Help with NOISE in photos

tate

Hello! I need help! I had done a family portrait for someone ...with 4 families for a portrait for their grandmother on her 80th birthday. The day we did the pictures was very overcast and misty.....This was the onlly day to coordinate all the families....Of course right before I did the cousins picture, it started really raining and I took these pictures under an umbrella ....shot tripod ....good thing, because these would have been a real big mess...lol....anyways...I have offered to reshoot these pictures, but they need a print for July for the bday....the only time we can get everyone together again is August........soooo I need something that looks decent enough for a frame. Can anyone give me any tips or suggestions on how to correct this. I should have upped my iso, but forgot...should have shot in RAW, but didnt....I was just trying to finish up before we were all soaked! I have PSE9, but not sure if any other program would correct the noise better? Maybe I could upload a trial program? Any help or suggestions would be most appreciated. Also, there are 2 pictures here...Cousins and Cousinsfinal2, Anyway to merge the little girl from Cousins to Cousins final 1? She is sitting on the girls lap screaming...

http://www.christymitchellphotography.com/Family/Diangelo-Family/17513610_NK9WVJ/

I couldnt upload the 2 pictures I was talking about, but the one Im talking about is in the last page of this gallery and is marked CousinsFinal2. The other one that I printed that looks grainy is the very first one in this gallery. Any opinions ....Im afraid all the pics in this gallery might come out awful printed....
Christy

ziggy53

You're asking for an awful lot. To do noise reduction is no problem but it takes competent software. If you want freeware I can recommend RawTherapee. It's not super fast but the quality is very good and you have separate control over chrominance and luminance noise reduction.

http://www.rawtherapee.com/

For compositing parts of one image onto another I really think you need Photoshop and then you need to learn the techniques involved. In the mean time maybe you can hire someone local to do the work for you.

Always shoot RAW for paying customers.

divamum

Also Noiseware (community edition). Free standalone program, and terrific.

zoomer

Noise shows less in prints. If they are only going 8x10 or so these should be ok. I was expecting to see a real mess, the two you mentioned look usable. Don't crop them anymore or it will be worse.
There is a blue tint on that last on in the gallery, maybe to much highlight tool. Click on the white shirts with the eyedropper should clear that up.
If you hit them with a bunch of noise reduction you may end up with soft porridge. Do a test print, I think you will find they are ok.

Sam

Chrisy,

Was this for a paying customer?

If so you can not forget to shoot in RAW or to set the ISO, aperture, shutter, flash, etc correctly.

If you take your car in for an oil change you don't expect them to forget to put the new oil in the car.

PSE9 while a good program and great bang for the buck lacks the tools needed for a professional.

It looks like they could be salvaged to some degree. They appear to be over sharpened and the white balance / skin tones are off.

I didn't look at moving a child into any photos.

Try giving access to the original unprocessed image, and let those so inclined do their magic.

Sam

tate

Sam wrote: »

Chrisy,

Was this for a paying customer?

If so you can not forget to shoot in RAW or to set the ISO, aperture, shutter, flash, etc correctly.

If you take your car in for an oil change you don't expect them to forget to put the new oil in the car.

PSE9 while a good program and great bang for the buck lacks the tools needed for a professional.

It looks like they could be salvaged to some degree. They appear to be over sharpened and the white balance / skin tones are off.

I didn't look at moving a child into any photos.

Try giving access to the original unprocessed image, and let those so inclined do their magic.

Sam

Sam & the others, Thank you for your responses. Yes this was a paying customer. Usually I dont have issues like this but I think I forgot everything that I should have done because of the extreme weather conditions. I know not the best excuse. I wouldnt have had this issue if I had shot it in Raw though correct? I am going to try to upload the original 2 pictures and I would be thrilled if anyone could fix the picture to make it look like a decent 11x14 print.

tate

original prints
hello
I just uploaded the original sooc image
here is another one. I was trying to get the little girl on the lap looking ahead and everyone else clear. I really really appreciate any help and if anyone does want to try to fix this if they would like to email me the picture? my email is: christym125@yahoo.com

tate

Sam wrote: »

Chrisy,

Was this for a paying customer?

If so you can not forget to shoot in RAW or to set the ISO, aperture, shutter, flash, etc correctly.

If you take your car in for an oil change you don't expect them to forget to put the new oil in the car.

PSE9 while a good program and great bang for the buck lacks the tools needed for a professional.

It looks like they could be salvaged to some degree. They appear to be over sharpened and the white balance / skin tones are off.

I didn't look at moving a child into any photos.

Try giving access to the original unprocessed image, and let those so inclined do their magic.

Sam

Here is the original picture that I had swapped heads on...but when printed out it showed noise.....let me know what you think...thanks! I think the other one with the little girl trying to get away might be a better print quality wise....

Sam

Christy,

The image you posted on Dgrin looks to be unprocessed and can be copied but is not full size.

The images need to be copied or downloadable so that I or others can put them into Photoshop for processing.

Sam

Peano

I'm seeing a blue/cyan cast in these images. Might be a good idea to set white and black points (using curves or levels).

pathfinder

What Sam said.

You will need to turn off right click protection if you really want someone to attempt to edit a copy of your original files.

Editing of your images you have posted here on line may be interesting and informative, but will not provide you with an improved file for printing.

You will need to turn off right click protection. You can put the images in a password protected gallery and give us the password, or you can email or dropbox one of us the original file, but without the original, we are just treading water.

tate

pathfinder wrote: »

What Sam said.

You will need to turn off right click protection if you really want someone to attempt to edit a copy of your original files.

Editing of your images you have posted here on line may be interesting and informative, but will not provide you with an improved file for printing.

You will need to turn off right click protection. You can put the images in a password protected gallery and give us the password, or you can email or dropbox one of us the original file, but without the original, we are just treading water.

Sam & Pathfinder,
Thanks for the info....What will do is send you the original print in a seperate email.. I will upload the original out of camera pictures into a different gallery and take the right click off the photos.....Ill post that link here....

tate

tate wrote: »

Sam & Pathfinder,
Thanks for the info....What will do is send you the original print in a seperate email.. I will upload the original out of camera pictures into a different gallery and take the right click off the photos.....Ill post that link here....

http://www.christymitchellphotography.com/Photography/Misc

Hello! Here is that gallery link. I uploaded 3 pictures that were the original pictures. Pic 75 is the one that I had merged the heads in...but when it was printed had a lot of noise and the little girl on the lap had a blur as was the girl holding her and then the little girl sitting next to them. Maybed I should stick with pic 74 and not worry about the little girl fussing? Any thoughts/help is much appreciated! Really dont want to have to reshoot this!

pathfinder

Your gallery link only takes me to your site, not to the specific gallery with the images. Are you sure the link is correct?

tate

pathfinder wrote: »

Your gallery link only takes me to your site, not to the specific gallery with the images. Are you sure the link is correct?

Hello! I just put it as a listed gallery. I had cut and pasted the link they gave me when I created it. OH well. Its under my site: www.christymitchellphotography.com gallery is Photography/misc

Thanks for taking a look at it. If you want to email me with what you can do, would appreciate it. christymitchellphotography@yahoo.com

Btw, last night was at a wedding....of course the photographer catches my eye.... He had a speedlight with an attachment arm and he had a white looked like a hard plastic piece that he had stuck into the light. I have always used the white plastic diffuser....does the plastic piece work better? Would you just get that at any photo store?
Christy

pathfinder

I downloaded both of the files from your gallery which you described as "straight out of the camera". They are 2000 x 3008 pixel images at ISO 400 from a Nikon D40.

A 11 by 14 inch print needs 3300 by 4200 pixels for a total of 13.86 Mpxls, for 300 pixels per inch of resolution. The D40 files are only 6 Mpxles, so the files will need to be high quality, and be uprezzed in Genuine Fractals or Photoshop for an 11x14 inch print.


The color balance of the images tend towards the blue/ cyan end of the spectrum.

Here are the two original files as downloaded.

#1



#2



I downloaded the original files, and ran them through Adobe Camera RAW 6.whatever is current. I warmed the color by white balancing on the shirt of the far left fellow, adjusted the brightness, white points, black points, sharpened, and corrected for the Nikon 50 mm f1.8, and then dropped the file into CS 5 for further noise reduction with Topaz DeNoise 5, along with further sharpening in PS, and uprezzing in GF 6. Here are my results

#!



#2



Image #2 is defiinitely sharper than image #1 in the original files. Both still seem a bit cool, even with the neutral tone s pretty close, so I warmed the central portion of image #2 for this result

image #2 warmed



I will PM you the link for the larger files so you can get them.

Comments, suggestions, complaints?

tate

Pathfinder,
What an amazing difference! Thank you so very much. Are you sending me the photos via my email? By chance is your name Bill Scheff? I just got an email from someone and not sure if it was spam or not. I have been thinking of upgrading my camera to a full frame camera. Looking at the Nikon d700. Someone from my camera club has a friend who might be selling it, so sort of waiting since its only a year old. (and also since hard to find the Nikon d700) I have always liked my Nikon d40. I would imagine I would see an amazing difference going from a D40-D700. I never realized about the sizing like you mentioned. That is the file size from my sd card.

Sam, You would be proud, I had a session this morning with these 2 little girls and I shot it all in RAW! I will have to make due with my PSE9 until I can invest in Cs5. I never thought that there would be such a difference in the processing...since some people from my camera club says the PSE9 is just as good......but your correction proved that is incorrect!

Thanks again! You have certainly saved the day and Im happy to not have to reshoot this session. Especially since the family needs the print for mid July and they cant get the family together until August for another session.

Christy
I look forward to your email with the jpeg!

pathfinder

Good jpgs can be very good, but RAW files always allow more editing and color correction in RAW conversion.

I am glad you liked the files I posted for you.

A full frame camera will have substantially lower noise at ISO 800 than the images you posted.

Most of what I did can be done in Lightroom 3 just as nicely as CS5. Lightroom is much easier to learn to use effectively than is CS5. Just my opinion, of course.

Glad to help, and no, I am not Bill Scheff. That email was not from me.

BinaryFx

tate wrote: »

I never thought that there would be such a difference in the processing...since some people from my camera club says the PSE9 is just as good......but your correction proved that is incorrect!

Sometimes tools make a difference, sometimes it is the operator that makes all the difference (or perhaps a little of both). All other things being equal, you would need to see the one operator use both tools to make a decision if it is the tools or the operator!



Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

tate

BinaryFx wrote: »

Sometimes tools make a difference, sometimes it is the operator that makes all the difference (or perhaps a little of both). All other things being equal, you would need to see the one operator use both tools to make a decision if it is the tools or the operator!



Stephen Marsh

http://binaryfx.customer.netspace.net.au/ (coming soon!)
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/
http://prepression.blogspot.com/

Stephen,
Well from this set of pictures I did, it certainly was the operator.....live and learn! I will never agree to a session in the rain again. It was too much post processing......at least my customer is ok with things....she knew going into this that the pictures might have had some issues. If it hadnt started to pour, I would have been able to gotten more shots and have had more pics to chose from.

I will have to take a look at Lightroom. Seems like a lot of people like Lightroom. Will download a trial and check it out! I like the price tag on Lightroom over CS5, thats for sure!

Enjoy the day!
Christy

Sam

Here is my version:



I think the basic problem with the image is it was shot in jpg with an aperture of f4 at 1/60 ISO 400.

It looks like there is camera shake, and the image was pre cooked with a color balance and settings very difficult to adjust after the fact. An entry level 6mp camera probably doesn't help the detail.

I think the image would have been improved by shooting RAW, use f8 and raised the shutter speed to 1/125. Use whatever ISO you need for this. Also fill flash would have helped as well.

Sam

EDIT: The flesh tones look a little too red here. :-( Too lazy to adjust upload / download / delete / etc. :-)

Sventekoz

Here is my attempt, although I agree with what the others have said - so no need to repeat it all. In addition to handling the noise and colour issues, I've also tried to add some punch by applying Lucis at a low level.

tate

Sam wrote: »

Here is my version:



I think the basic problem with the image is it was shot in jpg with an aperture of f4 at 1/60 ISO 400.

It looks like there is camera shake, and the image was pre cooked with a color balance and settings very difficult to adjust after the fact. An entry level 6mp camera probably doesn't help the detail.

I think the image would have been improved by shooting RAW, use f8 and raised the shutter speed to 1/125. Use whatever ISO you need for this. Also fill flash would have helped as well.

Sam

EDIT: The flesh tones look a little too red here. :-( Too lazy to adjust upload / download / delete / etc. :-)

Hello ! Thanks to everyone! I did download one of the corrected pictures and printed it out. It looks nice....and the customer doesnt want to reshoot. I appreciate all the advice and help that you have all given me. Yes I have been thinking it is time to upgrade the camera. I love my little 6 megapixel, but it did what it needed to do. I so want to go full frame and want the Nikon d700...but cant find it anywhere...(well can find a few places but the price is outrageous since its not being produced anywhere) Hoping that Nikon will come out with a new camera in the fall that is similar and then I can make the jump to upgrade.
Christy