, I have Photoshop LE which does not support actions.
My question is...has anyone come up with a method to reduce high ISO noise
in Photoshop LE or other image edting software other than the full blown
Photoshop? I am already a little light in the wallet after buying a D30 and
wanted to avoid buying Photoshop if possible.

Thanks

Jim

[ab@nefiga.net]

YES!!!!

i am also interested in learning a technique to reduce noise.
Right now I am doing it mostly "very manualy".

So if some one can share with us your technique it would be GREAT!!!

Thanx,
AB

[drisley]

I find using the Blur>Smart Blur seems to work quite well. Use High Quality, and a small radius (less than 1) and then adjust the threshold.

However, I dunno if "LE" has this filter.

[inactive01]

I use "Digital Deluxe Toolbox version 1.0"
from : http://www.2morrow.dk/75ppi/coolpix/actions/

[aravet]

jfaller wrote:
My question is...has anyone come up with a method to reduce high ISO noise in Photoshop LE or other image edting software other than the full blown Photoshop?


I've been really impressed by the fully functional free version Neatimage.

(http://www.neatimage.com/)

[lord.hypnos]

I also recommend NeatImage. It is much faster (and probably much better) than what you can do manually.

[lziering]

In Photoshopmake a copy of the background and try Filters>Noise>Median and use a very low value of 1 or at max 2.

An alternative that is better is to made a dupilicate Background Layer. Go to the Channels Palette and review the noise in each of the three channels (Red, Green, Blue) You will probably see that there is very little noise in the red channel, some noise in the green, and a lot of noise in the blue channel. Select the Blue channel and then use the Median filter on it with a value of 2-3, next select the Green Channel and use a Median Filter of between 1-2, finally, select the red channel and apply an unsharp mask with values of between 500-250, .4-.7, and 6-12.

Neat Image also works well and Fred Miranda's ISO R Pro action (http://www.fredmiranda.com/) is excellent, but it's good to explore Photoshop and understand what it can do.

[madhg]

Picture Window Pro is a first-class photo editor from www.dl-c.com Not expensive, but the interface takes some getting used to after Photoshop LE or Elements. The next release promises excellent noise reduction, and I expect it to live up to this promise.

The author Jonathan Sachs provides outstanding support via online forum - usually replies to questions within one day. It's interesting to browse the forum at

http://www.dl-c.com/cgi-bin/discus/discus.cgi

I'm a moderately satisfied user of PWPro. For routine jobs I do find it quicker to use PSElements. But for tricky perspective correction or color correction or brightness curves PWPro is much more powerful.

[gmitchel]

lziering wrote:
Neat Image also works well and Fred Miranda's ISO R Pro action (http://www.fredmiranda.com/) is excellent, but it's good to explore Photoshop and understand what it can do.

I encourage everyone to reconsider purchasing actions from FredMiranda.com.

As artists, we should be very concerned about censorship. Purchases of actions from FredMiranda.com encourages censorship.

FredMiranda.com is a heavily censored site. Even trying to discuss the issue of censorship in the appropriate forum results in threads that are locked and deleted.

Please, avoid FredMiranda.com and buy actions from sites that are tolerant and encourage free expression -- sites like DPR!

Cheers,

Mitch

[dtrayers]

I have a G3 and purchased Breezebrowser for the RAW conversion functionality but also for the Smart Noise Reduction filter when converting images. I find it works quite well at reducing ISO noise. An additonal benefit is it also works on JPG files. With your D30, you may want to consider it.

Another program that works with RAW files and has noise reduction is YARC Plus. It's noise reduction filter (ARF) works well, but the reason I didn't go with YARC Plus is that it only works on RAW files as the source, and shoot in JPG most of the time.

You can download both as free trial versions.

[scottbergerphoto]

FVU creates noise in Raw conversion of high Iso shots. I found that using Breezebrowser without Noise reduction produced no noise at all.