Help needed - editing out noise.

crazy_dragonlady

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Can others edit my Photos
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I have a problem. I just got three rolls of film developed at Wal-Mart. (I know, I never learn) and instead of getting prints I just had them develop and scan the photos to CD. I like being able to work with them on my computer but in pretty much every photo there's a bunch of noise... and I don't know why. The film is ISO 400 and obviously each image had different settings but why are they so dang noisy? :confused:

I don't want to put them all up here in one post but I will post a few. If anyone can help me out I'd appreciate it. Hopefully these can be corrected. I'm not sure if it's me or if it was done during the developing/scanning process.

TIA for any help, and yes, it's ok to edit them and re-post! :mrgreen:

master_of_the_sky.jpg


male_cardinal1_noise.jpg


female_cardinal1.jpg


The last one isn't too bad but there's still noise.

Once I figure out how to get the noise cleared up I will be posting these in the critique forum so I can get everyone's opinion... just don't want to post them like this and I don't know how to edit them myself without making the subject of the photo too blurry.

I obviously edited them for size as well as some cropping and minor color editing too ;).

ttfn
CDL.
 
Here is my try, hope you like it.

master_of_the_sky1.jpg


male_cardinal1_noise_removed.jpg


female_cardinal1_noise_removed.jpg
 
WOW! Now, tell me what you did and with what so that I can do it for myself from now on. :)

PLEASE. :sexywink:

Thanks again. I want to try that on the full size images. Maybe I can get a better crop on the male cardinal.

ttfn
CDL.
 
Thanks for the link, I'll have to check it out and give it a try! :D

Now all I gotta do is figure out whether the noise comes from something that I did or something else altogether. Any ideas? I don't want to keep on having to do this to 80% of my images.

ttfn
CDL.
 
Why would you edit out your beautiful film graining? It makes the pictures soft and in my humble opinion, takes away a lot of their character.
 
Now all I gotta do is figure out whether the noise comes from something that I did or something else altogether. Any ideas? I don't want to keep on having to do this to 80% of my images.

ttfn
CDL.


There was a thread on this forum recently about the same problem someone was having with film. Their response was something along the lines of 'Digital Film Processing' Seems many processing procedures these days include the negatives getting scanned and then handled digitally thereafter. Really defeating the whole purpose of shooting film.

Not saying this is what happened to your photos but it is a possibility. I'm just offering some information from a previous thread which could be the same as your case.

Ask Wal-Mart about their film processing procedure.
 
I downloaded the Noiseware one and compared it to NeatImage and NoiseNinja and the noise removal in CS3.

- Noiseware does a nice job

- Neatimage comes up a little short, unless I spend time tweaking

- NoiseNinja does a nice job, and each pic gets its own noise profile to remove noise when using the batch option, and does a better job than NeatImage and thought VERY close to Noiseware, I feel it eeks out a SLIGHTLY better result.

- I could match the NoiseNinja results in CS3 using noise removal on all 3 channels and then manually doing a smart sharpen. Results are near identical to NN on the noise side and the pic looked a little sharper afterwards too. Issue is that it took me about 2-4 minutes per pic where NN was a process that did it by itself.
 
Why would you edit out your beautiful film graining? It makes the pictures soft and in my humble opinion, takes away a lot of their character.

Oh I don't mind a little bit of noise due to the same reason you stated. But when I'm attempting to take a close-up of a smallish bird like the cardinal I didn't want the noise. I guess, after I look at it from a different perspective the noise in the image does give it some character.... maybe I should be a little more open-minded when viewing my shots instead of trying to match what everyone else does? :D

I guess I shouldn't be comparing my film captured images to those that are using a digital camera. You just don't get the same "type" of photo... but that doesn't necessarily mean it's worse.. or better I guess. (ignore my ramblings) ;)

I guess you liked the originals better then? Not bad for taking them through a window! There's a bunch of bushes outside my spare bedroom window that doesn't have a screen... lots of birds like to perch in those bushes and because I'm not outside and they can't really see me I can get a whole lot closer. I was about 10ft away from that cardinal. The hawk in the first one won't let me get more than 150ft away from him before he takes off.. every time we drive past him he's there and he takes off. One of these days I'm gonna park down there and sit and wait for him to ignore me... then start shooting away :D

ttfn
CDL.
 
There was a thread on this forum recently about the same problem someone was having with film. Their response was something along the lines of 'Digital Film Processing' Seems many processing procedures these days include the negatives getting scanned and then handled digitally thereafter. Really defeating the whole purpose of shooting film.

Not saying this is what happened to your photos but it is a possibility. I'm just offering some information from a previous thread which could be the same as your case.

Ask Wal-Mart about their film processing procedure.

That probably is what happened as they scanned the negatives to CD and I'll bet that they did some editing of the images even though I specifically asked them to NOT mess with them. I guess I'm just going to have to add a negative scanning printer to my "wish list" of gear I want so I am in control of the whole process from beginning to end. :er:

I guess I need to find a better place to get my film developed.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my thread. I am learning a lot around here.

ttfn
CDL.
 
Assuming that the images you shared are from the CD Wally-World made from your film (They are, aren't they?) ...

The problem is NOT digital NOISE!

And it's NOT film grain either!

It's simply low resolution. 8 inches x 6 inches at 72 dpi!

This happens to people all the time. Wal-Mart and (I believe) most discount places, always burn CDs at low resolution. It's cheaper and faster for them ... and they could care less about the quality you take home (because they're not getting the income from your print order). BTW, it's not the employee's fault. That's the way their machines are set up, and they are not allowed to change it.

Do you see their thinking here?

You take home a CD of crappy files. You try to do something with them, you fail (because they're such low resolution). You feel inadequate and stupid ... and bring your film back to THEM to get prints made ... because you're obviously not smart enough to do it yourself.

Sure, you can fix these shots somewhat with whatever software the people above are recommending. But the real problem is a crap CD.

Take your film to a real camera store, or to a friend who has a decent film scanner.

I think you'll see a world of difference.
 
I will go over noisy areas like that with the blur tool in PhotoShop, a low % and go over bad areas a few times. Real fine or detailed areas get smudgy doing that though and are skipped. I used to use diffuse/anisiotropic on selected areas, but it would apply it to nonselected areas too...grr!
 
You know, I was thinking pretty much the same thing... but I am not the type of person who blames others for my faults (even if they're not my faults ;)) It's a personality flaw I guess.

Oh yah, you are right about the fact that Wally world did the CD for me. I have searched around where I live for another place to take my film. The only other place that develops film is (I think) Ritz Camera. At least I think they process film in-store. I tell ya, I wish I lived back in Hamilton, ON again. I used to go to a store there called Black's. They would do pretty much ANYTHING I asked them to with my photos at a reasonable cost too! I used to take all my film into them to get developed and they'd scan them and I'd have to go to a link they'd send me in an email to download the images. The resolution of those images was quite high! At least I'm sure it was due to the size of the individual image files (each was approx. 20-30Mb) compared to the ones I got from wally world yesterday (1-1.5Mb each).

I guess I'll check out Ritz Camera to see if they're any better... or look for a film scanner/printer.

Thanks for the comments btw, they make me feel a little less stupid :sexywink:

ttfn
CDL.
 
Is this what you are talking about? I wonder if that has good enough quality or if the images will have the same problem as the ones I got from wally world. :er:

ttfn
CDL.
 

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