Editting fix for high ISO?

I screwed up... there it is out there.

 

Grabbed my 30D that was last used by me for some outdoor daylight pics, not

knowing my wife used it for some indoor activity. She had bumped the ISO to 1000.

 

Grainy, grainy, grainy...

 

Any chance there is some post-editting that can be done to adress this? The

upside is that i can retake these pics fairly easily.

 

Thanks for your help.

DPP, ACR, Lightroom, and all the others have tools for reducing digital noise.

 

They may look grainy at 100% but have you tried printing, printing, printing?

1000 should not be so bad on the 30D, as long as they are exposed properly. I prefer noise to any sort of noise-massaging, as it looks less unnatural. Keep your prints small and you should be OK.

 

The most important lesson in this experience is to learn to judge light without a meter, so you know if something is up. I just use BDE as a starting point. Your exposure setting should have screamed out to you that something was amiss.

 

Keith

Noise Ninja is good.

Thanks for your responses, sadly though Keith your comment about keeping prints small is the biggest problem. The shots were to be for a 22x24 canvas print for my Mother-in-Law.

 

Plenty of lessons learned here, some of which you have responded with. Probably the biggest is to not be in a hurry as I was today. Tomorrow the sky looks clear and sunny, and with luck I can have another go at it.

Neat Image.com

Roger,

 

To print a 22x24 from a 20D/30D, you will be printing at about 93 dots per inch without upsizing. That is only slightly better than internet quality. If you do upsize that much, it will be plainly visible in the print. This may be a time for the rental of a Hassie, especially since you will be printing close to square format anyhow.

 

Keith

Or, you could use Genuine Fractals, and you would own the program for less than you would spend on a rental of a high-end camera. Still wouldn't beat the quality of a large piece of film/sensor, but it would be better than upsizing in Photoshop.

 

Keith

Try the NR feature in DPP 3. It works well for light to moderate noise but not as god as a dedicated plugin. However it's free.

Roger,

 

Preferably you would take the picture again with a tripod and low ISO. There's no need to go rent any equipment as the 30D is very capable of giving you an image file worthy of uprezing. What you do is you bring the file into photoshop and increase the size of the image in intervals increasing it by 10% each time until the desired size is achieved. Be sure that the bicubic smoother option is on and the results should be fine. As for the noise i don't know of any software that can beat the results of taking the picture again. Of course if you grayscale the image then the noise would be minimal and not as noticeable, increase the contrast a bit and it should be virtually unnoticeable - behind glass and a frame most people don't see it.

Good luck.

I faced a similar situation recently - usually I always reset camera settings after every shoot, but forgot this once.

It really depends on how bad the noise is and what the image contains. The following is what i did to fix a sunset image to fix high noise;

(1) Genuine Fractals - if you can afford it...or..

(2) PhotoShop CS or other software; Noise > 'reduce colour noise' and 'reduce dust & scratches' and even try 'de speckle'.

(3) PS or other software - enlarge the image to min 300% and use the healing brush tool over all the 'noisy' pixellated areas (some colours eg orange produce more pixellation than other colours) this method is very time consuming but it fixed an image for me so that i could enlarge to poster size for a clients living room wall.

(4) You could try converting the image to TIFF to retain data and then play around with other software to hide the noise. I use ACDSee Pro Manager to 'cover up' all my high noise images rather than toss them out. The program is loaded with so many 'enhancement' features.

(5) Convert it to Sepia, or Old Style, and make a feature of the noise rather than fight against it.

 

Please note that my contribution is only a quick fix remedy so that you don't have to toss the images out.

NeatImage works wonders on high grain/noise images. Used by pros around the world with very good results.

Unless you are using f22 plus a polariser, shooting daylight at ISO 1000, you should have noticed that your shutter speed was around 1/4000 sec.

 

No offence intended, but this is a good time to courteously remind ourselves to think, compose, what you want to achieve, metering issues, something is not right etc before pushing the magic button.

 

Having said that, I suggest you try a free Demo version of Neat Image:

http://www.neatimage.com/download.html but be carefulu of how much you apply, have fun.

here's one review of Noise Reduction software: <a href="http://www.michaelalmond.com/Articles/noise.htm">Michael Almond</a> and a bit of conversation: <a href="http://www.dgrin.com/archive/index.php/t-7325.html">drsmug</a>

"Unless you are using f22 plus a polariser, shooting daylight at ISO 1000, you should have noticed that your shutter speed was around 1/4000 sec."

 

I am quite curious as to how you have figured this little gem of photographic insight...since you have no idea what aperture he was shooting at. At '4000, his aperture would have been around f/8 in clear sunlight.

 

Keith

OK Keith, my words are a bit loose and I see what you mean but it wasn?t meant be a thorough guide to correct exposures.

 

Roger has said it himself ?Plenty of lessons learned here, some of which you have responded with. Probably the biggest is to not be in a hurry as I was today?.

 

If Roger had ISO 1000 and wanted to shoot the kids playing for his mother-in-law, he would be aiming for a larger aperture say f2.8 thus he would have noticed the unusual higher shutter speed. Going by the rough sunny 16 rule with harsh shadows at ISO 1000, f16 @ 1/1000, so shooting at f2.8, you can see where I got the faster shutter speed.

 

Even shooting landscapes, he would have noticed the unusual higher shutter speed.

 

My intention was simply to remind people in the forum including myself that we should be alert or recognise of unusual exposures before we push the button as we have all sorts of photography levels in this forum, from the humble beginner to the pros like Keith.

 

I also provided a direct link for Roger to try out.

My apologies to those who was offended.

If you're printing on canvas, the noise is a lot less of an issue, as is resolution. The texture of the canvas "absorbs" a lot of that and you may not notice anything unusual at all, even without noise reduction.

Keith Lubow wrote: "To print a 22x24 from a 20D/30D, you will be printing at about 93 dots per inch without upsizing."

 

The 20D/30D have pixel dimensions of 3456 x 2304 so assuming that the 22" side maps to the short side of the sensor then you're looking at a resolution of 104dpi.

 

I print many many canvases at this resolution and they come out just fine - in reality the texture of the canvas contributes far more to any lack of detail than the resolution of the source image.

Colin is absolutely right. For some reason, the image I pulled up to get the numbers was 3072 by 2048...odd, since it was shot with a 20D, and it is uncropped.

 

It seems as if everything I processed in Bridge on another computer is slightly downsized. Everything I did at home with DPP is full size.

 

Keith

I love the passion in which everyone puts into their replies, that is why I cam to all of you for this. The reality of this "shoot" was that in the middle of the day, my Wife and her sister concoct this great idea. I work from a home office and really didnt have the time to do this, but was told they were prepared and knew exactly what and where they wanted me to snap pics from... they weren't quite prepared, but then again neither was I.

 

Here is the upside in it all...I have taken all my grainy images and set them up on lightroom with a large monitor for viewing. This gives them the ability to see what poses and backgrounds worked or didnt. Also they get the benefit of seeing the quirks that the 5 boys who are the subject exhibit as a result of an uncomfortable pose, or from other distractions.

 

For me, the camera is back to ISO100 and will consider the lighting and other factors when we go back to shoot. I also need to temper myself as my wife gave me an open door with the following "Is this not good enough of a camera for these kind of shots?" Maybe some good can come of this :)

Don't stall at that chance! Tell her you need a Hassy digital for things like this!

 

Keith

yes