Can Neat Image be Applied to PART of an Image?

[bens]

I use the Neat Image free demo model, not plugged into Photoshop, to

smooth out grain in images I work on in Photoshop. I cannot figure

out if it can be applied to a part of an image. Can you do so and if

so, how? If not in the demo model, how about in any of the plug ins?

 

I'd like to learn how because sometimes when applied to the image

overall, neat image will take care of one portion of the image well,

while creating too much of a processed look in another portion.

 

Thanks for your help.

[gpb]

Create a duplicate layer, run neat image on the duplicate layer. Add a layer mask to the

neatened duplicate layer, and mask out the areas you do not want shown.

[jpursley]

You could use multiple layers with a layer mask to show or hide processed areas.

[rich815]

Run NI, go back into PS and do a History save of the step with NI applied, click back one step, then "paint" NI back into the areas using History Brush.

[www.whitemountainphoto.com]

Yes, I'm using the mask system, but the history brush would also work just fine. Since we're getting readers regarding NI, I hope you don't mind if I add on to your question. I've just got it and am trying to get used to using it. I thought that I would be able to use neat image to eliminate noise from some of my problematic scans, and then apply unsharp mask as a final step to sharpen the image overall. I'm finding that when I use the unsharp mask after NI, it seems to put almost all of the noise back in that I got NI to remove. In that case, I'v been forced to use masking to have it affect only the most problematic areas, and unsharp masking the rest. Am I missing something here? Also, I've had some decent success with the settings, but it takes an awful long time to apply on a 300MB image, so with an "average" (I know, hard to say what's average) amount of NI used, what settings are NI users starting with as a base-line to work from?

 

Regards,

 

Dana/<a href="http://www.whitemountainphoto.com">www.whitemountainphoto.com</a>

[roger krueger]

Dana: I've had much better luck using NI's built-in sharpening rather than denoise-then-

sharpen.

 

My current workflow is to make a layer with no sharpening and a layer with sharpening

and a "hide all" mask and then paint in the sharpening.

 

But this is for thin DOF images that only have a few areas to sharpen. I'd probably handle

an f22 landscape differently.

 

If you think NI is slow you should see Grain Surgery--which I think is a little better for ISO

800+ film, but inferior on slow film and digital, and is 10x slower--I've seen it take

HOURS on 4800 dpi/6x9).

 

Sorry, denoising right is a computationaly intensive task. Learn to use Photoshop actions

to batch your denoising.

[bennyboy]

Hi Ben,

 

This will probably be a dum answer, but neatimage isnt really that expensive, it's probably worth just buying the version with the plugin to be able to apply the filter at will to any selection you could cunjure up. I bought it myself and find the ability to selectively apply quite useful.

[bennyboy]

Especially when you consider my spelling of dumb :D

[bens]

thanks everyone, several options to think about. appreciate it.

[www.whitemountainphoto.com]

Away for two days, thanks Roger for confirming what I already suspected. Unfortunately the large majority of my images are F22 landscapes. I'll try the sharpening in NI, but by the time I paint in or away the sharpening effect it sounds like what I'm doing now by having an NI layer and a PS sharpened layer and masking the two together. Thanks for the info.

 

Dana