The Great Noise reduction challenge!

[Overread]

Yep I've decided its time that I up ones skills in noise reduction. However instead of just reading dry articles I'd rather have a look at what other people can do with their own skills with a view to then sharing those results and skills.

Hopefully we can all pick up a little (or a big) something from others and learn some new skills in noise reduction.

So up I'm putting up a RAW shot I took recently which we can work upon. The shot is taken on a Canon 7D at ISO 12800 indoors so its pretty darn noisy. In fact its rather extreme and certainly beyond the cameras best, but why do this easy - lets do a challenge as all we learn on this will greatly improve shots with lighter noise levels.

Here is the drop-box link to it (it should work - hope it works - just remember to copy and paste it locally otherwise DB might do odd things).

Dropbox - IMG_4859.CR2

Once you've got the shot make a note of:
1) The software you use and the order you use them if you use more than one
2) The steps and stages you use to reduce the noise - be as detailed as you are capable/desire to be. The more info the better as ideally we should each be able to replicate the results.
3) Post up your method and your results and how you've found the shot to reduce noise with etc... Again more detail the better.

I'm not as concerned about exposure or white balance changes here, this is really about focusing on the noise itself (both fullsize and resized).


My own method:

1) Opened and performed basic editing in lightroom. Noise removed at this stage is only colour-noise (which is at its default value). I removed no other noise with lightroom.

2) Opened to edit in Photoshop.

3) In photoshop I opened up the Neat Image 3rd party addon to reduce noise. I used a 7D ISO 12800 profile from their website combined with area selecting a segment of the grey background and then using the "fine tune" automatic command to fine tune the noise filters based upon the area selection content.

4) In the next page I set the noise reduction setting to reduce noise and sharpen default values - reducing the Y value noise reduction to 40% and in sharpening setting it to 125% in the high setting.

5) Upon completion of the Neat Image I then used the Photoshop "Filters - noise - dust and scratches) with a radius of 1 and a threshold of 30.

5b) at this stage i should have reduced the saturation in cyans (upon reflection and comparison to the original shots taken on the blue areas which are a bit overly strong in my first edit here).

6) Results were then saved - I then reduced the size in a couple of steps (3500 - 2000- 1000 pixels on the longest side) sharpening with unsharpen mask as needed at each step.
I could have done one final small noise-reduction sweep on the final stages

So now lets see and hear of your results

 

[bribrius]

over my head overead. I don't have any of those programs, that is a lot of $$$ in software. don't even know what you are talking about. I can say you have me beat already as I cant get photos at iso 6400 coming out this clear. I hope this thread takes off as I could learn something here.

 

[Overread]

Photoshop and Lightroom is under £10 a month for me at present with their sign-up scheme so that's the bulk of costs in software that I currently use (and before that I was using elements which is why I got Neat Image which I think was around £60 for a non-commercial licence)

 

[qleak]

hmm I'm by no means an expert at denoising. My new favorite tool in darktable is the equalizer.

1. In the equalizer I did the following:

• Smoothed the finer details in the choma. Brought up the contrast on the coarser choma just a tad. I didn't worry about the super fine details too much since I'm planning on scaling to 1000x like the OP

• Aggressively smoothed the finer/medium details in the luminance. Brought up the contrast in the coarser details, left contrast in the medium/finer details unchanged.

2) Did the hot pixel quick fix.
3) Scaled

constructive criticism welcome. The equalizer is a somewhat new technique for me, but I like it cause it saves quite a bit of time

 

[Overread]

I've never heard/seen that tool before - looks very complicated - though I can see how its kind of like playing with the curves and then speeding things up that way.

First thing that stands out to me though is that your version has a lot of what appears to be colour noise (I think) all red-dots all over the scene. Otherwise it seems to give quite a pleasing result.

 

[pixmedic]

LR 5.7 NR 60 and sharpening 25

 

[qleak]

I've never heard/seen that tool before - looks very complicated - though I can see how its kind of like playing with the curves and then speeding things up that way.

First thing that stands out to me though is that your version has a lot of what appears to be colour noise (I think) all red-dots all over the scene. Otherwise it seems to give quite a pleasing result.

The equalizer is like frequency separation with a split luminance and choma (color), they also have an edge correction tool to adjust sharpening artifacts across the different detail levels.

Thanks for the feedback I'll have to be more careful with the choma. It could be the hotpixel removal tool to blame also.

 

[JustJazzie]

Interesting thread! Im terrible at noise reduction so I won't participate. I will be here though, watching and learning!

 

[bribrius]

I cant even get the file to open. just say not supported cannot load file. Guessing because it is a photoshop file? lmao

 

[Overread]

Nope its a RAW from a Canon 7D so chances are it requires the 7D codec on your software of choice -- the codec should be up for download somewhere onthe Canon website or on your software manufacturers website

 

[fotograph]

I normally work in Lightroom, but since I didn't want to add this photo to my catalog, I used Camera Raw.

1) I changed the camera profile from Adobe Standard to Camera Standard.

2) Enabled Lens Correction

3) Performed Basic Editing (I would have like to see this image exposed more to the right, it would have allowed this step to remove quite a bit of the noise in the image)

4) Detail Panel
a) Sharpening {Amount = 25, Radius = 1.2, Detail = 25, Masking = 92}
b) Noise Reduction {Luminance = 30, Luminance Detail = 100, Luminance Contrast = 25, Color = 50, Color Detail = 50, Color Smoothness = 50}

5) Opened in PhotoShop CC

6) Noise Ninja Plug in on a duplicate layer
a) Auto Profiled
b) Luminance Settings (Strength -8, Smoothness - 10, Contrast - 10)
c) USM Settings = 0
d) colors settings = 10, 10, 10 (standard settings)

7) add a mask and paint in areas of fine detail with a gray brush (experiment with how dark or light a gray to use. I was painting on a white mask and used a light gray, small soft brush)

8) Resample to 1000pixels wide (bicubic)

9) Sharpen in Nik Sharpener, Using control points so as not to sharpen the wall behind the rider.

 

[Overread]

Interesting result, you got very much the same colour and contrasts that I did.

Using layers and layermasks is something I've got to do more of - ergo be less lazy with noise reduction!

Exposure wise I agree, sadly I was pretty much at the limits I could do. Aperture at f2.8 widest it would go - ISO at 12800 as high as it could go and the shutter speed was 1/640. I could have dropped to 1/500sec, but I find that at that speed there is significant risk of blurry hooves/manes appearing (esp because the horse was shifting from this slower pace to a faster one through the display).

 

[tecboy]

What do you think?

 

[runnah]

Way too blu tecboy.

I will have to try this on my editing pc tomorrow.

I normally only use the raw editor for such overall noise reduction. When it's more focused reduction I'll bust out the layers and masking.

 

[Don Kondra]

DxO Pro 10

Raw white balance from the saddle pad

Exposure Comp Highlight Priority Slight

DxO Smart Lighting Medium

Color accentuation - Vibrancy 20, Saturation 10

Noise reduction Prime, Luminance 50

DxO lens softness, Global 1.02, details 50, bokeh 50

Unsharp mask 250, radius 1.02, threshold 5, edge offset 1

Then in FastStone Image Viewer....

Resize to 1000 wide

Sharpen +2

Shadows 7, Highlights -4

Brightness 5, Contrast 2, Saturation 2

Hosted at Photobucket..

Cheers, Don