Noise Reduction using Channels and Surface Blur

xendless xurbiaxendless xurbia Registered Users Posts: 43 Big grins
edited January 3, 2008 in Finishing School
Hey all,

I don't know how many of you have signed up to Kelby Training, but there is a really interesting topic on noise reduction by Corey Barker (of LayersTV fame). Now I've tried it, and it seems to work while keeping a very very acceptable level of detail in the shot being worked on. It adds about 4 minutes to a pictures workflow. (now if you have a super duper Nikon or Canon, this topic isn't for you I guess. :wink )

It's very simple.

1- In RGB open the channels palette.
2 - Inspect each channel for noise.
3 - Apply Surface Blur, but keep it to a minimum. I find that a threshold of over 8 starts to deteriorate detail.
4 - Do not do this while the image is a Smart Object, as it will apply it to the whole image at once instead of having it done to individual channels.

Here are 100% crops of a picture I've worked on. Yes, they are overdone by a bit, but I did this for examples sake.

2160196072_50446db4f9.jpg
Straight from Camera with slight contrast adjustments to accentuate noise.



2160196410_d0ac9787b6.jpg
Noise Reduced using Surface Blur on the Red Blue and Green channels in varying amounts.

Give it a shot and post some examples of what you were able to do.
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