Noise Reduction

[matt_towells]

Hi all,

 

I have just finished working on some band pictures i took a couple of weeks

back and would like your options on noise reduction. I had to take the pics at

ISO 3200 due to the very low light levels. I have run this one through Noise

Ninja and would be interested to know what you think. Does the noise reduction

look over worked and if so what levels would you change to tweak it?

 

Thanks<div></div>

[emre]

I think the noise would have helped mask the blur, so I'd be inclined to leave it.

[ellis_vener_photography]

Here's a good trick. Before running noise Ninja , Noiseware, etc., make a duplicate of your

background layer and run your noise reduction steps on that new layer. That way you can

change the opacity of that background layer or make a mask to protect ares where you want

to preserve fine detail.

[illusive dreams]

I use Neatimage. I havent tried Noise Ninja. sometimes the images can be over worked and things become blurry/distorted to the point where you dont want to keep the image.

 

I like Ellis' suggestion, but sometimes, I dont have enough time to do that. Ive been batching them in Neatimage to save A LOT of time.

 

Here is my fav image from a rock night at a local venue from the 19th of this month.

 

<img src="http://illusivedreams.zenfolio.com/img/v1/p499472574-5.jpg">

 

The rest of the photos are here: http://illusivedreams.zenfolio.com/p530195697

 

Jason P.

Illusive Dreams

[ronald_moravec1]

Protect the image on a new layer with an edge mask and you can be very agressive reducing noise and not destroy the sharpness.

 

There are too many steps to list on how to do it. It is worth learning. Simply put, invert the mask for high pass sharpening.

[trunfio]

Jason, that's a great image. Definitely the most appealing of your images. I see you didn't use flash and

corrected for color temperature. I have a band shoot assignment this weekend and am just going to mount

a 35/2 and 85/1.4 and shoot at 1600 and 3200 (I think my D300 will handle that) and I noise reduce in

Noiseware Pro as an action. Since this is only for press, I don't worry about fancy techniques like Ronald

mentioned, but this link explains how to do it:

 

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/photoshop/articles/phscs2at_sharpening_03.html

 

Matt: your image looks quite soft. Is it possible the shutter is so slow that the performer's head is

moving?

[matt_towells]

Thanks for all the help guys, i'll try and get hold of a demo of Neatimage and see if that makes any difference. I'll also try the layers and masking technique on a few of the best images.

 

In response to Paul?s comment i think there probably is a slight motion blur from the singer?s movement i had to use a long shutter speed to get this shot.

[illusive dreams]

Paul - I believe that was shot with my 50mm 1.8. 1/80th at ISO 1400. Thanks for the comment as well. im also only shooting with a D70s.

[kari v]

I think you're overdoing it. Have you tried printing the image with just minimal noise reduction? Or are your shots intended for web use only?

 

It's a matter of taste of course, some people like their images noiseless. I usually find them too plasticky and as Emre said, noise could actually enhance your picture by masking the blur.

 

Then again, I enjoy something like this...<div></div>