best free noise reduction program

[kellylindseyphotography]

does anyone have recommendations? I have cs3 and the noise reducing doesn't seem wonderful.. but maybe I'm doing something wrong. If someone has recommendations on setting for the noise reduction for that program, I'm all ears for that too!

 

[Overread]

Free noise reduction I have no idea about, but for noise reduction in Cs3 have a read here:
http://www.juzaphoto.com/eng/articles/noise_reduction.htm

 

[kellylindseyphotography]

Thanks for that link. I am doing exactly that in CS3 and I find that its not very effective and the tools are very basic. Looking for something that can get me out of an ISO 1600 jam that I got myself into...

 

[Overread]

for free I don't know of any programs - but noise ninja and neat image are often cheap programs people use as external noise reduction

http://www.neatimage.com/
demo of neat image - its a full working version, but it only works at 8 bit, and you can only save to jpegs rather than TIFFs. It also works better when used outside of photoshop rather than as a plugin (result of demo conditions)

 

[Jeff Canes]

the trial version noise ninja add a water mark, I've been use the free neat image for a few years

 

[hedonia]

I actually just downloaded the trial version of Bibble Pro, to see what it was all about. It has a Noise Ninja plugin built right in that seems to work very well, and its a fully functional, fifteen-day trial. There aren't any watermarks or size/file format restrictions. Hope that helps!

 

[391615]

not sure in photoshop but in gimp, there is a "selective gaussian blur" It can be set to blur at certain contrast levels I think, so strong contrasts aren't affected. I just did a trial and error on it, and sort of know how much to add.

 

[Overread]

ahh 391615 you reminded me!
Yes if you take a shot and use the selection tool to select the background (working in layers and layer masks is also a more precise way) and add blur to the background you can hide noise. I find it better to use the add blur rather than the gaussian blur, but either way you don't need or want to add much - just enough to hide the noise