Help me post-process this image (high ISO > noise)

[ernie]

Ahh you just missunderstood what I said about missing the point. The point is to make a good picture, this is irrespective of the noise / grain on it. A noise free picture does not make a good picture, and visa versa of course.

Well I agree with that, better to start out with a good picture instead of having to heavily edit afterward. I did my best to get the best result at the moment itself, just came out a bit short. Hence the post-process tips ...
Nice edit btw, I'm gonna try a B&W myself after seeing this.

 

[ernie]

Mind telling what you did exactly to get this result?

 

[Garbz]

Hey Garbz,
Your monitor must be better than mine. I'm not seeing any problems w/ compression on your try at it. Looks pretty tight.

The compression in this case just killed the grain. It was significantly reduced when I uploaded to photo bucket. The file also halved in size form 105k to 63k :S That site used to be good.

Well I agree with that, better to start out with a good picture instead of having to heavily edit afterward. I did my best to get the best result at the moment itself, just came out a bit short. Hence the post-process tips ...

No you didn't. You really made the best of the situation. This is one of the most difficult lighting situations to be in, and grain wise all you could do was get a faster lens or a better camera. Mind you the definition of heavy editing is somewhat fluid too. Sharpen, curves adjustment, channel mixer, and adding a film grain is not what I consider heavy editing. Ls3D's edit on the other hand...

 

[ernie]

No you didn't. You really made the best of the situation. This is one of the most difficult lighting situations to be in, and grain wise all you could do was get a faster lens or a better camera. Mind you the definition of heavy editing is somewhat fluid too. Sharpen, curves adjustment, channel mixer, and adding a film grain is not what I consider heavy editing. Ls3D's edit on the other hand...

Thanks. Just finished up my final edit. Check it out here.

 

[osirus]

Mind telling what you did exactly to get this result?

well not exactly, but i can give the jist of it.

opened in photoshop
opened helicon filter plugin
under brightness i increased the brightness of the shadow areas
i ran the noise filter in there
changed the colour balance a bit as it was a tad blue
sharpened it some
got out of there then in ps i adjusted the levels a bit, darkened it some
and noticed some noise on his face that i used the blur tool to get rid of manually

i thinks thats it.

( may have fiddled with the colour again, don't remember lol )