Who has any experience with the freeware on this website <http://www.bardill.net/projects/photoshop/> The noise reduction item is pretty impressive, just like the sharpening.It almost lookes too good to be true.
I don’t know… it looks like the picture processed with this action is blurried. I’ve looked in the action file and there’s a lot of Gaussian blur applied in there.
I agree with Ray on this the image also appears blurred to me.
I think Elements has a wonderful selection of tools that can handle noise but you do have to get use to them. The tools are varied because not all noise is the same. Most of the noise I encounter are from digital photo images and mine come in two flavours. The first is camera related: there is a bit of colour noise the kind that is most noticeable when using high ISO settings. Then is JPG artefacts …yes I shoot in JPG more often than not.
For a very quick fix I often use median it works well but the effects can cause problems very quickly as you increase the Radius value.
If I want the best (to my eye) this is what I do:
The JPG noise is best removes first and it is reasonable easy with the Despeckle tool If your image is badly damaged you can use the "Dust and Scratches …" filter but I find this adds too much softening to the image.
The colour noise is next. Make a copy layer of your image. Use a Gaussian blur until the colours noise disappears have no fear if the rest of the image is also blurry this is as it should be. Now from the drop down menu in you layers pallet select "Color" and that is it, no more noise.
A couple of hints are: 1) To work with a high magnification, I generally use 200%. 2) If you have areas that are really damaged mask then and use the "Dust and Scratches …" tool before you do the other two steps.
That being said, I’ve checked (and tried) these actions and it adds a great deal of noise to the picture. As a result, my ISO 800 pictures now really looked like ISO 800 pictures.
I use a similar technique, which I got from Scott Kelby’s "Photoshop Book for Digital Photographers", envolving the LAB color mode, and I get more subtle and better looking results. And I can apply it two times (sometimes even three) without adding noise or damaging the picture otherwise. Here the text version of this action :
Action: Lab Sharpen Convert Mode To: Lab color mode Select lightness channel Unsharp Mask Amount: 85% Radius: 1 pixels Threshold: 4 Convert Mode To: RGB color mode
Just a short explanation for those using Elements : LAB color mode divides the image in 3 layers, one of them being the Lightness channel. This is where the sharpening is done, on the lightness element of the pictures.
As LAB mode isn’t available to Elements users I usually do it this way: -duplicate layer -from the filter menue: others (?) > highlights (?)at about 10% -enlarge image to 100% -layers menue: choose hard light (?) and set the opacity somewhere between 30 and 70%
The (?) means I don’t know exactly the right words in English as I’m currently using the Dutch version.
Leen, I tried to locate a filter that would use percentage under the other and I can’t. Would it be possible for you to tell which one, in numbers ? Like the 3rd one, for example.
Ray, I apologise, it is "radius" instead of percentage. Sometimes you have built a routine for yourself and as soon as I see "10" I click OK without actually looking "10 what?"
Ok, it’s the High Pass filter. It makes good results, but it also produces some color aberations, even at under 30%, especially between shadows and midtones. There are usages for this procedure, though, I am sure. Thanks for the information!
To separate Color from Luminosity (the essential difference in Lab mode)
1. Duplicate the background and set the mode to Luminosity. 2. Create a new layer between the background and new layer and fill with 50% gray. 3. Merge the Luminosity and Gray layers. Set the layer result to luminosity mode.
You can now use this like a Lab mode image by making color changes to the Background and tone changes to the Luminosity layer.
About reducing noise…creating edge masks using the Find Edges filter can help target the changes of your corrections to areas of the image that are not along edges — in that way, you can blur and still not lose definition in important detail.
I’d also add chromatic abberations and digital colour artefacts to your list. The former are frequently visible around for example leaves on a skyline (kind of red on one side and purple-ish on the other) and the latter may be seen in larger plain otherwise one colour areas for example sea, sky areas of clothing etc.
Digital colour artefacts arise, as I’m sure you know, from the fact that 4 pixels with different colour filters (rggb) are reconstituted into one output pixel with complete rgb values in the image output (ie one pixel of image memory comes from 4 pixels of different colours in the sensor and the artefacts arise as these pixels are not in exactly the same physical position in the sensor but the chip processor pretends that they do). This is the reason I’m so eagerly waiting for the foveon x3 chip to become more widespread in use… sigh…incidentally the reason, I believe, why Canon have dumped the price of the EOS 300D, …the new chip is ready and has been in production for some time…
Whatever, I’m pretty convinced that many so-called jpeg artifacts are due to other factors but have yet to prove it. However, how the distortion arises is not really relevant when you have a picture with noise, artefacts and distortion and need to get rid of it. The methods you describe are indeed excellent and have their uses but do in fact introduce some softening of the image. This is due to the fact that most of the detail recognition we perform is with the smaller b/w nerve sensors in our eyes. The larger colour sensors have much less affect but they do still have an effect. So even putting back smoothed colour does influence the sharpness of an image.
An aside here, many of the "how do I get rid of this and that" questions to this forum are related to these nearly invisible defects which have been manipulated particularly with changes in contrast and hue whereupon the defects become much more plainly visible. A very close examination shows that they are in fact present in the original as you say. I’d agree that it’s best to tackle them before they get exaggerated.
So, back from the aside, I’d like to add another method which surely is already well known but it wouldn’t hurt to repeat it, namely to simply paint with colour in the obvious areas being careful to avoid bits which don’t belong to the said area. The opacity can often be 100% with wet edges but less for a slow and careful treatment. One may need to change colour frequently too depending on how the area changes in hue. By blowing up the area real big to see the pixels clearly then one can easily select the correct colour with point selection between the blotches of faulty stuff. Shrink down again and paint away until it’s time to change colour again. This technique keeps the correct intensities and doesn’t soften the picture. After this you can see if the artefacts were jpeg artefacts as they leave those nasty boxey edges the size of which depends on the degree of compression used. I’m not sure about digital colours artefacts whether they leave edges or not but colour abberations will disappear. If you do still have artefacts they are now in the same colour and much less noticeable and now is the time, imho, to decide whether to apply a smidgeon of median noise blurring and sharpening in a new layer and mix down a percentage with the underlying layer. After this apply contrast, levels, hue and saturation changes if needed as there are no artefacts left to exaggerate.
Sorry this got so long-winded but I couldn’t be clear with many fewer words, I’ve one more thing to get off my chest in a new topic "Resolution and peripherals" then I’ll go back to lurking 🙂
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