Which come first; NR or Sharpen

[once2work]

I learn from some digital expert, claim we should apply the sharpening before the noise reduction after color adjustment.

But Nik Software suggest should apply the Nik Dfine (what I use) as soon as possible, I don't know they hint for as soon as we open the file from LR before the color adjustment or after. Then the sharpening at last.

Should we apply the noise reduction first or leave it at the last process since the sharpening may caused the noise.

[David Sutton]

Noise reduction before sharpening, otherwise you sharpen the noise. If you capture sharpen in LR, you don't have to worry about the order, LR handles that.  If the noise needs a lot of work do it after export with Nik Define. Sharpen last.

[Mark D Segal]

David is correct - we don't want to sharpen noise, so reduce the noise first and then sharpen. But there are some workflow considerations. Do you use a sharpening workflow which includes Capture Sharpen near the start of the process and Output Sharpen just before printing? If you aren't, you should be. (See the various tutorials by Jeff Schewe and Jeff Schewe/Michael Reichmann on this subject.) Now, assuming you do, and depending on the seriousness of the noise, you may be better off reducing the noise outside of Lightroom using a special purpose plugin such as Noiseware or Noise Ninja, or Neat Image. If you do that, you would not capture sharpen in Lightroom either, because you want to reduce the noise with the special purpose plugin first. You would send the image to Photoshop, use the noise reduction plugin on a duplicate image layer, then capture sharpen using for example a plugin such as Photokit Capture Sharpener Pro, finish adjusting and sizing your image for output, then do output sharpening using for example Photokit Output Sharpener. These sharpeners are available from Photokit as a package and they are designed for this kind of workflow. You could also design your own capture and output sharpeners from instructions provided in "Real World Image Sharpening...." by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe, but however you go about sharpening, reduce the noise first. You can do it all in Lightroom where David correctly points out that the workflow order doesn't matter because the program looks after it under the hood; it's just that these special purpose noise reduction plugins used with Photoshop - arguably - still do a better job at distinguishing noise from detail than does the current noise reduction feature in Lightroom.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I agree except the workflow issue. If you really want to sharpen in LR (which makes sense to me) you could always use masking in the sharpening dialog. That would sharpen edges but eliminate sharpening on smooth areas.

I hope that LR3 will have some better noise reduction. The "beta" holds some promise on supressing high ISO noise but I felt they need more work on supressing impulse noise. An inverted edge mask for noise reduction would also be nice.

Another option may be look at Bibble Pro 5.0, it has support for Noise Ninja.

Best regards
Erik

David is correct - we don't want to sharpen noise, so reduce the noise first and then sharpen. But there are some workflow considerations. Do you use a sharpening workflow which includes Capture Sharpen near the start of the process and Output Sharpen just before printing? If you aren't, you should be. (See the various tutorials by Jeff Schewe and Jeff Schewe/Michael Reichmann on this subject.) Now, assuming you do, and depending on the seriousness of the noise, you may be better off reducing the noise outside of Lightroom using a special purpose plugin such as Noiseware or Noise Ninja, or Neat Image. If you do that, you would not capture sharpen in Lightroom either, because you want to reduce the noise with the special purpose plugin first. You would send the image to Photoshop, use the noise reduction plugin on a duplicate image layer, then capture sharpen using for example a plugin such as Photokit Capture Sharpener Pro, finish adjusting and sizing your image for output, then do output sharpening using for example Photokit Output Sharpener. These sharpeners are available from Photokit as a package and they are designed for this kind of workflow. You could also design your own capture and output sharpeners from instructions provided in "Real World Image Sharpening...." by Bruce Fraser and Jeff Schewe, but however you go about sharpening, reduce the noise first. You can do it all in Lightroom where David correctly points out that the workflow order doesn't matter because the program looks after it under the hood; it's just that these special purpose noise reduction plugins used with Photoshop - arguably - still do a better job at distinguishing noise from detail than does the current noise reduction feature in Lightroom.

[Mark D Segal]

Hi,

I agree except the workflow issue. If you really want to sharpen in LR (which makes sense to me) you could always use masking in the sharpening dialog. That would sharpen edges but eliminate sharpening on smooth areas.

I hope that LR3 will have some better noise reduction. The "beta" holds some promise on supressing high ISO noise but I felt they need more work on supressing impulse noise. An inverted edge mask for noise reduction would also be nice.

Another option may be look at Bibble Pro 5.0, it has support for Noise Ninja.

Best regards
Erik

Erik, that's true you could do that and it should be fine, but I haven't seen any visible difference of results from capture sharpening whether I do it in LR or with Photokit Capture Sharpener in PS.

Could you clarify what you mean by "high ISO noise" and "impulse noise". I'm familiar with the terms "shot noise", "read noise",  "luminance noise" and "colour noise", but I - and perhaps other readers - may not be as aware of the two you mention here.

[digitaldog]

NR first, certainly with rendered images (which is all NIK can handle).

In LR, its best to work top down but the processing order is optimized (unlike rendered files in Photoshop, you control the order which in this case is pretty important).

[Philmar]

I've come across tutorials using ACR and Smart objects. I've yet to harness this seemingly powerful tool.

Is there any possibility of using Smart objects as a workflow option to get an unsharpened image in to PS to do Noise reduction on a layer mask - and then re-entering the image back in to ACR for further changes (one of which would be capture sharpening)?

And more importantly, where are there good tutorials on how to best use Smart Objects in ACR?

[Schewe]

I learn from some digital expert, claim we should apply the sharpening before the noise reduction after color adjustment.

Ok, here's the thing...the OPTIMAL time to do noise reduction is in the same processing pipeline as demosiacing and capture sharpening of the image–meaning the raw processing. So, what that means is to do the global sharpening, image toning and color correction AND the noise reduction ALL in the raw processing pipeline.

OK, in the past some people tended to poo poo the ACR/Lightroom noise reduction–and to a degree, I agree. In the past (operative word "past") Camera Raw and Lightroom's noise reduction was not what most would call "industrial strength".

Andrew (The Digital Dog) and most of the people I know (like Martin Evening, Mac Holbert and even Mike R.) tended to take the REALLY NOISY stuff and do post processing in Noiseware Pro. The problem there was that meant that at best, you only did very, very gentle capture sharpening prior to the noise reduction and all the retouching and other work had to be done AFTER a trip to Photoshop.

So, here's what I would say about "current practice": If your image is from a recent camera and less than ISO 800 and with little Exposure bump in ACR or LR, try your best to achieve the optimal image sharpening and noise reduction settings in ACR or LR. If you often shoot at higher ISO and do post processing exposure bumps, seriously consider doing little sharpening in ACR/LR and take advantage of the power of a 3rd party noise reduction tool.

But know that this is now...and in the future, the "best practice" is bound to change since the tools we are using improve...

BTW, did I mention that the LR 3 beta has some interesting improvements in demosiacing and color noise reduction?

The luminance noise reductions isn't hooked up yet but those practiced in the art of tea leaf reading would probably deduce that LR 3 and ACR 6 would have substantially improved luminance noise reduction that might make 3rd party tools less needed and allow even the HIGH ISO shooter the ability to do both sharpening AND industrial strength noise reduction all in one pass...

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I may ber wrong but:

- With high ISO noise I simply mean noise at high ISO settings.
- With impulse noice I mean "salt-and-pepper" kind of noise. It's a bit similar to hot pixels. I posted an image to Erik Chan illustrating the problem.

Regarding LR vs. Photokit Sharpener, both have countour masks and they are similar (I got the impression is that sharpening in LR is based on the methods used in PKS).

Best regards
Erik

Erik, that's true you could do that and it should be fine, but I haven't seen any visible difference of results from capture sharpening whether I do it in LR or with Photokit Capture Sharpener in PS.

Could you clarify what you mean by "high ISO noise" and "impulse noise". I'm familiar with the terms "shot noise", "read noise",  "luminance noise" and "colour noise", but I - and perhaps other readers - may not be as aware of the two you mention here.

[Philmar]

Thanks for the detailed information Jeff.

One reason why I tend to do noise reduction in photoshop (rather than in the ACR RAW pipeline) was because I had been lead to believe 3rd party plug-ins did it better (sounds like a tacky bumper sticker- 'Plug-ins DO it Better") and of course because I could better control/target noise reduction using a surface mask. As much as I hate noise, I hated detail loss even more.

I started to do capture sharpening in ACR when the edge mask genertor appeared in ACR. This great tool made my life a lot easier.

One thing I'd like to know is: does the ACR noise reduction use an inverted version (surface version) of the edge mask generated for capture sharpening? Or is the noise reduction performed globally without regard to the edge mash created for capture sharpening?
I'd love it if there were an edge mask generator in ACR for noise reduction.

[Schewe]

One thing I'd like to know is: does the ACR noise reduction use an inverted version (surface version) of the edge mask generated for capture sharpening?

No...the Edge Mask has nothing to do with the Luminance Noise Reduction edge preservation. Perhaps Eric Chan could explain EXACTLY how the ACR noise reduction deals with determining whether or not noise is noise vs micro-detail. The noise reduction should only impact the real super high frequency noise texture and not image micro-detail but sometimes that REAL HARD to distinguish.

Actually, I'm not sure an inverted edge mask would be good for a surface mask without substantial modification. As I indicated, the way things are NOW will certainly change in the future...(which may not be too far off).

:~)

[JeffKohn]

One thing I'd like to know is: does the ACR noise reduction use an inverted version (surface version) of the edge mask generated for capture sharpening? Or is the noise reduction performed globally without regard to the edge mash created for capture sharpening?
I'd love it if there were an edge mask generator in ACR for noise reduction.

I think inverting the sharpening mask would lead to quite ugly results. You'd have surfaces that look overly smooth in comparison to the edges, and probably have "noise halos" around all the edges since edge masks tend to be a little fuzzy/blurry.  Besides, the real damage of NR is not to edges (it's pretty easy to recognize edges); the real damage is to fine details in the image, which won't be coverted by an inverted edge mask anyways.

The noise reduction should only impact the real super high frequency noise texture and not image micro-detail but sometimes that REAL HARD to distinguish.

Not just hard, but pretty much impossible. I've yet to see a Noise Reduction tool or plugin that can truly discriminate noise from true detail (some do get closer than others, though). That's why ideally you want to shoot at ISO's and exposures where NR isn't necessary if at all possible. Of course sometimes you have no choice. Personally, I prefer a bit of grain in an image as opposed to the smudged look of NR.

What would be ideal is if NR could be applied in ACR/LR with the adjustment brush to have a localized effect rather than having it apply to the whole image or using some auto-generated mask.

[Philmar]

What would be ideal is if NR could be applied in ACR/LR with the adjustment brush to have a localized effect rather than having it apply to the whole image or using some auto-generated mask.

I agree. Sometimes when some minor noise is limited to small area (i.e. bottom of a cloud) i'll try to blur (unsharpen) and/or desaturate it using the local adjustment tools in ACR rather than subjecting the whole file to noise reduction