Detail?

[Raymond J Barlow]

Just curious what you all think here.. on the first image, I did not use neat image, on the second, I did. I post in inks, so everyone can see the full exif below each shot., this might help you decide what I did correctly, or where I screwed up., any help would be appreciated.

did I lose detail with neat Image is my main question,

1
http://www.pbase.com/raymondjbarlow/image/69517989

2
http://www.pbase.com/raymondjbarlow/image/69517977

Maybe I should have tried this with something with more noise.

thanks for looking.

p.s. here is one more from today.

http://www.pbase.com/raymondjbarlow/image/69515359

 

[Tantalus]

I can't see a difference...

 

[JTHphoto]

yeah, it doesn't look like there is really that much noise in that shot either way. I'm having a hard time telling the difference on this monitor.

I really like neatimage, but it does seem to reduce the detail particularly in birds and wildlife.

In a wildlife or other shot where the background/sky is really noisy but I want to retain the detail in the subject i will actually make a composite out of both a filtered or "neat" image and the original. I place the neatimage copy on top and then erase or "clear" it away from the portion of the photo I want to show more detail. With "clear" you can set the opacity of your brush to control just how much noise/detail you want to show through. i processed this one that way because the sky was really noisy but neatimage almost made the feathers look blurry... Redtail Hawk Composite.

oh yeah, great shots btw... :thumbup:

 

[oldnavy170]

I see a difference. The second photo is smoother.

 

[Alex_B]

i can see a clear difference. but that is only in the blurred background. it seems that you removed more of the medium frequency noise, which to me does not appear as iso noise but maybe is really in the scene.

i can see a lot of artifacts though, in particular at the subject edges (sharpening?) ... those artifacts look different in both, but not worse or better in any of the two, just slightly different.

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

thanks for the comments everyone.. very cool shot JTH!

I find neat image does a great job of preserving detail., but in my processing, I do find I get my share of artifacts. I use USM to sharpen, the radius is set at 1, and the threshold at 4., and I sharpen at 50-400% depending on the shot.

For prints, am I better off to use tiff files?

and what causes these artifacts??

 

[Arch]

There are lots of causes for artifacts... the main cause is low resolution... but sharpening can add unwanted artifacts.... It is also most noticable in blocked areas like skies or in your case the space around the bird...

The thing i do ray... although it can be a bit fiddley... is to duplicate the layer... use USM, then layer mask through to the unsharpend layer, just in the areas of background behind the subject....

This will result in the sharpening only having an effect on the bird.... making sure it doesnt sharpen something in the background that you dont want.

Another method to make it even smoother.... is to again duplicate the image.... use Neat Image on one.... then drop it onto the other, then layer mask to take the effect of Neat Image off the bird.

The only drawback to these methods is that it takes more time.... but it is useful if you have one shot you really want to give a full makeover to.

btw out of the two here... i think you've done a good job of not overdoing Neat Image because there isnt much loss of detail. :thumbup:

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

thanks Archie., I really appreciate you suggestions.