Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Printing: Printers, Papers and Inks => Topic started by: huguito on December 26, 2013, 02:52:00 pm

Title: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: huguito on December 26, 2013, 02:52:00 pm
Hello
What are you guys using for noise and sharpening?

Photoshop?  Camera raw?  A specific plug-in?

I don't want to spend a lot of money if a good quality result can be had using Camera Raw and Photoshop.

Hugo

Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: ErikKaffehr on December 26, 2013, 03:04:03 pm
Hi,

I do all my noise reduction sharpening with Lightroom. Sometimes I need to sharpen extra or use masks, than I use Smart Sharpen in PS, or Focus Magic.

Best regards
Erik
Hello
What are you guys using for noise and sharpening?

Photoshop?  Camera raw?  A specific plug-in?

I don't want to spend a lot of money if a good quality result can be had using Camera Raw and Photoshop.

Hugo


Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: dgberg on December 26, 2013, 05:08:09 pm
Lightroom 5
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: bill t. on December 26, 2013, 07:55:06 pm
The new noise reduction in PS CC's Smart Sharpen dialogue has some heuristics that make it suited to cleaning up "pushed" skies in landscapes with little effect on more detailed parts of the image.  I sometimes use Imageonics "Noiseware" plug in for Photoshop and find it does a fine job, although its many controls require some familiarity and study.  Mostly, I try to arrive at the stitching stage of my panoramas with the images cleaned up as much as possible in Lightroom, which has the best noise reduction of any raw converter I have used, and which can also be used to process flattened Photoshop files.

Topaz "InFocus" can add relatively subtle sharpening with less haloing than Smart Sharpen.  But there are limits.  "Blur Radius" should be kept under 0.90 if you want to avoid strange artifacts.  Its "Sharpness" and "Sharpness Radius" controls can be taken pretty far with very little halo.

Topaz "Detail3" doesn't actually sharpen, but emphasizes the image in a way that usually creates a sense of, uh, plenty of detail.  Use sparingly, it easily goes over the top.  Very effective at pepping up clouds and similar amorphous objects, but keep them on their own masked layer.
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: Justan on December 26, 2013, 11:09:01 pm
I started using the PS high pass procedure for sharpening a few years ago, with some variations.

For noise reduction I mostly use the lowest ISO the camera will permit and a tripod. For some older works I used Nik Dfine and have also used a few types of PS blur filters - with marginal results.
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: bill t. on December 27, 2013, 12:18:49 am
The "Progressive" sharpening available in Resize 7.5 seems to be a variation on the high pass technique and is very effective for that type of upsizing provided the original was acceptably sharp to start with.  Keep the slider way over to the left, works best when subtle.  That's the thing...sharpening works best for images that need it the least.
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: 149113 on December 27, 2013, 05:35:23 am
I am partial to Noise Ninja and Photoshop's internal sharpening
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: Ernst Dinkla on December 27, 2013, 07:15:49 am
NeatImage for film scans. Any raw developers noise reductor for RAWs.

--
Met vriendelijke groet, Ernst

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July 2013, 500+ inkjet media white spectral plots.
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: Paul2660 on December 27, 2013, 09:48:50 am
For sharpening with raw files, I will start with sharpening in either Capture One or Lightroom, after conversion I often tweak with Focus Magic, and or Photokit creative sharpening.

Noise reduction I will use the noise reduction in both Capture One and Lightroom (Lightroom offers the ability to use localized noise reduction with the adjustment brush which can be very helpful at times) Capture One still does not offer noise reduction in an adjustment layer.    At times I will still use Neat image to tweak mainly skies that have picked up a bit too much noise.

Paul Caldwell
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: PeterAit on December 27, 2013, 09:56:50 am
I am using Lightroom more and more for these tasks, but for the images I decide to process in Photoshop I use Noise Ninja and PK Sharpener.
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: Mark Lindquist on December 27, 2013, 11:00:59 am
Imagenomic Noiseware  and Intellisharpen III
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: huguito on December 28, 2013, 03:41:21 am
Thanks very much for the info.
Any links to a video or a detailed explanation of the High Pass sharpening?
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: Justan on December 28, 2013, 01:01:27 pm
Google PS high pass and you’ll find a lot of examples.

In short:

Select the area you want to sharpen and then put it on a new layer.

For the newly created layer select Filter>Other>High pass.

Select the radius size that works for the image. Generally this is between 1 and 7 or so. Less is more so don’t overdo it.

Select OK

For the newly created layer, select hard light or linear light and then select the opacity % that works. Generally this is between about 30% to about 70% but can be more or less depending on the results you're after.

The results are infinitely variable based on the steps noted above. Enjoy!
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: Some Guy on December 28, 2013, 01:51:49 pm
DxO Optics 9 "Prime" has a new noise engine. http://www.dxo.com/intl/news/dxo-optics-pro-9-introduces-revolutionary-prime-denoising-technology-and-pushes-limits-high-iso (http://www.dxo.com/intl/news/dxo-optics-pro-9-introduces-revolutionary-prime-denoising-technology-and-pushes-limits-high-iso)  Takes its time do do the fix though (Minutes maybe.) with large image files.  From that, I use Qimage as it's sharpening engine beats anything Adobe is currently using for printing, imho.

DxO Optics Pro 8 or 9 doesn't play nice - or at all - with some Epson printers though.  Bug has been around for years now.  Does work with Canons.

SG
Title: Re: What's your favorite tool for noise and sharpening?
Post by: huguito on December 28, 2013, 04:30:10 pm
Thanks Justan
I will try it later, seems easy enough. Probably I can add a mask to the layer and paint the sharpening selectively.