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Has anyone ever used Neat Image? I saw some great editing & the photographer told me he did it with that program.

Neat Image is a great tool. I can recommend it. There is also a freeware version available.

I'm not a big fan of noise reduction in general, because every noise reduction software will remove details and you essentially loose resolution. I think it is better to just remove color noise, but only slightly suppress luminance noise if at all.

There have been some scientific studies that showed that people consider photos with a bit of noise more detailed and sharp. So if you use a noise reduction tool, I recommend that you weaken the luminance noise reduction to a point where the noise isn't too distracting and the photo didn't get too soft.

It's phenominal! I've even managed to clean up some stills taken from VHS Video tape really well.

After using the demo version, I liked it so well I bought the home user version so I could have the Photoshop plugin part of it.

By having the plugin you can use edit>>fade if the effects are too much.

Download and use the demo, you won't be sorry!

I have tried neat image ,the problem i have it takes along time to work. I also tried Noiseware Community Edition-free version,works great you should try it. Robert


http://www.imagenomic.com/detailsstandalone.asp

And you have
Noise Ninja
http://www.picturecode.com/
they have both a standalone and a plugin version.


Btw.
Paint Shop Pro 9 has a very good noise reduction tool built in (Digital Camera Noise Removal)

I see that the new Photoshop CS2 has now also got a noise reduction tool built in

I havent tried ninja,but i hears it a good program.

Hi,

I'd recommend Noise Ninja. I think it's a little easier to use, uses similar wavelet technology, but it causes fewer digital arifacts than Neat Image. Plus, you can try the Noise Ninja as a demo. Neat Image has a partial standalone demo that can't open certain file types and clunky stuff like that. So, they make it harder to try out than Noise Ninja.

As for reducing noise, you should use it carefully. Be gentle and don't get greedy, otherwise you'll lose useful information. I do agree with Harald that leaving some grain does give the appearance of detail and sharpness even though it's not real information. With Noise Ninja you can also use their Masking Brush to adjust any overall noise reduction that you do apply. So, if want to apply a strong filter to get rid of the sky noise, but it takes away too much information in the other portions of the shot, that's okay. Simply brush away the noise reduction in the rest of the picture just like you can with Photoshop layer masks. Actually, I use Photoshop masks instead, but this is a nice way to custom tailor the noise reduction because it's almost impossible to pick one set of parameters to make every part of the image looking perfect. For instance, you may want to remove a lot of noise from the sky and water surface, but you may want to keep it in the glissening snow so that it looks more like snow crystals.

These NR programs offer basic sharpening, but I always turn it off and follow up with FocalBlade. This way, I have the best of both worlds.

Good Luck.

See some examples of Neat Image in action at http://www.plugsnpixels.com/neatimage.html

Mike