Noise?

[J-Cal]

So, I took some shots of the moon last night, well I tried anyway. I'm looking at it in Lightroom, which i'm new to, and I do a couple of little things and then export it. Upon export, I see noise that I didn't see even when zoomed in in Lightroom. I'm wondering what this is, and if it's fixable. I have spent some time in the details tab messing with Luminance and such, but nothing has worked thus far, as I still get the noise upon export. I attached the photo below. You can see the noise in the sky. Any input would be appreciated. Thanks in an advance.
BTW, I have one lens that I shoot with because i'm poor. It's an 18-200 Nikon VR and the camera is a D300S.

 

[ronlane]

try bumping the color noise slider up some as well.

 

[J-Cal]

try bumping the color noise slider up some as well.

Thanks for the reply! That didn't work. So, what i'm doing is backing off any color adjustments I did and see if that lessens the noise at all.

 

[J-Cal]

It's just weird because it's not really showing up in Lightroom as much as it is after exporting it.

 

[ronlane]

To be honest with you, no matter what you do there is going to be noise in an image such as this. When I pull up the image, I don't see anything that is troublesome. My next suggestion, don't pixel peep dark images to death, it will drive you insane.

 

[ronlane]

It's just weird because it's not really showing up in Lightroom as much as it is after exporting it.

What sharpening are you using on export? That could possibly have something to do with it.

 

[J-Cal]

To be honest with you, no matter what you do there is going to be noise in an image such as this. When I pull up the image, I don't see anything that is troublesome. My next suggestion, don't pixel peep dark images to death, it will drive you insane.

Thank you, but now I see it, it just dominates the image for me.

 

[J-Cal]

It's just weird because it's not really showing up in Lightroom as much as it is after exporting it.

What sharpening are you using on export? That could possibly have something to do with it.

I thought that as well. So I backed off any sharpening and contrast I was using just to see what I would get, and it's still there. It's just weird.

 

[fmshoemaker]

I reduce noise in LR, do minor sharpening in LR, Export as a tiff full size, do a high pass sharpen in PS, mask it then only sharpen areas i want sharp. Resize, save as jpg, done.

 

[ronlane]

If I have an image that really has a lot of noise, I use the McPhun plugin, Noiseless to start with and then edit the image.

 

[J-Cal]

I reduce noise in LR, do minor sharpening in LR, Export as a tiff full size, do a high pass sharpen in PS, mask it then only sharpen areas i want sharp. Resize, save as jpg, done.

Wow. I follow you. I haven't even really been in PS yet. I'm really new to the post processing game ..not so much when it comes to color, contrast, or other basic adjustments, but I haven't started isolating various spots on images and fixing them yet. That's on a little down the road for me.

 

[J-Cal]

If I have an image that really has a lot of noise, I use the McPhun plugin, Noiseless to start with and then edit the image.

Is that an Adobe plug in?

 

[ronlane]

If I have an image that really has a lot of noise, I use the McPhun plugin, Noiseless to start with and then edit the image.

Is that an Adobe plug in?

Yes, you can use it as a stand alone or either in LR or PS. It is only for Mac's though.

 

[TCampbell]

As Ron has already suggested... don't be obsessed with noise.

There is a trade-off between de-noising an image and sharpness. When you "de-noise" the software inspects each pixel to see how radically different that pixel is as compared to surrounding pixels. In other words if you have a single "red" (just making an example) pixel in the middle of a bunch of "blue" pixels, the computer might conclude that this pixel represents "noise" and not real data. So the de-noising algorithm attempts to reduce the noise by averaging the pixels around the "noise" pixel. But this "averaging" of pixels has a side-effect of softening the overall image so that it isn't as sharp anymore.

You can also exasperate a noise problem by sharpening an image (sharpening looks for differences between pixels which might be subtle... and then intensifies those differences. This makes textures and edges stand out more... but "noise" shares a lot of these properties so it gets intensified right along with everything else. In Lightroom's "Develop" module you'll notice that the "Sharpening" tool section has a "Masking" slider. The tip here is to hold down your alt/option key WHILE adjusting that slider. You'll initially notice the whole image goes "white" (sharpening can occur anywhere in the image that is "white" which means the whole image is fair game for sharpening). But as you slide the "Masking" slider to the right, you'll notice the white starts going black especially in areas with little detail. Any areas where "edges" or "textures" are strongly detected it will remain white. This allows you to mask out all the flat areas in an image so that noise won't be generated in those areas when you sharpen (it won't attempt to sharpen those area.)

I had always wished they had an inverse of the "masking" slider for de-noising so that I could be more aggressive with de-noising in areas that are supposed to be smooth (areas with little texture or contrast -- that's where noise will be the most apparent) and leave the "textures" and "edges" alone. I don't know of a way to do this in Lightroom.

I have a plug-in by Imagenomic called "Noiseware Pro" which is pretty good at this. It allows me to define the noise levels by frequency or tonal range (noise tends to be worse in dark areas -- because "dark" represents very little "signal" (not much real data). It's all about "signal to noise ratio" (SNR). If SNR is poor you'll see more noise. If the SNR is great then you'll have very little noticeable noise. This means if a bride & groom are standing side-by-side... the bride has a "white" dress and the groom has a "black" tuxedo, you're like to see noise in in his tuxedo... but not in her dress. You don't want to de-noise everything (because that would soften the details in her dress) ... but you would like to eliminate the noise in his tuxedo (which has the side-effect of getting rid of lint, dandruff, and whatever else might be on his tuxedo because "black" shows everything.) I like that particular program because it allows me to "tune" the de-noising behavior in ways that go beyond the standard tools.

Alway... if you cannot see the noise without really zooming in... don't worry about it.

 

[J-Cal]

If I have an image that really has a lot of noise, I use the McPhun plugin, Noiseless to start with and then edit the image.

Is that an Adobe plug in?

Yes, you can use it as a stand alone or either in LR or PS. It is only for Mac's though.

Good thing I have Macs at home. I'll check it out. Thanks!