Pages: [1]   Go Down

Author Topic: ACR and noise reduction ?  (Read 10434 times)

Go Go

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 172
    • New York Editorial Photographer
ACR and noise reduction ?
« on: June 25, 2014, 03:33:44 pm »

Working with files from a 5DIII shot at base, 160, 320, 640, and 1250 ISO.
Do you have any suggestions for setting in the Noise Reduction sliders?
Luminance, Luminance Detail. Luminance Contrast, Color, and Color Detail?

Slobodan Blagojevic

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 18090
  • When everyone thinks the same, nobody thinks
    • My website
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #1 on: June 25, 2014, 03:42:40 pm »

You could select it in Preferences (see the attached file), but, otherwise, I rely on my own visual preference on a case-by-case basis.

Go Go

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 172
    • New York Editorial Photographer
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #2 on: June 25, 2014, 04:09:04 pm »

Thank you.
I have been seeing a lot of files that look better without any Luminance (slider zeroed).
I thought that I might ask here, about how others are using the NR sliders in ACR?

Denis de Gannes

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 319
Logged
Equip: iMac (Ret. 5K,27"Mid 2015),macOS 10.15.6

Tim Lookingbill

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2436
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #4 on: June 25, 2014, 06:33:54 pm »

Thank you.
I have been seeing a lot of files that look better without any Luminance (slider zeroed).
I thought that I might ask here, about how others are using the NR sliders in ACR?

I'm editing ISO 800 PEF's off a 2006 Pentax 6MP DSLR viewed at 100% in LR4/CS5. The shadows are noisy as hell but I found the combinations of Luminance Detail and Contrast sliders REALLY do work hand in hand with the sharpening settings. I thought these Lum sliders didn't do anything until I took quite a bit of time seeing exactly what they do to noise viewed at 100% and can now profess I've been doing it wrong because these sliders act on the pixels so subtly that if you don't take the time on an image by image basis you'll miss how well they work.

But if your camera doesn't have that much noise shooting at high ISO maybe it's not worth the time.
Logged

Theodoros Papageorgiou

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 13
    • Arcadia Images
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #5 on: June 26, 2014, 08:51:34 am »

Good question, I too wonder how others are using Noise Reduction in ACR.

However, do you really need noise reduction for 640 or lower ISO with Canon 5DIII images?

For 1000 and higher ISO I've found that a Luminance setting of ~25 with Luminance detail 50 works well with portraits, the skin looks smooth.

digitaldog

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 20630
  • Andrew Rodney
    • http://www.digitaldog.net/
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #6 on: June 26, 2014, 11:28:04 am »

i used Slobodan's technique of building a group of presets per ISO as a starting point. But then I'll season to taste on hero images, always viewing at 100% (1:1).
Logged
http://www.digitaldog.net/
Author "Color Management for Photographers".

Tim Lookingbill

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2436
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #7 on: June 26, 2014, 08:22:09 pm »

I find the Contrast and Detail Luminance slider provide a sort of micro-Clarity effect to shadow detail maintaining smoothness to the dithered noise especially in skin texture in shadows.

My setting of 50 Detail would create a weird swirly texture to upper shadow detail and so I set Detail to about 25 and upped the Radius to 2 which reduced fine crispy dithered noise and punched up edge sharpness without halos.

I'ld have to assume this works on my 6MP image but I doubt those settings will work on higher rez captures. The Contrast Lum slider actually brought out the local contrast in the shadow detail just like old PV2003-2010 Clarity but with a much more narrower radius. It almost acted like a sharpening adjust.

The delay (almost 6 seconds) in the preview updating viewed at 100% when adjusting these sliders was what prevented me all this time from seeing the benefits of its use.
Logged

rovanpera

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 70
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #8 on: June 26, 2014, 08:38:17 pm »

It's always good to check visually at 100%.

Noise can show up on ISO100 or ISO200 shots from extreme corrections - big exposure moves, lifting the shadows, adding a lot of contrast etc.
Logged

Schewe

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 6229
    • http:www.schewephoto.com
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #9 on: June 26, 2014, 11:59:02 pm »

Not for nothing, but you can't talk about noise reduction only without also talking about sharpening...noise reduction and image sharpening are two side of the same coin. As you increase either, you must increase/adjust the other. I guess that's why so many people struggle when simply trying to adjust one set of numbers or the other.

Increasing high frequency sharpening means you need to adjust luminance noise reduction...generally higher unless you are starting from zero.

At some point there will be an optimal combination of both sharpening and noise reduction to get a specific image "perfected". Yes, there are generalities...but to try to arrive at specific numbers really needs to be applied based on specific cameras at specific ISO's and the types of images being adjusted...

Sorry, there are no simple and easy answers...you need to learn the controls (and what they do) and trust your eyes to see what's happening...and I often adjust sharpening and noise at 200% or 400% to see what's happening to the pixels....
Logged

Go Go

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 172
    • New York Editorial Photographer
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #10 on: June 30, 2014, 08:18:00 am »

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate it.

Rajan Parrikar

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3950
    • Rajan Parrikar
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #11 on: July 11, 2014, 07:13:33 pm »

On a related note, going through Martin Evening's (excellent) book "Photoshop CC for Photographers" I found his discussion of the Detail slider within the Detail panel of ACR a little wanting.  Martin E writes that "The Detail slider suppresses the halo effects in the image. It allows you to increase the Amount sharpening but without generating too noticeable halo edges in the image."  Later he cites Eric Chan as someone who uses +100 Detail on his low ISO landscape images.

My understanding was that the Detail slider activates the deconvolution algorithm but Martin E doesn't say so explicitly and I feel he has muddied the waters somewhat.

Overall, a superb treatment, one that I highly recommend.

Tim Lookingbill

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2436
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #12 on: July 11, 2014, 09:55:45 pm »

On a related note, going through Martin Evening's (excellent) book "Photoshop CC for Photographers" I found his discussion of the Detail slider within the Detail panel of ACR a little wanting.  Martin E writes that "The Detail slider suppresses the halo effects in the image. It allows you to increase the Amount sharpening but without generating too noticeable halo edges in the image."  Later he cites Eric Chan as someone who uses +100 Detail on his low ISO landscape images.

My understanding was that the Detail slider activates the deconvolution algorithm but Martin E doesn't say so explicitly and I feel he has muddied the waters somewhat.

Overall, a superb treatment, one that I highly recommend.



Are you referring to Eric's 100% Detail in the noise section or sharpening section? If you're referring to the Luminance Noise slider section, 100% Detail creates a swirly texture for my 6MP PEFs viewed at 100% and I either have to dial back that slider or increase Sharpening Radius to like say 1.5 to 2.0. I would suspect higher resolution Raw files which I'm assuming Eric applies this setting would hide or make it hard to see this swirly texture at that zoom view.

But thanks for that tidbit from Eric.
Logged

Rajan Parrikar

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 3950
    • Rajan Parrikar
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #13 on: July 11, 2014, 11:47:27 pm »

I was referring to the Detail slider in the Sharpening section.

xpatUSA

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 390
    • Blog
Re: ACR and noise reduction ?
« Reply #14 on: July 12, 2014, 08:09:55 pm »

I have been seeing a lot of files that look better without any Luminance (slider zeroed).
I thought that I might ask here, about how others are using the NR sliders in ACR?

May not apply to your camera, but ACR 5.4 applies some NR even when both sliders are zeroed.

For my Sigma cameras:

dcraw V9: none
Sigma Photo Pro 3.5: a bit
ACR 5.4: quite a lot

FWIW
Logged
best regards,

Ted
Pages: [1]   Go Up