Anyone still using Neatimage?

Been considering picking up a copy of either this or another decent quality noiseware program. Just had a couple of questions:

Neatimage home only works on 8 bit images. This is probably a very dumb question, but since I can't find the answer, I'll have to bite the bullet and ask -- will that handle shooting with a 60D and post processing in PSE9?

I didn't find too much discussion of Neatimage from recent; I saw another program whose name is escaping me at the moment and doesn't look bad either, but I didn't see PSE9 support (though it did have CS5).

If not Neatimage, what would you suggest (for a hobbyist that isn't yet making much - read, any - money from photography yet)?

First, if you scroll down the page you will see that your title sparked a forum "mini-search" that produced some results!

As to producing 8 bit results, that is pretty common. If you want to keep the "best" capabilities for an image, you work in 16 bit for all the essential tasks, then convert to 8 bit for anything else, including an app like NeatImage.

Other noise reduction apps are out there, like Noise Ninja and Noiseware, but the Photoshop noise reduction stuff, both in the Camera Raw plug-in and in the main editor ar quite capable. I'd try everything out before landing on one decisive choice.

Thanks Tony

So, does that mean that the data coming from the 60D is 16-bit? I tried checking out the specs and PSE and couldn't find anything to indicate this value (except for the greyed out 8 bit selection under the Image->Mode (8 bit/channel).

The search results are (all except the top one) 4+ years old too, so I was hoping for slightly more recent feedback. Thanks again!

I use neat image and I like it.

Mistabernie wrote in post #12420236
Thanks Tony

So, does that mean that the data coming from the 60D is 16-bit? I tried checking out the specs and PSE and couldn't find anything to indicate this value (except for the greyed out 8 bit selection under the Image->Mode (8 bit/channel).

The search results are (all except the top one) 4+ years old too, so I was hoping for slightly more recent feedback. Thanks again!

The 60D Raw file is not an RGB image -- it is a 14-bit data file. Your Raw processor determines the bit depth of a tiff or psd file when converting. A jpeg is limited to 8 bits.

So, in Elements, open a Raw file in Camera Raw and look at the link below the image preview -- it should show both the bit depth and the color space. If you click the link you can change those settings. Since you say that in the editor the Image/Mode setting for 8 bits is grayed out I suspect it is already set to 8 bits.

You can also specify a bit depth in Digital Photo Professional when you do a conversion.

Yeah, it looks like it's set to 8 bits/channel in PSE when I pull up the raw. Sweet, thanks for the info Tony!

I use neat image when necessary. Neat image just came out with a major update to version 7 and will accept 8, 16 and 32 bit per channel images should you need that range. Neat image is a very flexible and versatile noise reduction application, including camera profiling and action-based automation in photoshop. I highly recommend it, although if you really are not going to use most of its features, there may be less expensive or more appropriate alternatives to fit your needs or workflows.

If you shoot raw, you may have all of the noise reduction capability you need built into your raw conversion utility of choice. however, if you operate on image data outside of your raw conversion environment and need a capable noise reduction utiility, neat image will probably provide e results you need. Try it before you buy it. Vlad's customer support and incorporation of user feedback is excellent as well. Head on over to the neat image forum and check there as well.

Kirk

Yeah, I use it - the pro version that does 16 bit. As a matter of fact, I upgraded to the latest version just a few days ago. LR's NR is excellent and I use it when printing directly from LR, but if I'm already making a rendered tif, I'll make the stop at NI as well. I am also a big fan of it's sharpening.

I go way back with NI - I remember the early days when it would take 10 minutes to process a file (on Windows 98). I would set up a batch process before bed and let it work overnight.