Where does noise come from in my workflow?

I sometimes have problems with noisy images, and I can't quite get to the bottom of it. So, this is what I might do with a typical picture...where might noise be creeping in...where might I be better doing something else?

Shoot at ISO 100 wherever possible, try to have good light.
Copy RAW files into Bridge...sort through good and bad, and delete the bad.
Open an image in Adobe RAW...
Check for burnt out, or blocked up blacks on the histogram...adjust exposure, recovery if burnt out, slight increase in clarity. Tend to leave all other bits alone...
Open image in Photoshop.
May do a curves adjustment (on adjustment layer) if necessary, nothing fancy...S-curve mainly. May adjust saturation (again, on adjustment layer).
Usually add sharpening with unsharp mask, typically radius is around 1 max. Slide up until it looks ok, but not oversharp.
Crop to 10in x 8in x 300ppi.
Save as PSC and then as JPEG, quality 12.

Anyhting in there a problem, you think?
I wonder about cropping...if I crop to 10in x 8in 300ppi, am I adding pixels, or deleting some? If I crop with nothing in the size boxes I will get non-standard crop sizes, but will I then not be extrapolating pixels, or something?

I welcome all ideas to avoid noise in PP.

Thanks

Try using DPP as the RAW converter just to compare. I can take a RAW file and do the same adjustments in both ACR and DPP and it is like night and day.

I find that if I convert from RAW using DPP and do the Photo Shop thing that all of my images are better for it. I've been trying to just use the Adobe software but if I do I to have problems with noise.

Tried MrAl's suggestion...don't know if it's better or not...

ACR Version.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …end_the_light/5​595059989/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …end_the_light/5​607573998/

Any edit that makes the image lighter makes noise more visible, increasing Exposure, Brightness and especially Fill Light.
Any edit that increases contrast makes noise more visible, including Clarity and any sort of sharpening.
Any increase in saturation, including Vibrance, makes chromatic noise more visible.

8x12 (before crop) @ 300 ppi is 8.6 MP, so if you have any model newer than the 30D you are discarding pixels.

I think DPP noise reduction turns details to mush and I think your example proves that (although I think the ACR version is over-sharpened). I'd rather have noisy details than mush.

I wonder if your images are as noisy as you think they are. It's a common mistake to judge noise by looking at a 100% zoom, but that is like looking at a 33x50 print. Make an 8x10 and I'll bet the noise will have magically disappeared.

Leave sharpening to last.

I agree that looking at an image, sized for print often is misleading.

Here is what I do in CS

Edit/Preferences/Units and Rulers

Print Resolution (pick the ppi you resize to). In your case, 300
Screen Resolution.... in my case it is 96 pixels/inch. Measure yours and enter it here.

Now, when you are in CS and click on Print Size (first select the hand icon). It will display at the exact print size on your monitor, such as 8 x 10. That will give you the best representation of what the image will look on print, in terms of sharpness and noise. You may notice that noise is not as visible as you think it is, on print.

Below is an image from the same file @ 200% view to show what I spoke of. The left side was opened with ACR with 25 color NR only and the one on the right with 4 color NR in DPP. There was zero sharpening in both and everything zeroed. Both halves were then sharpened in PS with a .6 radius and 200 amount. Nothing else was done other than crop and resize.

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Bend The Light wrote in post #12195151
I sometimes have problems with noisy images, and I can't quite get to the bottom of it. So, this is what I might do with a typical picture...where might noise be creeping in...where might I be better doing something else?

This is fine as long as you can get a good exposure without compromising things like using a slow shutter speed that will show unwanted camera/subject motion or an aperture so wide that you lose wanted "depth of field". If shooting static subjects with a tripod, well, you can use the lowest ISO and you be the judge. Handheld shooting is more demanding, and using a higher ISO is part of the solution.

Do not underexpose at any ISO if you want to avoid noise!

Sure

Sure

As much as you can effectively do in ACR, do in ACR!

Whatever gives you the best outcome for your image!

Here I would think of your workflow: why are you as a matter of course cropping to 8x10? If it were me and I needed to go beyond Camera Raw into Photoshop, I'd save a project file as a tiff, and only save a jpeg for a specific output. I'd either crop in ACR if my composition required it or just keep an uncropped tiff until a print project required it then would crop and resize, maybe do output sharpening, all immediately prior to doing a Save As a jpeg (not re-saving the tiff).

See the above -- visible noise in an image is a result of a low exposure that has been compensated for either by ISO amplification, in-camera processing, or in your software. So, with low light and with dark shadows, some noise is inescapable if you are going to "brighten" these areas. If you think "shooting at ISO 100 underexposed is better than getting it good at ISO 200/400/800/1600" well, wrong. Test it out and you will see. The "cure" for noise is letting in as much light as you can, not underexposing at a low ISO.

You should know that post processing software has made nice strides in Noise Resuction as well.

Hope this helps a bit!

When you sharpen, try to avoid sharpening areas, especially noisy areas, that don't need it.
Sticky: Sharpening Tips & Tricks, Tutorials, and FAQ

Firstly, thanks to everyone...some well informed, and useful ideas there. I am printing this page for reference.

Many Many thanks.

bohdank wrote in post #12195785
Leave sharpening to last.

I agree that looking at an image, sized for print often is misleading.

Here is what I do in CS

Edit/Preferences/Units and Rulers

Print Resolution (pick the ppi you resize to). In your case, 300
Screen Resolution.... in my case it is 96 pixels/inch. Measure yours and enter it here.

Now, when you are in CS and click on Print Size (first select the hand icon). It will display at the exact print size on your monitor, such as 8 x 10. That will give you the best representation of what the image will look on print, in terms of sharpness and noise. You may notice that noise is not as visible as you think it is, on print.

Thanks, I didn't know about that, and wondered why it didn't look right when zoomed to print size. Thanks.

Well, here's an image that people have said is noisy...

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …end_the_light/5​595059989/

From looking at your CR2 file I could see several things you did that increased the noise. I am not saying they were wrong things to do, only that you should understand that they carry the price tag of increased noise.
1. You cropped the original 2592x3888 pixel image down to 1520 x 1900, which would have been 1520x2280 before it became 4:5 in aspect ratio. In other words you went from 10 MP to 3.5 MP. This makes the noise more visible even in the web version because it is downsized less.
2. You greatly increased contrast and saturation.
3. You did some extreme sharpening to try to compensate for the softness of the original.

Incidentally, the posted image is in the Adobe RGB space. This means that people using a non-color managed browser will see it as flatter and less saturated than it really is, which will hide some of the noise.

Edit: Elie was posting, while I was editing
Edit2: My image is closer to your DPP edit. (Probably since I used "Camera Neutral" in LR.) Your DPP edit is pretty good.

Few "problems" with the image: First, it's in AdobeRGB, so it will display wrong in any browser that isn't colormanaged.

Second: It's a fairly heavy crop, with *very* drastic contrast alterations. That brings out the noise.

Also: The sharpening settings used in ACR could be optimised: Maybe something like this: (This is LR, but you get the point)

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

Well, the image above was captured with a 400D @ ISO400 after all, and from my experience with that camera, I can say it doesn't take too well to increases in ISO.
In any case, here's a version I processed, I had do a bit of black magic on this one, so not a hint of noise anywhere.

Nothing he could have done about cropping, alas, as the spider is rather small in the frame. I managed to get around the noise by turning off all NR and sharpening in the converter (Capture One can do this), and out putting a flat-ish image that I ran through Nik Dfine in PS as the first step, image was inherently soft, so I didn't lose anything by doing so. The rest was careful contrast and sharpness enhancement with masks and blends so as not to aggravate the noise.

I had to go out for several hours but I'm back now and here's my take. I think the RAW is overexposed so I reduced Exposure by 1 stop, which, of course, gave a leg up on the noise. I lifted only the yellow by using HSL and brushed in a little negative Clarity on the OOF background.

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