Noisy Sky

[Mike Sellers]

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

[Mark D Segal]

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.

[Rhossydd]

+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.

[Mark D Segal]

+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.

[Paul2660]

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

[Justan]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rxvY08zJQQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2OXyLRDgrk

[Mike Sellers]

Here is a shot after Neat Image has been applied. It looks a lot better-thanks.

[Paul2660]

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

[artobest]

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.