Noise in HDR

Sneakerz

Hi all

In the last few weeks i have been really getting into photography and HDR. I know I still have lots to learn and there are a few things I just can't seem to get right. At the moment I am really struggling with noise.
I have tried out different things and still always seem to end up with a less than satisfactory result.

I am, where possible, always shooting with ISO100. I shoot the pictures as jpg's .. would shooting in RAW help?

I then load them into photomatix (4.0.2) and process the whole thing. On this one i used the option to reduce noise in the final picture. Would it be a better option to have photmatix do it on the originals?
After Photmatix i head over to PS and use Noiseware to get rid of the noise as good as possible. Now this fixes the problem to a certain point with the negative effect that the whole picture goes soft.

I would like my pictures to be sharp so I use a ps action afterwards (slice like a ninja), which gives me some sharpness back buuut makes the noise come back. Soooo I feel like I am running in circles here.

Is there anything I am missing? how are you guys dealing with noise?

i have an example below of how my pictures usually look.. please ignore everything else that is wrong with it.. i realize there are a few things but those I will think about after the noise issue

thanks a lot for your help!

Troy Raymond

One way I have found is to process the raw to tif or jpg and reduce the noise first. The HDR process changes the noise pattern so noise reduction software has a hard time removing it. I have also blended a noisy photo with a full noise removed photo as a layer in photoshop to get an acceptable photo.

I use Dynamic Photo HDR, also, PTgui Pro has an HDR setting that will keep a photo looking real and will auto adjust images that have moved (pano software), It does wonders also.

Troy

eoren1

I think you are seeing noise because you haven't captured the full range in the photo. Photomatix is trying to pull out detail from the shadows which is giving you noise. I tend to shoot my HDRs as 6 brackets at 1EV. For a very wide dynamic range I may go to 9 brackets if need be. I shoot RAW but tend to remove sharpening and noise reduction in the file before exporting to Photomatix. I think you'll find that if you shot this same scene with EV +3 (if using Av mode), +2, +1, 0, -1, -2 then there would be minimal noise in the final shot.

mhandy

I always use RAW when shooting and bracket mine at +2 and -2 (that's as far as my camera will go) and can only take 3 shots. If your camera can do more shots and more higher and lower exposure bracketing I would play with that. I also shoot in AV mode. I feel like Photomatix handles merging really well. Alos if you save them as tifs you can open them in RAW after processing them in photomatix.

bebestylee

Agree with Mhandy

Shooting in RAW maximizes your potential for correcting common errors (not to say you made any) Because the image is RAW it captures more information that will help you with Post Processing. You can use software like Lightroom to then enhance the image by tweaking exposure settings, brightness and contrast and even Noise. If you image was shot at a High ISO setting...naturally there's going to be Noise in the image. Lightroom 3 has a new feature that enhances the vibrancy of the image without sacrificing the detail of the photo thus eliminating Noise.

Just my 2 cents.

Sneakerz

hey all

I will get back to this later but I wanted to tell you all that I am grateful for the replies. i will try a few of the mentioned things and let you know if it helped. Thanks again!