noise reduction

[ernie]

hello,

just got to work with some noise-reduction software (noise ware). at first sight i am getting good results, colors and texture all seem smoother and intenser. but when saving the noisefree image i noticed it's only 1/3 the size of the original (which i saved in photoshop, quality 11). so the question is: doesn't noise reduction reduce the overall quality of your picture? i mean, where did those extra 200kb of information go?

thanks,
- ernie

 

[Big Mike]

I wouldn't worry about it. I'm not exactly sure how the file sizes of digital images is affected...but I do know that a busy image, with lots of colors and different contrasting areas...will have a large file size than an image of a solid color. So I guess that once the image has been run though the noise reduction...a lot of the colors and contrast that was the noisy pixels...has been thrown out.

 

[steveb]

If the file you are saving is in a compressed format like JPEG, then the act of reducing the noise in the image may have a secondary effect of making hte image easier to compress. Noise doesn't compress well.

You should see the same file sizes before and after for uncompressed formats like .psd or (uncompressed) TIFF.

--Steve