Noise?

[ronlane]

yw

 

[KmH]

If you don't already have them, you might want to get some highly regarded training/reference resources:
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)[/url
The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop (2nd Edition)
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC / Lightroom 6 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers
Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers, 2015 Release

The authors of the above books have consulted regularly for Adobe for many years and are members of PixelGenius.

 

[J-Cal]

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.

Thank you so much for the insight. I am very careful with sharpening as i've created noise just as you talk about. I learned that on Instagram of all places.

 

[J-Cal]

If you don't already have them, you might want to get some highly regarded training/reference resources:
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)[/url
The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop (2nd Edition)
The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC / Lightroom 6 Book: The Complete Guide for Photographers
Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers, 2015 Release

The authors of the above books have consulted regularly for Adobe for many years and are members of PixelGenius.

Thank you!