Extreme super advanced noise reduction technique?

[Rodreguez]

Ok, for reasons that are unclear to me I decided to shoot this star trail in one hour long exposure rather than smaller ones. I've done it before and the noise levels have been easily correctable when using the long exposure noise reduction, but the noise here is foul. I turned the camera off by mistake while it was still processing which I don't think helped much, and my sensor was particularly dirty as I was out in the desert, which didn't help. We thought we were going to die finding this place and got stuck in the desert and had to be rescued, so I'll go to any lengths to save this shot as it means alot to me.

Anyone got any ideas? Here's the shot, followed by a close up of the noise:






Doesn't look too bad small, but I wanna put it in my exhibition next week at A2 size.

[Rodreguez]

I have noise Ninja BTW. It'd be good if there as a way to selectively remove the black speckles from the while sky without degreading of softening the rest. I don't know of a technique to do that. I've tried selecting the highlights, inversing, gaussian blurring te rest and then deleting the highlights to leave the stars underneath, which kind of works, but I lost some of the stars....

[conkeroo]

I have Noiseware Pro and it does a good job for me but with your shot, unfortunately you're gonna lose a bit of detail using a noise reduction plugin or technique. I guess the trick is knowing when too much is too much. The fact that you have the full sized image to work on may make it easier. Amazing shot btw.

[Pete]

Try a variation on my edge detection sharpening technique

http://www.the-aperture.com/EdgeMaskSharpen.htm

But at step 7, don't inverse the mask. Instead of running a sharpen pass, run the noise reduction instead. You should find (if you've got your mask well defined) that the noise reduction will only apply to the background.

[Rodreguez]

Interesting thanks guys

[Rodreguez]

Think I prefer this one anyway. Not sure the star trails are even neccessary:



The sky on a clear night in the Utah desert really is jaw dropping. No photo can do it justice.

[Sorarse]

Originally Posted by Rodreguez

Think I prefer this one anyway. Not sure the star trails are even neccessary:



The sky on a clear night in the Utah desert really is jaw dropping. No photo can do it justice.

I prefer that one too. Nice shot.

[5Dmaniac]

I like the one with the star trails better - it adds drama to your picture. Try printing it before you give up -once you downsize the picture it might very well print OK - even with the noise.

[Jim G]

I use Noise Ninja and find it to be excellent. You might be surprised at how it prints, though.. give it a shot.

[tom1s]

Beautiful shots.

[tim]

I can see barely any noise even on the 100% crop. Stop looking at 100% crops, look at prints or whatever your output format will be.

[R Hardman]

Originally Posted by tim

I can see barely any noise even on the 100% crop. Stop looking at 100% crops, look at prints or whatever your output format will be.

Had a photo just recently with noise but when printed 90% of it blended in with the texture of the paper. Some papers hide it better then others so as Tim stated, focus on your output.

[conkeroo]

Originally Posted by Rodreguez

Think I prefer this one anyway. Not sure the star trails are even neccessary:



The sky on a clear night in the Utah desert really is jaw dropping. No photo can do it justice.

Without a doubt, this is shot is way better than the first. Would love to see a large size version of it. Really well done.

[CannedHeat]

Originally Posted by Rodreguez

Think I prefer this one anyway. Not sure the star trails are even neccessary:



The sky on a clear night in the Utah desert really is jaw dropping. No photo can do it justice.

Very nice, indeed. Looks like you got the Milky Way, too. OCF or light painting?

[neilwood32]

Originally Posted by tim

I can see barely any noise even on the 100% crop. Stop looking at 100% crops, look at prints or whatever your output format will be.

+1.

Dont pixel peep. Concentrate on what the image looks like in "real life" on the print. When printing the colours tend to bleed slightly which may reduce the visibility of the noise