Working with high ISO on the 7D and speckles

So I've got some ISO 1600 shots and they are higher than what I normally work with (plus some have some under-exposure so that isn't helping matters). At present I'm processing in lightroom which removes the colour-noise - then I'm going into CS5 and using Neat Image to remove the bulk of the noise from the shot.

However some have some strong speckling present. Neat Image doesn't seem to do much for speckles - whilst CS5 has a de-speckle feature, however I suspect that there must a knack to using it and combining it with a certain layer type because at present to get any meaningful effect It have to run it so high on the fade setting that its blurred the rest of the shot.

I know I could spot-heal remove the spots, but I don't really want to go through a fullsize shot removing the spots one by one.

I shoot at 3200 ISO all the time on my 7D and don't see what you're referring to. Lightroom does a phenomenal job at reducing noise whilst retaining detail.

How about sharing a shot (a resized version and a tiny %100 crop from an area exhibiting the noise 'problem'.

What are your LR sharpening settings for the photo ?

Lightroom settings:
Sharpening:
Amount 25
Radius 1.0
Detail 25


Noise Reduction
Luminance 0
Detail -
Contrast -
Colour 25
Detail 50
Smoothness 50

Basically they are at standard values although I think I might tweak the sharpness radius down a little from that now I look at it. I've mostly used it to remove colour noise and perform capture sharpening to work from; as I've gotten used to Neat Image, Unsharpen mask and such in general as my noise and sharpening process.


Here's a sample from the shot - note applied a rough noise and sharpen pass over this - in general if I can remove noise and sharpen but that only makes the spots stand out even more than normal.

Here are my lightroom settings (process 2012). Note that my sharpening is way higher than yours. I'm surprised you're happy with sharpening so low. Also my NR workflow is obviously different because I'm happy to use the Luminance NR in Lightroom.

I mostly use the lightroom just to give a pre-review - I still shift photos out and then sharpen and noise reduce fully in photoshop (combined then resizing and sharpening again for output).

On that shot I pushed exposure up by 0.5 - the rest of the settings I've not adjust too much - shadows +12 blacks -7

Try taking a look in Photoshop under Filter/Noise/Dust & Scratches. I applied a Radius of 1 and Threshold of 10. Upped the exposure to see the result easier. You can play around with the settings to your satisfaction.

Ahh Dennis that looks great! Somehow I guess I thought that tool was for a different application, but it looks like its worked really well - hasn't hit the sharpness too much - or at least should be recoverable with some more sharpening - or even just playing with the settings a little more.

It's one of those easily forgotten tools. Sometimes it takes a bit of trial to find the right combo of Radius and Threshold. You can also select area and apply it just the selection if it's not spread over the entire image.

LR noise reduction is pretty good I find. As a very rough rule of thumb I generally use a luminance setting of a tenth of the ISO from 1600 upwards up to a maximum setting of 50, ie ISO 3200 gets set at 30, with detail around 65-75.

I'd certainly do a little bit more in LR before export, Dennis' edit is pretty sweet though!

LR/ACR sharpening amount levels really depends on the settings you are using, especially the Masking slider. If you have very low masking, then the sharpening is applied to the whole image equally, and you need to use low values, especially if you combine that with no luminance NR at all. The defaults in that situation are probably not that way off. If however you up the Masking slider, as in the example above, then the sharpening is mostly only applied to major edges, and you can use a far higher amount. Levels from about 80 to over 100 will work really well when you have masking set to above about 80. I prefer the look from having USM rather than the Deconvolution sharpening so tend to have my detail setting down in the single figures. I also tend to use a radius of 1 to 1.5 very often, as this again reduces the amount of small detail sharpening. Many of my images though do not have lots of very fine detail. They do though often have large areas of blue sky, which seems to very often show up as being a bit noisy. I also usually use 5-10 Luminance NR with Detail at 75 and contrast at 100.

My colour NR is usually set at the Adobe default, which seems to work really well for almost every image.

Alan