Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Mike Sellers on May 20, 2013, 09:21:48 am

Title: Noisy Sky
Post by: Mike Sellers on May 20, 2013, 09:21:48 am: I have an old Ektachrome shot with a very grainy/noisy sky. I need to clean it up so that it will look good in a big print. I lassoed the sky and used the Dust&Scratches filter set to 7 pixels. My question is could there be a better way to clean it up?
Mike
Title: Re: Noisy Sky
Post by: Mark D Segal on May 20, 2013, 09:44:41 am: Yes there is. Use a professional noise reducing plug-in, such as Topaz DeNoise, Noise Ninja. Neat Image or Noiseware. There are frequent recommendations for Neat Image when it comes to cleaning-up film scans. I agree with those recommendations, but also find that Topaz Denoise does a very good job with fewer settings. If you print from Lightroom, I would also highly recommend Lightroom's noise reduction functions.
Title: Re: Noisy Sky
Post by: Rhossydd on May 20, 2013, 10:13:18 am: +1 on using a dedicated noise reduction program.
I use Neat Image it does the job on film scans very well.
I'd also caution against trying to eliminate it completely in any one area or things start looking a bit weird.
Title: Re: Noisy Sky
Post by: Mark D Segal on May 20, 2013, 10:16:26 am: Quote from: Rhossydd on May 20, 2013, 10:13:18 am
+1 on using a dedicated noise reduction program.
I use Neat Image it does the job on film scans very well.
I'd also caution against trying to eliminate it completely in any one area or things start looking a bit weird.

Hi Paul, yes point well taken. I forgot to mention in my reply that when dealing with skies, it is often best to put the sky on a separate layer and treat the noise on that layer alone; however in doing so care is sometimes needed not to let the noise reduction spill over as blurry stuff into the non-treated areas adjacent to the sky.
Title: Re: Noisy Sky
Post by: Paul2660 on May 20, 2013, 11:18:00 am: You could also import it into LR and see how well it works on the file. For stand alone noise reduction, I would also look at Neatimage. Very good tool, works stand alone or as plug in. I prefer it to Topaz.

Paul Caldwell
Title: Re: Noisy Sky
Post by: Justan on May 20, 2013, 11:31:47 am: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rxvY08zJQQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2OXyLRDgrk
Title: Re: Noisy Sky
Post by: Mike Sellers on May 21, 2013, 08:15:07 am: Here is a shot after Neat Image has been applied. It looks a lot better-thanks.
Title: Re: Noisy Sky
Post by: Paul2660 on May 21, 2013, 09:44:02 am: Mike:

I forgot to mention, I tend to use Neatimage in the plugin mode. Create a duplicate layer of the original image, then run the noise reduction. One of features of Neatimage is the break out into various view modes/channels, and it has sliders to effect the noise
in just that particular channel where the most noise may be.

The 64 bit version is definitely worth the investment.

Paul Caldwell
Title: Re: Noisy Sky
Post by: artobest on May 22, 2013, 07:02:56 am: Nice to see Neat Image get some love around here. It's often overlooked in these discussions, despite being a uniquely competent piece of software.