KEEP THE NOISE. Landscape use.

[thierrylegros396]

After a lot of trials with several recent Cameras and a good raw converter, I have decided to change my "high ISO image processing".

Why  

Simply because the fine noise is really more acceptable than the smoothing, especialy for grass, branches, and foliage.

With LR5 and a G15 (ISO 400 to 6400) for example, I use only 10 for luminance (detail 10, contrast 16) and 16 for color (detail 10, smoothing 16).

OK, noise is visible from ISO800, but no artifacts or exagerate smoothing.

And it appears to be more acceptable for prints AND screen !

The most important thing is to remove the color noise, the luminance noise is more acceptable except for the sky.

[Tim Lookingbill]

Clearly you have seen the light. I totally agree with on your points about noise and landscapes.

Noise never bothered me that much even on 6MP sensors shooting ISO 800.

[bill t.]

I use an superb denoise tool that removes high ISO noise from landscapes while preserving pixel level detail.  It's called Tripod.

[chez]

I use an superb denoise tool that removes high ISO noise from landscapes while preserving pixel level detail.  It's called Tripod.

There are conditions that I have come across where I need to boost up my ISO even on a tripod to stop the wind from moving branches in low light conditions.

[thierrylegros396]

Yes, and there are a lot of wind in Western Europe ans it seems that it will last !!

[Ray Cox]

Tripod is not a software that I am familiar with. Can you tell where it can be found?

[stamper]

Stuck in the ground or sometimes on a pavement or a road if there aren't any vehicles about. Some times in water if you don't mind the possibility of toppling it. 

[Ray Cox]

Duh!  Got me that time !   

[Ed Blagden]

I use an superb denoise tool that removes high ISO noise from landscapes while preserving pixel level detail.  It's called Tripod.

Comment of the day 

One thing that I wish would show up in LR one day is a noise reduction mask.  We already have the ability to create a sharpening mask on the fly, so why not include a slider in noise reduction which would create an invert of the sharpening mask and only apply noise reduction to areas which lack detail in the first place (e.g. the sky, deep shadows, in other words the places where noise tends to be an issue).  I tend to do this manually for some images using the adjustment brush, but it is hugely laborious and it would be great if it could be automated.

Jeff?  Eric?

[kers]

With al new cameras you have to go to iso 3200 or higher to at last have some noise...
In future we will all use particle tools to get some noise.

I am happy with my d800 iso 6400 noise! it looks good to me in print ( not so much on screen) and at 6400 the camera still produces rich coloured images.

[thierrylegros396]

Comment of the day 

One thing that I wish would show up in LR one day is a noise reduction mask.  We already have the ability to create a sharpening mask on the fly, so why not include a slider in noise reduction which would create an invert of the sharpening mask and only apply noise reduction to areas which lack detail in the first place (e.g. the sky, deep shadows, in other words the places where noise tends to be an issue).  I tend to do this manually for some images using the adjustment brush, but it is hugely laborious and it would be great if it could be automated.

Jeff?  Eric?

+1 and a luminance dependant noise reduction would be kind.

Of course with LR4 and LR5 you have the possibility to use a brush with +/- 100 noise cursor, but it certainly uses the main noise reduction settings as you have set them.

[bill t.]

Even though high ISO noise doesn't show up on the print as much as on the screen, you still lose a lot of dyanmic range once you hit the 4 digit ISOs.  Night shots and particularly cityscapes can suffer from that.

And we senior photographers used to willingly wallow in noise grain.  ISO 6400 noise ain't nuthin' compared to full frame 35mm Tri-x...

http://grubbasoftware.com/filmlibrary_trixpan.html

[robgo2]

Depending on how heavily I step on the accelerator in post-processing, I sometimes get objectionable noise in the sky.  This requires NR.  Otherwise, I agree with gentle NR as a general rule. 

Rob

[Stas Wilf]

Simply because the fine noise is really more acceptable than the smoothing, especialy for grass, branches, and foliage.

Maybe there are cultural reasons for this. Digital noise was unacceptable when the technology was still young and everyone everywhere agreed that film grain is much, much better, so these traces of new technology were things to hide. Now, when digital imaging has established itself as a respected technology, the noise takes its place in the row with film grain and brush streaks.

[Alan Klein]

Comment of the day 

One thing that I wish would show up in LR one day is a noise reduction mask.  We already have the ability to create a sharpening mask on the fly, so why not include a slider in noise reduction which would create an invert of the sharpening mask and only apply noise reduction to areas which lack detail in the first place (e.g. the sky, deep shadows, in other words the places where noise tends to be an issue).  I tend to do this manually for some images using the adjustment brush, but it is hugely laborious and it would be great if it could be automated.

Jeff?  Eric?

Have you tried the Masking slider in the Sharpening section?  YOu can use the slider in conjunction with the Alt key.  This masking is suppose to reduce noise in open areas like skies while not effecting the more complex areas like tree branches for example.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... This masking is suppose to reduce noise in open areas like skies...

Are you sure? My understanding is the masking reduces (blocks) additional sharpening there, not noise. The side effect of it, however, is that it does not sharpen noise in those areas either.

[Alan Klein]

Yes.  I think you're right.

[Ed Blagden]

Have you tried the Masking slider in the Sharpening section?  YOu can use the slider in conjunction with the Alt key.  This masking is suppose to reduce noise in open areas like skies while not effecting the more complex areas like tree branches for example.

Alan

I'm not sure that this is what the Sharpening Mask does.  As far as I know it masks out areas of low / no detail (eg open sky) and limits sharpening so as to avoid sharpening the noise in these areas.  I use the sharpening mask on nearly all my images and in my view it is a very powerful tool.  Being able to hold down the ALT key and see what you are doing is super-cool in my view.

My idea for a noise reduction mask is a bit different.  The idea is to make another slider in the noise reduction section called "Masking".  This would create an invert of the sharpening mask, in other words it would mask out all areas of high detail and allow Noise Reduction to work only on areas of low detail.  Maybe this is what the "detail" slider in noise reduction does already, but if so it would be very nice to be able so see what you were doing by holding down the ALT key.

Just an idea for LR6 or 7.  Eric?  Jeff?

[Alan Klein]

Ed,  You and Slobodan are  correct.  I just tried using it recently after seeing a video on its use.  I sharpend the whole photo first then went back and used the Masking slider to reduce the grain (scanned film) in the sky.  So it seemed to me that I was reducing noise.  By the way, is that the right procedure on its use?  Sharpen the whole first?