A difficult noise removal problem - monochrome 120 film processing damage

[Peter McLennan]

Here's the full image.  By full moon from my Pentax 6X7.  Ilford FP4, I think.  Scan is 10K pixels wide.




It's a nice image, one I'd like to print large.  The resolution is there for large prints, but the sky is the problem.

Poor processing technique (mine) has caused the sky to look like this:



I've tried cloning and the healing brush, but I can't make enough difference, no matter how much time I spend.

I've considered a complete sky replacement, but I like the star trails.

Any ideas? 

[Mark D Segal]

Have you tried a professional strength noise removal program such as Noiseware, Noise Ninja, Neat Image or Topaz DeNoise 5? I would give one of those a try - create a duplicate image layer and let the noise software operate on that layer, by keeping it active when you launch the noise correction application. Try various settings. There may be some setting combination that smoothes the sky while preserving the tracks you wish to keep. These applications will cause loss of detail. You want to preserve the detail on the building at the least. So for that, add a reveal-all layer mask to the noise reduction layer after reducing the noise, and with that mask active, paint black on all image areas where you don't want the noise filter applied. Perhaps that will help improve the sky while retaining detail where you need it.

[bill t.]

Got this from Lightroom.

Have you tried a un-corrected print?  Mottle like that was just a fact of life in the good old days, it might lend a certain class to the image.

[Peter McLennan]

Wow, Bill.  That is a substantial improvement. : ) I don't use Lightroom, but that certainly did a much better job than I was able to do with Topaz, Mark.   Is that in the ACR component of LR?  Or is that an internal function?

I've tried for years to talk myself into the idea that it gave the image "charm", but to no avail.  I'd love it to be completely gone.  You've come very, very close. 


As others have noted on another thread, the Taj is no longer accessible during full moon nights.  Thanks to you and Mark for giving this old image new hope. 

Peter

[Mark D Segal]

It's in the develop module of Lightroom along with Sharpening and indeed it does work very well. Topaz also does very well, but you need to be quite careful with the adjustments because it's very reactive. If you have Noiseware or Noise Ninja, you will find they have more controls than either Topaz or Lightroom, so just may give you a bit of extra improvement.

[bill t.]

And I wouldn't go so far as to say that the Lightroom treated version would look great at larger print sizes.  All the noise removal and sharpening processes that I know about to some degree do wiggy things to edges that aren't always an improvement when viewed on the print.

Don't know if ACR has the same mojo, as far as I know there is no way to feed the .jpg I have to ACR.

The Lightroom noise reduction is very impressive, that's for sure.  You can push it pretty hard on RAW files with very little IQ penalty.

[Fine_Art]

Here's the full image.  By full moon from my Pentax 6X7.  Ilford FP4, I think.  Scan is 10K pixels wide.




It's a nice image, one I'd like to print large.  The resolution is there for large prints, but the sky is the problem.

Poor processing technique (mine) has caused the sky to look like this:



I've tried cloning and the healing brush, but I can't make enough difference, no matter how much time I spend.

I've considered a complete sky replacement, but I like the star trails.

Any ideas? 

That is a tough one. This is what I got from 2 passes through noise ninja.

You probably have to mask the buildings to keep the detail.

[Fine_Art]

This is 1 pass with "remove very course noise" setting on.

[dmerger]

I got similar results with Neat Image.  I could also remove virtually all the noise, but such a strong filter also removed too much detail.  The best approach would probably be to create two layers, with a mask of the sky on one layer and a mask of the detail areas on another layer.  Then, use a strong filter on the sky layer and a weak filter on the detail layer.  Creating a good mask would be the real chore.

Edit:  Here is a quick job using Neat Image. I probably used too strong of a filter, but it would be easy to dial it back a little. 

[Tim Lookingbill]

In Photoshop select out the sky and apply Dust and Scratches setting 55/9. Paint back with History Brush or however you want to go about it. I did this using just History Brush but I ran into some spots at the bottom that need the sky selected out. But I think this is the texture that'll work for you. It was a quick brush application and didn't finish.