Got some grainy pics of thresher sharks off Malapascua, Philippines last week. Had to shoot in ISO400 and the subjects stayed pretty far to even fill a 50mm frame (canon 350D). Some of the pics might be keepers with some cropping and noise reduction. Anyways, I've heard some mention "Noise Ninja". Any other software you PS experts would recommend? Or are there any PS CS2 tricks?
Here's an example of what I would like to fix (sorry about the WB! gotta little carried away with the WB adjustments... need to tone down that purple... and yes I'll tone down the watermark as well! )
Maybe not OK for competition or the purists, but if you want to save this shot I recommend that you try to create a mask of the shark. (time consuming and needs to be done with close magnification) Then work on the background and the shark separately. Your background looks pretty close already to me. You will then be able to work on the shark, colour correct, play with contrast etc. Although I own Noise Ninja, I do not have enough experience using it yet to decide whether the results are truly better than Photoshop Unsharp Mask or Smart Sharpen. I used the masking technique on my shark shot at
No noise reduction was done on my shot, it needs it, and I will have to revisit it sometime.
Loftus is spot on. And I don't think that the shark will be too hard to select and mask. You just need to adjust your edge contrast to the image and you are set. I think you have a salvageable image.
Also, Photoshop has a noise reduction feature but I have no clue how it compares to other dedicated noise reduction software. In PS you go to filter-noise-reduce noise.
If you shoot RAW, Noise Ninja is built into the latest version of Bibble RAW conversion software:
If you shoot in JPEG, you can also apply the unsharp mask in photoshop with a high threshold value. There's an even more effective technique in PS, but it's too long to explain in this post...
I like the Grain Surgery, its a PS plugin that do good work (even somthime slowly).
Starbuck, I take it back... That action is nice for green pics, but doesn't work with my blue thresher... I tested it with some extremely greenish pics pics I had from an old wreck dive... that red correction action is pretty cool, really brought back the color in that particular photo.
Peter, thanks I'll look into that link.
NoiseNinja works as a plugin in CS2. I haven't tried it in earlier versions of Photoshop.
It is the most impressive noise reduction that I've tried.
Compare:
with:
This is a pretty awful image, but you can see what happens. The only difference is careful adjustment of the NoiseNinja parameters, and making the file size of the second image the same as the first (which would have the effect ofmagnifying residual noise).
Tim
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I use NeatImage which gives great results. I also used that to process some of my scans in the old days (1.5 years ago). There is also a Photoshop plug-in available.
Thought I would revive this topic. I'm interested in a plug in for PS/ and or Aperture. Has anyone one had any recent experience with any of the noise reduction programs. Better than PS?
Thanks for any insight.
Thought I would revive this topic. I'm interested in a plug in for PS/ and or Aperture. Has anyone one had any recent experience with any of the noise reduction programs. Better than PS?
Thanks for any insight.
Dave, well since I started this thread I ended up pruchasing Noise Ninja. For awhile I was using the Neat Image demo. Tough to say which one was better between those two as IMHO they were pretty equal in noise reduction and speed in their latest versions. In the end, I went with Noise Ninja as I found it's interface a little more intuitive (others might think the opposite!). Both Noise Ninja and Neat Image had pretty good preset profiles for all my cameras and offer plug ins for PS. Both really leave the PS noise reduction filter in the dust.
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