NoiseNinja - who's used it? Any other recommendations?

[keith204]

So now I am pushing some 20x30 prints for the race pictures I take. I have gotten some 400ISO pictures blown that big and they look GREAT.

Now I have a customer wanting a 20x30 of a night-time shot. At night at the races, I really have no option but to use 1600 ISO since I am maxed out at f/2.8 the whole time... (separate issue)

So, the 20x30 they want is a 1600ISO image. whewwie..that could be crazy. I certainly need to reduce the noise..

Heard about Noise Ninja... is it good? how good? is it easy? how easy? who has used it? are there alternatives? what alternatives?

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

 

[keith204]

This is the picture I'll be blowing up. Obviously a higher quality, not watermarked, version.

 

[JDS]

I've used Noise Ninja and it works well.. But popular opinion is that NeatImage is better

 

[Big Mike]

Neat Image, is one that I have tried. It seems to work fairly well but it does kill some of the small detail...which may not be a problem with this shot.

There are ways to combat noise in Photoshop (if you have it)...just Google it and see what comes up.

 

[Mike_E]

Have you tried resetting the color to Lab Color and tweaking and smoothing the lightness channel? (by smoothing I mean gaussian blur in the filter menu - start at around 1.0 ) ((you can use the history brush to paint back in any fine detail in faces and logos))

Don't forget to change it back.

 

[Alex_B]

A vote for NeatImage here

 

[keith204]

I need to add---

This is not the only image I will put through noise reduction, so I am looking for a technique/method/etc that will work very fast... where I can just simply make a couple clicks without thinking, and the noise will be reduced.

(if possible) maybe I am asking a bunch. All my night shots (at the track) are 1600 ISO and I'd love to be able to put them all through a batch deal.

 

[Mike_E]

You can do the Lab trick and record it as an action and it won't cost you a dime. (if you are using photoshop that is )

 

[keith204]

You can do the Lab trick and record it as an action and it won't cost you a dime. (if you are using photoshop that is )

Great, and I am using photoshop, so I will give it a try! Thanks!

 

[doenoe]

i used Dfine2.0 a little while ago. Was a demo, so i could only use it for 15 days or something. But i was pretty happy with it. You can pick multiple points which have noise, so you got more control.
You can google it and try it

 

[harkain]

I love to do stuff in photoshop myself and create actions and such. Creating an action for certain techniques can work but you have to set points in the action where you can make adjustments (like for gaussian blurs).

But I have to admit that I like Noise Ninja and I use it for most images. If you learn how to use it properly, it works very well. The only time I resort to other means of noise reduction is when the image is very important and the level of noise is very high.