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Photography Question 
- Eloise Bartell

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Noise Reduction


I have been using Noiseware for removing noise, but have run into a problem when using it on ocean scenes. It is great for the sky, but I am finding it removes too much of the ripples in the water and makes it look like its smudged when it is printed. I've playing with the settings, but can not seem to hit on the right combinations. Can anyone help me with this?? Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated and attempted.


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May 03, 2008

 

Richard Lynch
  Eloise,
Noise reduction is really 'detail reduction'. Blur is how the plugins work - some have better or worse masking.
The best way to reduce noise is likely manually. I know people hate to hear that because it is so convenient to depend on a plugin to think for you, but really these things are just calculations and can't see the image. Only you know what you want.
My suggestion: skip the plugins and learn to use Photoshop (or Elements) to its capacity. Enhance your understanding of masking and layers.
If you insist on using plugins, try applying the plugin to a masked layer and paint in the noise reduction.
I hope that helps!


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May 03, 2008

 

David Van Camp
  Another approach is to select areas to be 'noise reduced' and then apply the filter.

For example, a recent photo I worked for a friend on had very high noise in flower petals, so I carefully selected (with a med feathering) the inner-petal areas and applied agressive noise reduction I then inverted the selection to select the edges & center areas of the flowers and applied USM.

Also, PaintShopPro has far more noise reduction options: Camera noise removal which builds a profile for your camera, edge preserving smooth which helps keep edge detail while smoothing flatter surfaces, texture preserving smooth which would probably be best for the water noise you mention and Medium, which, as Richard mentioned, is basically a blurring approach.

I bought PaintShopPro9 for $25 on ebay. It also has a number of other features I like better than or not available in Elements (4). You might want to consider getting it too (v8 or v9 are, IMO, best, since I don't like what Corel did to it in vers X & up)

Have fun!
dvc


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May 06, 2008

 
- Eloise Bartell

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  Thank you both for the replies. I'll be trying both this weekend.


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May 20, 2008

 

Oliver Anderson
  I shoot races, Nascar & Drifting at night and obviously noise can't be avoided. If you buy a good plugin they do have the ability to easily direct where and how much you remove. Photoshop does this but I don't feel the noise reduction software is as user friendly or refined as some of the plugins. I use Noise Ninja


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May 20, 2008

 
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