Noise Control Method

I don't use noise control much as I don't find it generally bothers my printed images. I have a copy of noise ninja and have not really used it much (not at all actually) but with the 5D MkII I am liking what it does to ISO6400 images a fair bit.

So I got to thinking about using noise control a bit and one of the photoshop tools that I have used in the past is to use median stack to eliminate pedestrians in an image. You will only find this command in photoshop extended I think. So I decided to give it a try for noise control. I would like to hear what the eagle eyed one think about my efforts.

I have included only one full size image as by the time it gets to forum size noise if gone anyway.

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So that was an ISO 6400 Image and a 100% crop.

So here I give you an ISO100 image followed by a 6400 noise ninja one.

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These last two are using the stack median method followed by a noise ninja treatment of it (so two noise control methods together).

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So this is what I think about the images. The stack method is a bit better than the noise ninja one for detail, noise control and contrast. Combined the two methods come darn close to the ISO 100 image for noise control but lose detail. Noise Ninja was allowed to profile the images I used it on but sharpening was set to zero. All files were opened as they were from RAW files. So what do you think? Useful at all or have I just wasted a couple of hours here?

Also all crops were taken from the extreme upper right hand side of the image as if had the best spot to see noise and the box had a bit of texture (it is a rough paper box imitating linen).

well theres still some jpeg artifacts that are sidetracking the results, but man noise ninja is awesome!

Dooms_day wrote in post #7571831
well theres still some jpeg artifacts that are sidetracking the results, but man noise ninja is awesome!

That was hard to avoid in order to get it to forum size. I went quality 5. I sharpened a couple and the artifacts went through the roof. Yes NN is great but takes a bit of detail with it. Less I think with this new version I got when I went 64 bit or it could be the MkII files. Still if you have noise after the fact and cannot plan for it's removal it is the go to tool.

Interesting, but what use would stacking have?

If you can take 3 high ISO pictures, couldn't you take a single low ISO picture as well?

itzcryptic wrote in post #7577497
Interesting, but what use would stacking have?

If you can take 3 high ISO pictures, couldn't you take a single low ISO picture as well?

Well that is a bit of the problem for this sort of method - applications.

I could see it having applications in something like low light night time photography where you do not want star trails. Three short exposures and the stars do not have time to move but the noise does since it is random, but I don't do that so I am not sure if it really would be useful. But more spaced out exposures say a second or two apart. You eliminate the noise plus any moving objects like people and cars.

I would really like it to work in very low light landscapes when wind is moving a plant and you want to photograph it and a 1 min. exposure just never works since the wind is bound to blow in that long of a time frame. So you can shorten the exposure sequence to a sec or two and hopefully the wind stays quiet for at least that.

I was hoping people here might give up a few ideas where they could see it applied.