Improvements: Noise Reduction Shadow Details, Geometry Correction & More

Loving what I'm seeing so far. Experimented with this last night and was very pleased what I could do in 10 minutes:
http://frontallobbings.blogspot.com/2012/01/lightroom-4-beta.html
Almost negated any need for HDR bracketing. I'm impressed. That said there's a few things I'd like to see still:
1. Noise Reduction shadow weighted areas. It would be nice to selectively control noise in only areas that really need it. Especially in terms of shadow recovery, only that area needs the noise reduction applied. It would be nice to have a dark/light slider to apply to that specific function.
2. Geometry Correction. This needs a serious update guys. It fixes a few things, but there's many other applications that do it way better (DxO Optics for one). It's a little too basic and could use better keystoning controls. I get better results from DxO Optics rather than use a Tilt-Shift lens.
3. The publish modules are still very antiquated and limited. No control over profile selection and still no way to update folders from previously published images. You guys need to really hire Jeffrey Friedl to do your modules. He's done amazing work with most of his plug-ins.
Good work so far with this version, looking forward to the release.

terrylam wrote:
1. Noise Reduction shadow weighted areas. It would be nice to selectively control noise in only areas that really need it. Especially in terms of shadow recovery, only that area needs the noise reduction applied. It would be nice to have a dark/light slider to apply to that specific function.
This, please!
Selective NR with brushes it great, but trying to use that to do NR in shadows is a real pain. Just a slider to weight NR to shadows would be a real boon. Ultimately it would be nice to have a full set of NR controls for shadows with a threshold slider to adjust when it kicks in.

Similar Messages

PV2010 Color Noise Reduction Robs Dark Tones

No pun intended.
I thought at first it was the raw-conversion/de-mosaicing, but its turned out to be the color noise reduction.
Here is a the latest example of a picture that looks better in PV2003 than PV2010 no matter what I do, because of loss of clarity / contrast / dark-tones resulting from the new Color Noise Reduction algorithm. Note: This loss can not be restored using clarity or contrast sliders.
This probably ought to be a feature request: A slider that controls the coarser aspects of color noise reduction (color waves or clarity/contrast) versus the most localized aspects (color specs). In this instance, just getting rid of the specs without trying to reduce the waves might leave the dark tones(?) - Something like that. In any case, there is room to improve color noise reduction so that it leaves the dark tones / contrast / clarity in certain cases like this.
(Its a 100% crop of a section of a fish under water)
PV2003:
PV2010:
The difference is striking when viewing the whole photo from afar...
PS - I just discovered that minimizing noise reduction will maintain the dark tones better - I've therefore added down-throttling of color noise reduction to my PV2003 -> PV2010 practice.
Rob

dorin_nicolaescu wrote:
Luminosity Contrast slider also helps maintain some darker tones.
Indeed it do.
And, last but maybe (or maybe not) least, one can cheat a bit at the end and add some grain, to give the illusion of greater detail / texture. So, if you really want to preserve full detail when converting high ISO shots from PV2003 to PV2010, you need to:
1. Crank up the luminance noise reduction detail slider pretty darn high (if not all the way up).
2. Crank up the luminance noise reduction contrast slider pretty darn high (if not all the way up).
3. Minimize color noise reduction amount.
4. Crank up the color noise reduction detail slider fairly darn high (not all the way up! - color artefacts - bleh).
5. Maybe add a touch of grain (pretty darn low).
(I've left out the luminance NR amount slider and sharpening because they are the more obvious ones).
I'm guessing I'm not the first person to fall into the trap of trying to recover detail lost by noise reduction by decreasing luminance noise reduction amount and increasing sharpening detail (and maybe amount too), and winding up right back where you started - too much noise. The detail/contrast sliders of the noise reduction controls really work a lot better for that, and minimizing color noise reduction is also a hot tip for you detail junkies.
I hope I'm not the last person on this forum to realize what is now seeming sort of obvious to me, whilst everyone has a good laugh...
(I had previous just left color noise reduction and detail, plus luminance NR contrast at their defaults (I discovered the importance of the lum.NR detail slider long ago...) - but not anymore. It has helped me to articulate all this - hope it helps somebody else too..........
Rob

Noise Reduction capabilities

I am just recently getting on board with Lightroom and even have a copy on pre-order. I am attempting to digest as much info as possible while waiting for delivery. My question is this (and I apologize if the topic has been covered in detail), does LR have a Noise Reduction feature? Is it considered adequate or should I be looking at a Noise Ninja or equivalent to augment LR. I have recently switched to using RAW exclusively and I shoot high ISO due to my subject matter. Looks like LR will cover 90% of my post-processing needs, can't wait to start using it.....thanks for any insight into Noise removal...and almost forgot, if a third party Noise tool is recommended, does LR support a plug-in type approach or should I obtain a stand-alone version..... Many thanks.

This thread could go on for ever.
Although it is generally agreed that the noise slider almost may as well not be there and the sharpening is poor, let's remember this is a metadata editor and there are plenty of pixel editors including adobe PS and Elements + plugins that do these jobs. If it was a choice to wait another 6 months for these tools to be developed further or have ver 1 NOW - I'ld vote for NOW everytime.
Comparing the scolls / decoration and NR/sharpening as alternative development tasks is spurious, the decorations could be a high school basic computing exercise, not so decent noise reduction.
As this is a metadata editor we have to remember that what is saved is settings. If we use this product for noise reduction now, do we have any guarantee that with future versions with improved noise reduction, what we see on the screen now will be the same when opened in two years time with Ver 3.1. I'ld rather have LR as it is now, and let them take their time and get Detail functions right before I rely on LR to do these. I want to get on with organising my images with LR, I can live with exporting into a .tif for fine tuning in the meantime.
I also want to be able to apply noise reduction selectively to areas of an image, but how much can we expect from a metadata editor?
If I was as angry about features of a motorcar as some of the contributors here seem to be about LR, then it's easy, I'ld go and look for another make of car. I wonder how many other people like me bought RSP at the introductory price of $50USD and now for that $50 are in line for a free copy of ver 1.0 - sounds pretty good to me even if it did nothing except organise my images! The results I'm getting in develop I love (except noise) so I'm really pretty happy. If I had to pay full price for V1.0 AND wasn't happy then I'ld simply put my credit card away until version 2.0 is released.
Andrew Bell

Very neat algorithm for noise reduction for high ISO

I thought of this algorithm for the suppression of parasitic points occurring at high ISO
ISO 6400
before
http://i053.radikal.ru/1009/26/ba1c56f4837b.jpg
after
http://s56.radikal.ru/i153/1009/73/ffcdcd185821.jpg
Operation for photoshop, but for the Russian version and the English version must rename the layers ...
http://rapidshare.com/files/417172652/Noise15.atn
P.S.
Maybe it will help you to further improve noise reduction algorithms

Hi travojed !
Thank you for your message
I came to the conclusion that the high level "Median" (or "Dust&Scratches") destroys parts in this algorithm.
And it seemed to me that the best result (when the contours remain sharp) will be if, instead of a "median" using the Topaz Denoize (Raw-moderate), because Topaz protects the sharp contours in this algorithm.
Example (at full resolution - copy the address into a separate window)
(RAW 6400)
before
http://s57.radikal.ru/i157/1009/73/ec1fbac57a83.jpg
after
http://s43.radikal.ru/i101/1009/fd/c30219adfc74.jpg
P.S.
I do not recommend using a constant value "Threshold" because at different values of the ISO get different noises
travojed If you give me your example of a noisy image, I can see how best to remove the noise

How do I permanently disable Detail (sharpening / noise reduction)?

I did this a while ago with the LR3 beta, but I forgot how I did it.
Anyway, I want to disable Detail (sharpening and noise reduction) in the right hand panel forever, so that when I import new pictures, it's disabled by default when I start developing them (so I don't have to disable it manually for each picture, which is very annoying). The reason is, I handle sharpening & n.r. as a separate step outside of LR (export as TIFF and then n.r. and sharpen).
Any hints please? I know it's simple, I just can't remember it.
Thanks.

first select an image, then drag the Sharpening Amount and Noise slider to zero, next choose Set Default Settings from the Develop menu. When dialog opens hit the Update to Current Settings button. If you have photos from more than one camera model you'll need to repeat process for each camera. The following tutorial should might also be worth reading http://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_camera/lr2-camera-defaults.htm

Is noise reduction due for improvement

probably get a "who knows?" but I am thinking of getting Izotope's RX2 which is quite a bit better/easier to use than Audition's noise reduction system. However if there were improvements in the wings for Audition I'd hold off til the upgrade and check that out. Any news?
Greg

Simple answer is 'I don't know'. But you should bear in mind the following - which is that the advanced version of RX2 is three times the cost of Audition, and I'd say was worth it; some serious effort has gone into it and it works stunningly well. With the best will in the world, Audition's noise reduction simply isn't in that league, and it's unlikely ever to be, I'd say.
But with care, you can get exceedingly good results from Audition's NR - although you have to put quite a bit of effort, and multiple passes to do it. With RX2, you can get better results in one go - but I'd say that you really need the (expensive) Advanced version to do so. One thing that RX2 definitely does better is to deal with threshold results in a more sophisticated manner - which means that you get less issues with reverb tails, for instance.

In the develop noise reduction/correction is missing

in the develop noise reduction/correction module is completely missing

I suggested the same thing 2 hours before and got “it’s not there” a couple times:
http://forums.adobe.com/message/5960745#5960745
sereshka60, if what we’re telling you isn’t matching what you’re trying to describe, please upload a screenshot of your Develop area where the NR pane should be, so we can understand what you’re seeing.

Noise reduction only on shadows

Would be great if we had noise reduction adjustable only on shadows in camera raw & LR ?

Yes. But it would be better if we had an easy way to select only shadows, so we could then apply any changes to them (noise reduction, color, tone, ... ).
Ditto for highlights, and all the dark blue stuff, and all the ... stuff.
Nik software supports this via U-points, and I hope Adobe invents a similiar auto-masking technology that blows U-points out of the water .
Cheers,
Rob

Poor quality noise reduction for Canon G10

I recently bought a Canon G10, and I am disappointed at the quality of RAW conversions done by ACR/LR at anything approaching a high ISO. The out-of-camera JPEGs show much superior noise reduction to what I can get from RAW files, no matter how I tweak the noise reduction settings.
At ISO 80-100 both look essentially identical.
At ISO200 JPEGs show less and tighter grain than I can manage with RAW (unless I nuke the details with luminance reduction), but both are still very good.
At ISO400 ACR/LR's RAW conversion starts to fall apart. Chroma NR in RAW is still handled well, the grain size in RAW is much larger than the camera's JPEGs. I need to apply a lot of luminance NR to reduce the RAW grain to match the JPEGs, and when I do that I lose a lot of detail. And even then, the larger grain isn't as attractive as the JPEG.
At ISO800 this problem is even worse. Big ugly blobs abound in the RAW conversion. The JPEGs don't look great, but they're very usable, especially if you're willing to dip the shadows a bit to hide the worst of the noise.
ISO1600 is interesting. The JPEGs don't look great; there's a healthy amount of noise, and NR kills a lot of fine details. But the image is usable for 4x6's or sometimes even an 8x10. But the RAW files are awful! Even cranking chroma NR to 100, there's color noise to be seen. And even with very careful use of luminance NR and sharpening I can't results that are anywhere close to JPEG's level of detail and noise.
I understand that P&S cameras like the G10 are very noisy by DSLR standards and so this might not be a focal point of ACR/LR development, but I'm surprised and disappointed that the JPEG engine in the G10 can do a better job handling noise than ACR/LR. I guess my hope is that ACR/LR will at some point offer improved NR so I can create photos using RAW that look as good as JPEGs straight out of the camera. As it is right now I'm in the unfortunate position of shooting JPEG at high ISO to get usable noise performance. My dilemma is whether to even bother shooting RAW+JPEG when this IQ might be the best I ever get from ACR/LR for the G10.
I suppose my favored solution would be to either implement or license NR technology that matches NeatImage/NoiseNinja/NoiseWare. That feature alone would be worthy of justifying a 3.0 version for me. :)

Jeff, I won't debate that the output from the G10 at ISO800+ is poor. It most certainly is! And I know that simply eliminating the scads of noise in a G10 high ISO shot won't restore the detail the noise killed in the first place. But with every other camera I've used with ACR and LR, the color noise slider eliminates all color noise at or before the "100" setting. So I was surprised when that wasn't possible with the G10.
I don't currently own a camera that puts out an image quite as noisy as the G10 at ISO1600, but what about the A900 at ISO6400?
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/AA900/AA900hLL6407XNR.HTM
Or the 50D at ISO12800?
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E50D/E50DLL12807XNR.HTM
Both of those are horrifically noisy. Worse than the G10 at ISO1600, I'd say. But those cameras certainly aren't crap. They just offer ISO settings higher than some consider acceptable. But then again, some people consider anything higher than ISO200 on a 5D unacceptable, so it's obviously all relative. Point being, I would expect ACR to do the best job it could for any camera it supports, not just the best job it can do for only some of the cameras it supports.
In any case, I want ACR to be able to remove the color noise from my G10's images, just like it can with my other cameras. I know the images are sub-standard when measured against a DSLR, but at least to my eyes, even very noisy images can look decent in small prints so long as there aren't big color blobs all over the place.
As for the luminance noise, I'm happier to live with that. I'd be happy to eventually pay for a LR upgrade that gives me NR similar to what the high-end third-party apps do, because that feature would make each of my cameras geniunely more useful--and retroactively! But a simpler request it seems is to recalibrate what "100" means for the G10. At least then I could dispense with the JPEGs and still make an 8x10.

Microfon problems s400 with noise reduction

Hello people,
have a problem with the microfon sound.
This recording is either noisy (without HD driver and with HD drivers without noise reduction) or it is distorted (with HD drivers and noise reduction).
Drivers I've tried from the Lenovo page and also from Realtek already.
here are a few tests
Noise: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1182020/test% 20HD% 20with% 20the%% 20treiber 20nachhallred.wma
distortion: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1182020/test% 20with% 20HD% 20treiber% 20with% 20rauschunterdr% C3% BCckung.wma
in the device manager for microphone stands for the version: 6.2.9200.16384 Microsoft.
Use Windows 8 Pro which I installed by myself.
Would be grateful for suggestions, I can not skype otherwise.
greeting

Dark areas have less bits to encode their values so a single bit of noise is a higher proportion of the total value.
For the basis of the default processing, to match the human eye’s response to dark and light, darker areas are brightened more than bright areas, using a non-linear gamma curve. This magnifies the noise in darker areas.
If you boost the brightness of dark areas using Shadows or Clarity, you are making that noise even more visible. Think of brightening as digitally increasing the ISO.
Adobe’s noise-reduction is calibrated to the original photo’s ISO setting, not how much you have digitally increased the ISO by brightening it, so if you have magnified the noise by extreme processing, you may be beyond what maxing out the NR sliders are calibrated to remove.
Exporting sharpening will sharpen any remaining noise.
Are you using the Mask slider in sharpen to keep from sharpening the noise grain in the Detail section? Use the Alt key while moving the mask slider to determine the optimal Mask level for a particular photo, where you can’t to have the edges indicated but not the wide areas of little detail.
It’s hard to guess what you’re seeing without seeing a screenshot.

Adjustment brush with exposure setting cancels noise reduction

Hello,
I just noticed the following problem:
1) Camera Raw 6.5; Bridge CS5 (4.0.5.11); Mac OS X 10.6.8; Mac Pro 3,1; Dual Quad-Core Xeon; 8GB RAM.
2) Start with a noisy raw file (mine is from a Canon 5D II).
3) Apply Noise Reduction (Luminance:30; Lum Detail:75; Lum Contrast:0; Color:25; Color Detail:50).
4) Go to Adjustment Brush and set a non-zero Exposure value.
5) Apply brush to image and notice the Noise Reduction effects disappear (noise returns).
6) Click Clear All button to clear Adjustment Brush and Noise Reduction works again.
This seems to only happen with Adjustment Brushes with a non-zero Exposure value (applying brightness or other settings don't seem to produce the problem).
Anyone else seeing this?
Thanks!

Richard (and others),
Yes, very good idea to check that. The problem does indeed get applied to the full sized, opened image as well as to the display previews. After working with this more, I now notice that I was wrong to say that the entire noise reduction is cancelled - rather it "changes", sometimes subtly, sometimes more dramatically depending on what the noise reduction settings are set to. Further, how dramatic the "changes" appear depend greatly on the preview zoom (the changes are more subtle at 100%, but it can look like the noise reduction is completely turned off at 50% and 66%).
Now I realize that the noise reduction does not ordinarily display at all preview sizes (especially smaller ones), but this is different. At preview sizes where it does normally get applied, applying an adjustment brush with any non-zero exposure value (even just +0.05) can have the appearance that the NR is completely turned off for the whole image. Simply nudging the exposure value back to zero brings all the noise reduction back.
Also, to be clearer and avoid confusion for others, the change in noise I'm seeing is not localized to just the brushed spot. Obviously if one increases exposure, you'd expect to potentially see more noise. Instead, what I'm seeing happens to the entire image, even if I simply paint a single small brush dot, say in a far corner. Having the image change globally in response to painting a small spot with the adjustment brush cannot be a correct result. Further, this does not happen with any of the other adjustment brush settings like brightness, contrast or saturation. There must be something unique about the exposure setting that perhaps introduces a new step into the processing pipeline, and this step is affecting the entire image.
In any case, the problem only seems to be an issue in somewhat extreme cases and is less noticeable at 100% (and the finally opened image). It's more just annoying when previews are generated for viewing in Bridge, for example.
I suppose one alternative might be to rob a bank and go buy one of those new 1D X's. Then maybe I wouldn't have to worry about noise anymore.
Thanks for the responses!

Noise reduction - RAW fine tuning and the Noise Reduction tool

Hi,
1- If I get it right, Aperture's RAW fine tuning "Automatic noise compensation" (translated from French) option uses the camera's information to adjust the noise. Is that correct?
2- The Noise Reduction tool is there to provide additional noise reduction, but this makes you lose some details. Is that correct?
3- How do you use them? I often find the Noise Reduction tool a bit overkill, but that's me.
4- This one is just out of curiosity. How does A3 compare to LR3 beta for you in that regard? In my testing, LR3 did a slightly better job (but A3 totally beats the crap out of LR2 for noise). BUT I have an old D50, and newer cameras handle noise better (especially Nikon), so does it really make a difference for a 2008 or newer camera?
Thanks!
Manu

Manusnake wrote:
pilotguy74 wrote:
I don't even have this option/checkbox in my Raw Fine Tuning brick.
I wonder if it's due to the type of files (Canon 7D). Do you still have those 7D files I sent you? Does the checkbox appear in Raw Fine Tuning for you with them?
I noticed this option in the manual the other day, but forgot about it until now.
True, it doesn't have the checkbox with the 7D files. However, it as a slider "noise suppression" (again translated) in the RAW fine tuning options (and still has the Noise suppression brick).
If you don't have this one too, have you reprocessed your images with Aperture 3? Since it has a new raw engine, it may be the cause of it.
I find it strange that Apple didn't tout the new RAW engine on Aperture 3 new feature, it clearly is an improvement over Digital Camera RAW 2, especially in noise suppression.
I agree the built-in noise suppression is much better than A2, but IMHO it pales in comparison with the Noise Ninja plugin from Picturecode. The key is that you calibrate a profile for Noise Ninja by shooting a color chart full screen on your computer at varying iso settings with each of your cameras. You then feed the images back in to Aperture, and tell Noise Ninja to create a noise profile for each setting. The results are amazingly good.
Now with a lot of new cameras, noise processing is getting less important because the high iso performance is so good....but this is what makes Noise Ninja special...even when the noise adjustment is subtle, because it is working from a profile created with your camera, at the iso the shot was made at, its effects are seamless. They just announced a 64 bit plugin for Aperture 3, so no bouncing into 32 like other plugins at the moment...
Sincerely,
K.J. Doyle

Newbie question about vinyl noise reduction

Dear folks,
I am entirely new to Audition (trying out the Mac beta), so if this question is entirely answered by other threads, please just point me in the right direction. Thanks!
I am transcribing all my vinyl albums (48KHz, 32 bit) as FLAC files and now I need to clean up the transcriptions. Both DeClicker and Noise Reduction (process) seem to do an excellent job at the default settings for each, but I am not sure of the best way to use them--
First, which order is it best to use them in; DeClicker first or Noise Reduction first?
Second, are the default settings ( threshold :30 and complexity:16 forDeClicker and 100%/40dB for Noise Reduction ) the best ones to be using in general? If not, what qualities, audible or otherwise should I be looking/listening forto help me figure out the best settings to use?
Third, any recommendations for help files or tutorials I should read on this subject?
Thanks for your help!
Ctein

Ctein wrote:
If I understand you correctly, you're recommending two passes with the Noise reduction process-- one with a large FFT followed by one with a smaller FFT sample size, right? The default for the process is a 4K sample window, with windows from 0.5K to 16K available. What values would you recommend for the two passes, and what NR percentages and dB "reduce by's" would you recommend for each pass.
Yes you understand correctly, but it's rather difficult to say how much to use in any given situation, because it depends entirely on the condition of the original recording. The basic rule is 'as little as you can to achieve an acceptable result', whatever FFT size you are using. As for sizes, the 4k is fine for the LF pass (you might want to look at adjusting the blue line to shape it so that it only attacks the bass, as well) and 16k is fine for everything else.
In some ways it's easier to talk about what is a realistic end result to achieve, than actual reduction numbers. Realistically, you should be able to get vinyl noise floors down to around minus 60-65dB, assuming that your signals get close to 0dB peaks. But with some older records, you may well not get this far before things start to sound rather 'fake' because you've over-processed the results. Often it's better to monitor the results on a pair of headphones rather than speakers - you'll hear more low-level detail, and have a better idea of how much processing you can get away with.
Yes, RX2 is pretty damn good - as good as you can get, in fact. But for vinyl, with care you can definitely get good results with Audition, but it takes more effort, especially with the NR. What actually makes RX2 good is that the multiple pass part of the processing is done for you by the software, and that's the major difference - other than that, the basic algorithms are quite similar. But, it costs an arm and a leg, so unless you have a massive amount to do, or somebody's paying you to do this, it's a dubious investment.

Where to put noise reduction into workflow (PSE5)

If you notice noise in your photos, at what point in your post-processing editing do you use the noise reduction feature of PSE5.0. In the beginning after cropping? Or, later on after color correcting or lighting corrections? Or, somewhere in the middle?
Thanks for thoughts.
Peter F.

Peter,
I agree with Jim that the order may change but as a general practice if I need to adjust color I do it after any lighting (levels or shadows/highlight) changes since they usually change the color in my pictures. Most of the time I adjust saturation selectively particularly if sky and/or water are concerned. As a final step I apply various amounts of unsharp mask. From the 3 cameras I have owned (2 Olympus and the current Panasonic) I have never found a picture that couldn't be greatly improved either overall or selectively by LIGHT application of usm.
Being basically lazy I always give Auto Smart Fix a shot as a first try and either go from there or undo it. :)
Bob

LR 2.5 / Sony A700 / Noise Reduction

i there,
I have tested LR 2.5 with Sony raw files (>= ISO 1600).
My experience is, that
- there are improvements in color noise reduction ( no more color spots)
- but another problem is still unsolved:
The Sony "Image Data Converter SR" has a much better noise handling comparing to LR (YES, i made a new import to LR).
The problem is, that in areas of "nearly the same color", i.e. in black shadows, LR is producing ugly structures, which are missing in the sony converter.
Any experiences from other A700 users?
Best regards

It would be easier to comment if you posted a screen capture and attached it to your forum message so people can comment based on what they see.
I am not famliiar with Sony's software, but Lightroom is non-destructive and so has to do all of it's processing on the fly every time you make an adjustment to the image so it will never do as good as software that takes seconds per image to reduce noise using sophisticated algorithms that only run once and then the changes are baked into the image.
Sony's software is likely tuned for the particular camera's noise-characteristics which is something LR will be, because it supports 100s of cameras and doesn't do something different from one to the next.
That said, my general complaint is that LR doesn't allow enough sharpening or noise-reductoin...the sliders need to be allowed to go much higher for particular situations.
I have Photoshop and use NoiseNinja or NoiseWare plug-ins as a post-processing step if NR is really important, but tend to get ok results with most things wtihout resorting to Photoshop.

Improvements: Noise Reduction Shadow Details, Geometry Correction & More

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