Noise reduction

[allanrube]

Here is an image I posted in the Avian section. I got several comments complaining about noise in chicks and background. What I usually do, and did here was apply noise reduction in areas without details. I hate to compromise detail for less noise.

I would like ideas for reducing noise on this image. feel free to dl and rework it. Much appreciated.

[Diane Miller]

I got used to film grain years ago and digital noise doesn't usually bother me as long as it is just luminosity noise, as opposed to blotchy color noise. But the latter is usually easier to fix, with sliders in raw conversion.

Noise is more of a problem for me when dark areas have been lightened in a high-ISO image. That doesn't seem to be the case here. All I see in the BG are the dots on my monitor, as far as I can tell. I often don't see the noise people mention in BGs. Maybe I need a better monitor. (It's an Eizo Color Edge, but getting a bit long in the tooth.)

There seems to be a little noise in the lower right, but after all, it's sand.

What I notice more is how sharpening has affected the in-focus sand grains. I assume the sharpening radius is of the same size as the sand grains. I'd consider whether that much sharpening is needed, especially there. I do sharpening on a separate layer and mask as needed -- sounds like that may be what you're doing, too.

[Poorna Kedar]

Hi Allan

Beautiful image and I love the lighting that you have got here.

To me the noise levels in your image is acceptable. But what is "acceptable" varies from person to person, it is subjective. Having said that, in a brightly lit picture like this, the background noise should have been much lesser than what we see here. I feel some of that hidden noise is lifted because of the sharpening technique you have used. It will be interesting to know which sharpening technique you employed here. Sharpening techniques like "High Pass filter" in Photoshop is known to enhance only the details and not much noise in the background.

I ran a quick noise reduction on your image using Nik's Define 2 photoshop plugin. It eliminated all the background noise without any noticeable loss in detail. With such mild noise levels, I hope you wont be loosing any details.

Ideally you should run the noise reduction tool at the beginning of your post processing workflow.

Thanks
Kedar

https://www.facebook.com/kedarphotography
http://www.flickr.com/photos/poornakedar

[allanrube]

I am glad you wrote to this thread Pooma as I had forgotten about it.

To update:
I had been using NX2 and following suggestion by Jason Odell (?) I added a bit of usm and then a high pass filter during the raw processing. What I found out is that this added noise to the bg. So, I added usm to the image and then a high pass to just the subject. This worked better.

However, over the weekend I decided to use LR instead of NX2. I don't think I can add high pass in LR so I have to figure out how I am going to do my sharpening.

[Don Lacy]

Hi Allan, With an OOF or solid color BG you should not use any sharpening on them at all you should only selectively sharpen the subject, there are several ways to do this in PS in lightroom I believe you can apply sharpening with a brush to the subject only. I really need to go play with lightroom one of these days.

[allanrube]

In theory I agree on not sharpening bg but in practice I often sharpen it some when I give a bit of usm to the entire image when I bring it into NX2 (or LR5.) I just think it makes life easier and doesn't add much noise. Later, in PS, I will make a layer of the oof background and apply noise reduction if necessary.
My mistake here was to give the entire image a second round - a high pass filter - instead of just the subject.

[Don Lacy]

In ACR you can mask out the BG while applying capture sharpening takes about 5 seconds with the slider if you can not do that in NX2 then I would not worry about it.