noise reduction in workflow

paddler4

I do most of my editing in Lightroom, with some in Paint Shop Pro. I have not been satisfied with Lightroom's noise reduction, so I have been playing with Noise Ninja and Noiseware, both of which seem much better. However, one of them has a warning that noise reduction should be done as early as possible in the workflow, and definitely before sharpening.

In contrast, LR places noise reduction near the bottom and the normal procedure is to work from top to bottom.

Anyone know whether it makes a lot of difference?

Tee Why

I am not sure if there is an absolute rule about when to apply noise reduction.

As a side note, you may need to ask why the noise reduction in LR in not adequate. If you are severely over/under exposing and trying to compensate, it may create a lot of noise that no noise reduction can fix, at least without some severe loss of resolution.

I tend to use NR towards the very end of the process as when you adjust the image it tends to produce noise, so if you do NR at the beginning, as you adjust the levels/curves/contrast/fill in lighting and such, more noise will be introduced and you may need to apply NR again.

I tend to do my editing first and sharpen as my last step and then use NR at the very end. If the NR reduces the sharpness, I may go back and add a slight more sharpening.

Good luck.

dwayne_bradley

Noise reduction
Nik Software also suggests to do noise reduction as the first step in the workflow if noise reduction is needed. See here:

http://www.niksoftware.com/completecollection/usa/entry.php?view=intro/workflow_lesson.shtml

For what its worth, I have always tended to do NR near the end.

Dwayne

rutt

The rule of thumb is to blur early and sharpen late. Noise reduction is a sort of blurring and thus the rule places it early. The theory behind this is that most post moves accentuate texture (including noise) and so you'd like to reduce these before color and contrast enhancement and the like.

There is kind of spectrum. You can sharpen less or more selectively and you will need less noise removal (or other blurring.) I learned to use a mask of some sort (the black channel, e.g.) for sharpening to keep it out of the shadows. Doing this reduced the need to reduce noise a lot. LR sharpening has its own built in mask, which probably achieves the same thing.

In LR and other non-photoshop workflows, I'm not so sure how the rule applies because I'm not exactly sure what order it applies the steps. With a third party noise removal program, do you actually know when it gets invoked?

Maybe you should let us see one of these noisy images.

paddler4

Like Tee Why and Dwayne, I normally sharpen and do NR at the end, which is why the advice from the NR vendors upsets the apple cart. I like to do as much as possible in LR, because the edits are just a reversible recipe, and export at the end, or as late as possible in the flow. That way, you don't get a proliferation of files, which with my camera (50D) are plenty big. Following the advice of the NR vendors, you right away end up with a 16-bit TIFF added to the LR stack, along with the RAW.

Nothing special with the images--just that for a lot of my shooting (e.g., handheld macro) I have to use high ISOs and can't avoid shadows, and the 50D is not the quietest camera under those circumstances.

thegridrunner

has anyone tried doing noise reduction manually in the individual color channels? How does this compare to a noise reduction program?

rutt

Won't you still have two TIFF files for your trip through NR no matter where in the workflow you do it?

Anyway, why not try an experiment with an image or so. Follow the rule of thumb and NR early. Compare with what you normally do. Any difference you care about? Be empirical.

paddler4 wrote:

Like Tee Why and Dwayne, I normally sharpen and do NR at the end, which is why the advice from the NR vendors upsets the apple cart. I like to do as much as possible in LR, because the edits are just a reversible recipe, and export at the end, or as late as possible in the flow. That way, you don't get a proliferation of files, which with my camera (50D) are plenty big. Following the advice of the NR vendors, you right away end up with a 16-bit TIFF added to the LR stack, along with the RAW.

Nothing special with the images--just that for a lot of my shooting (e.g., handheld macro) I have to use high ISOs and can't avoid shadows, and the 50D is not the quietest camera under those circumstances.

rutt

thegridrunner wrote:

has anyone tried doing noise reduction manually in the individual color channels? How does this compare to a noise reduction program?

It depends on what channels have the noise and the details you want to preserve. Sharpening on the black channel is a trick of Dan Margulis to avoid bringing out skin blemishes. By the same token, NR on the red can be good for skies. But in my experience, the most noise usually lives in the darkest part of the image, so some sort of luminosity mask on the sharpen layer is usually a good idea. Invert that mask and NR on it to limit NR to the noisiest and least important (usually) areas of the image.

Because I usually only have noise problems in the darkest parts of the image, one solution is just to plug them (perhaps with curves) and lose shadow detail (and thus noise). Then this is only an issue if there is detail you want in the shadows.

Tee Why

paddler4 wrote:

Like Tee Why and Dwayne, I normally sharpen and do NR at the end, which is why the advice from the NR vendors upsets the apple cart. I like to do as much as possible in LR, because the edits are just a reversible recipe, and export at the end, or as late as possible in the flow. That way, you don't get a proliferation of files, which with my camera (50D) are plenty big. Following the advice of the NR vendors, you right away end up with a 16-bit TIFF added to the LR stack, along with the RAW.

Nothing special with the images--just that for a lot of my shooting (e.g., handheld macro) I have to use high ISOs and can't avoid shadows, and the 50D is not the quietest camera under those circumstances.

The initial reports I hear is the with the 50D, Canon's DPP automatically sets default NR (even when shot in RAW). I also hear that Canon's DPP is better at NR than ACR/LR. Hence I'd check out DPP and see if the NR from it is enough. As a side note, they also put NR at the end of it's workflow by having it in the last tab, not sure if that makes a big difference to do the NR last or first though.

Good luck.

paddler4

Good suggestion. I have not used DPP much, but I can check it out.

Tee Why wrote:

The initial reports I hear is the with the 50D, Canon's DPP automatically sets default NR (even when shot in RAW). I also hear that Canon's DPP is better at NR than ACR/LR. Hence I'd check out DPP and see if the NR from it is enough. As a side note, they also put NR at the end of it's workflow by having it in the last tab, not sure if that makes a big difference to do the NR last or first though.

Good luck.

MA-FOTO

The suggestion to apply noise reduction seams a bit old fashion w/ LR and RAW processing.
I want to do all my adjustments in the RAW arena then sharpen followed by neat images noise reduction.
I have gotten good results.
I tried tiff vs jpeg and found no difference.

I drive the 50d and have been please w/ this workflow.
I have shot high iso 1600-3200, processed thru LR followed by Neat Image then printed 16x24 from smug.
Great result on all. 4 in the last 2 months.

just my 2 cents.

Later,
_Mark