Does noise ninja work....?

[matthewkane]

After you have already done your edit? Will it make my photos lose sharpness?

Which version do you recommend and where should I buy it?

Or do you recommend a completely different noise reduction software these days?

Thanks

[William Kahn]

You can download a trial version at www.picturecode.com. Try it, you'll like it......

[robvine]

Works for me!

 

There are two schools of though. One is to decrease noise before any further editing and the other is to do so as a final step. In images where noise is created by the processing then I use NN at the end. I have never had any problem with it decreasing sharpness but you can lose some shadow detail. Careful manual adjustment of the controls will cure this.

[dennisprice]

You might also want to download a trial version of Neat Image.

 

http://www.neatimage.com/index.html

 

Some people (me included) prefer it to NN. Both work well, so I suggest you try them both and make your choice.

[EricM]

fwiw, i save a seperate copy of a file i have sharpend and nr'd. and sometimes when nr goes over board, i do it on a seperate layer and then use fill to blend the original to taste.

 

both great filters, enjoy.

[ellis_vener_photography]

yes it works.

 

After opening the image in Photoshop, apply Noise Ninja and then do any sharpening.

Noise reduction needs to be done as a firs step.

[greglyon]

Try Neat Image too. They both do a nice job for dslrs AND for scanned film to remove grain etc. Noise Ninja was faster than Neat Image when it came out but thankfully Neat Image performancehas been greatly improved in recent versions.

[lex_jenkins]

Be sure to download the specific profile for your camera. It really helps ease the adjustments. You're not stuck with these settings, tho'. The standalone version in particular is easy to tweak if the profile for a given ISO is too much or not enough.

 

The plug-in version is more convenient to use from within compatible photo editing software, but to me it's less intuitive than the standalone version.

 

Noise Ninja tends to be very effective at minimizing chroma noise (the splotchy red and green stuff) without compromising fine detail. But this comes at the cost of some contrast and color saturation. Reds tend to be a bit muted after Noise Ninja. Other colors aren't affected much.

 

NN by default doesn't usually produce waxy smoothness in eliminating luminance noise. It's possible to crank it up to virtually eliminate the grainy type of noise, but the end result often looks artificial. I usually pull back a few points from the default setting for a given profile.

 

The sharpening built into NN is probably best used for evaluating how the final image *might* look after additional tweaking in Photoshop or whatever program you use to correct colors, etc. But the sharpening tools in Noise Ninja is the hamfisted USM type and since sharpening is usually best reserved for the last step after all other tweaking, it's probably best to use minimal or no sharpening in Noise Ninja.

 

I find Neat Image to be more effective at reducing luminance noise but less effective with chroma noise. With my D2H photos shot at ISO 800 and 1600 I've yet to find a setting that eliminates the red splotches. However it's satisfactory with photos shot at ISO 200 or 400 where chroma noise isn't much of a factor.

 

The Imaging Factory also has a very effective Photoshop compatible plug-in for noise reduction. It's entirely comparable to both Noise Ninja and Neat Image. Even tho' it doesn't offer camera specific presets like Noise Ninja it's still easy to get consistent, repeatable results. And it works with RAW files (at least it did with my Nikon NEFs). Imaging Factory plug-ins are available as full featured trialware for 30 days, unlike Noise Ninja and Neat Image which are both limit access to certain features in the trial versions, altho' there's no time limit to the trial versions.

[cjfraser]

Check out Noiseware Professional also. Free trial download. There are several useful threads comparing the effectiveness of these programs in the archives -- should be easy to find by searching for "Noiseware," "Neat Image," etc.

[bill_fouche]

Never tried NeatImage, but love Noise Ninja. I second the recommendation to download the camera-specific profiles. Makes the noise-reduction process relatively painless.

[matthewkane]

Thanks everyone!

[rob_shooter]

I'm looking at Neat Image and wondered where resizing fits into the workflow....

 

am I therefore correct in presuming workflow would be resize (e.g.Photozoom), reduce noise (Neat Image) sharpen (CS2)?

[greglyon]

It's best used right at the start of workflow, before any other work is done. In the case of raw files, do it first thing after import. once you start manipulating a photo you also start manipulating the noise and it doesn't seem that it does as clean of a job then.