touch up process

rickp

quick question,
When going through the work flow process, does one remove noise before or after sharpening?

Richard

Before. Otherwise you may end up sharpening the noise and making it worse.

Peano

Richard wrote: »

Before. Otherwise you may end up sharpening the noise and making it worse.

+1

If you shoot raw, Camera Raw in CS5 has excellent noise reduction.

ziggy53

I often do noise reduction near the end of the process, i.e. after sharpening. I use Neat Image which is very nice in how you can tune it for both noise frequency and individual color channel.

Sometimes I do noise reduction in a separate layer, including the use of the "Dust and Scratches" filter, which seems to target shadow areas. Then I use tone blending to reveal the highlights and middle tones, keeping the shadows well subdued. This technique works nicely for images that I have unintentionally underexposed and brought back to a more normal exposure/brightness in post-processing. (Essentially those images that have been digitally "push processed".)

For simpler noise reduction I agree to use it at the beginning, including using noise reduction in the RAW conversion itself.

angevin1

ziggy53 wrote: »

I often do noise reduction near the end of the process, i.e. after sharpening. I use Neat Image which is very nice in how you can tune it for both noise frequency and individual color channel.

Bonus Word! Neat also makes the Video Noiseware I use!