In-camera noise reduction

This question is directed to the technically knowledgeable out there and has to do with in-camera noise reduction settings. Although I'm shooting with a 1D4, I would guess the same would apply to all models. In a nutshell, is in-camera noise reduction (assuming it's enabled) applied to RAW files or just to JPEGs? If it's applied to RAW files (which is all I shoot), have any of you shot RAW with noise reduction disabled, and if so, how were the results? I tried to do a search here on this topic but was unable to find any information. Thanks.

hsbn wrote:
No, with all due respects, it is Long Exposure NR. Why would it make it worst with High ISO if it is "High ISO Noise Reduction".
6D Manual page: 128 - 129
5D Mark III manual page 144-145
"Images taken at ISO 1600 or higher may look grainier with the [Enable] setting than with the [Disable] and [Auto] setting"
With Auto setting, camera will not do LENR if the ISO is higher than 1600.
I've tested this and it's give many kind of artifact with high ISO from time to time. Others it just gives more noise.
Hi,
- Great to know, thanks! It's very surprising indeed.
LENR is supposed to remove hot pixels and noise due to long exposure. It's (sadly) surprising the in-cameras LENR may be worse than in post...
We'll take a review about it , since shooting long exposure at higher than ISO 1600 is not uncommon for astro photography.
I think 5D Mark 2 didn't have this "problem". Will check that too.
- The manual tells that in-camera High ISO NR applied is lower at high ISO than the NR that can be applied in post, not "worse", sorry, my mistake.
Thanks once again.
EDIT: The User manual of 5D Mark 2 doesn't tell anything about this matter. The manual of 7D does, as well as 6D and 5D3 as you mentioned.
Since I used to work with 5D2 I didn't realize the 5D3 could be different. Or at least the manual of 5D2 doesn't say the final result of LENR at 1600 or higher could be worse. Good thing to keep in mind.
Sitll doesn't understand why the result "may" be worse, the 5D3 has enormous computing potential with the Digic 5+
This seems to only affect if LENR is set to "ON" / "Enabled", not to "Auto". Very likely a more agressive NR is applied in such case.
We'll carry some test indeed.
EDIT 2:
In just brief tests with the 5D Mark 3 we found some inconsistency on the results between setting Long Exposure NR to "OFF", "Auto" & "On".
We set High ISO NR, Peripheral Illumination Correction and Chromatic Aberrations to OFF, to see only the effect of LENR in JPG (not RAW yet).
This camera (5D3) applies High ISO NR even when you set it to OFF (very noticeable in video mode).
At ISO 6400 we didn't see a hot /stuck pixel (even when LENR set to "OFF") that appears at ISO 3200 when setting LENR to OFF or Auto. Of course "ON" deletes all hot /stuck pixels, but also increaed grain.
We all already know that the more the sensor heats up (shooting and shooting long exposure stills - or using Live View for stills or video), the more noise we'll get in the pictures (and video).
So far we couldn't get a "rule". Sometimes the "Auto" works better than "ON", it seems it depends on the selected ISO value and how hot is the sensor too.
I pesonally don't understand WHY the LENR delivers more grainy images when set to "ON", if the NR is more agressive the grain should be finer than in "OFF" or "Auto", so it doesn't make sense...
We'll test the 5D Mark 2 to compare with 5D3 in this regard
HD Cam Team
Group of photographers and filmmakers using Canon cameras for serious purposes.
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Camera noise reduction

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It seems apple's new noise reduction is a little too strong for my liking.
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Hi I've just got a new iPhone 6, and i love it. However, I've noticed that what i see in the live view before i snap a photo, and after i snap, is totally different.
It seems apple's new noise reduction is a little too strong for my liking.
reuslting in a huge loss in depth and color and details.
On my iPhone 5, i used to be able to take really close up photos of my shrimps, and they looked fantastic. extremely detailed for a phone camera.
I expected this to be better on the iPhone 6 because of the new lens system and overall camera and phone processing power.
unfortunately, this is not the case.
The videos are better because the phone doesn't seem to apply any Noise Reduction filters after it is recorded.
can apple have a function to switch off noise reduction entirely? I would love to be able to choose.
also, please allow manual control of the camera settings! like VSCOcam and such. thank you!

Is Lightroom really better for noise reduction than Adobe Camera Raw?

That's what I keep hearing from Lightroom users (who don't use Photoshop or barely touch it).
Which is better? or are they exactly the same? I'm not referring to a specific version, but I am personally using the latest Cloud versions of everything. I haven't tested it visually, I'm just now getting familiar with Lightroom.

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In-camera high ISO noise reduction & ACR

I've been involved in a discussion over on DPReview where someone believes that, when shooting with a Nikon dSLR (in this case a D7000, but the model isn't really important) high ISO NR is automatically applied in-camera directly to the raw file, and this will be carried over to any raw conversion software, including third-party software such as ACR/LR.
Now I do agree that even with NR switched off, Nikon do automatically apply some limited NR to high ISO images in-camera, but I'm pretty much 100% certain that this is not something that ACR would interpret, and so it would not actually have any effect on the appearance of the raw file when it's processed. In fact, if the high ISO NR is somehow embedded into the raw file, that would go against my whole concept of how a raw file works in a convertor such as ACR! Surely any "default" high ISO NR is just added to the proprietry part of the EXIF, and is therefore only factored in when using Nikon conversion software (ViewNX, etc)? Otherwise, the file could not truly be considered to be 'raw'.
I think I'm right, but wanted confirmation from some of the experts on here! And of course, I'm also quite happy to be proven wrong!
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Noel Carboni wrote:
By the way, the reference I found for D7000 shows that the High ISO NR can be disabled. See this page: http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/D7000/D7000A7.HTM
What camera do YOU have, Molly?
-Noel
Hi Noel,
Wow, I'm impressed with your efforts here! Your point about blurring being a potential sign of whether or not NR has been applied to the high ISO raw files is a good one, and I agree that, based on that thinking, the examples you've found don't really seem to show much evidence of that, particularly the shots of the focus/resolution target.
I do have a D7000; I replied as such back in post three ("yes I do" in response to your question "do you have such a camera?"), but I can see how that may not have been as clear as it should have been! I'm going to try some test shots myself to see if I can pick out any evidence of softening/blurring that may indicate NR being applied during the processing of the raw data. However, unfortunately my PC is currently being fixed as I've been having some hardware issues, so that testing won't be happening until I get it back (hoping within a week, missing it already).
Regarding your reference that indicates that high ISO NR can be switched off, yes it can, but apparently only up to a point - here's what it states in the Nikon manual (and what has in turn sparked off this discussion over on DPR):
"High ISO NR - option: off - Noise reduction is only performed at ISO sensitivities of ISO 1600 and higher. The amount of noise reduction is less than the amount performed when low is selected for High ISO NR" (as the article indicates, there are three options apart from off: high, normal, and low).
As I've said previously, my understanding was that all of that had zero bearing on the raw file once it was loaded into ACR: regardless of any NR settings applied in-camera, either by the user or by Nikon bypassing the user, they were all thrown away by the Adobe raw processing algorithms, as are things like picture controls, sharpening, contrast, etc. But following my recent discussion, I started to wonder if my understanding of the raw capture process was incorrect, hence this thread.
Thanks again for your work here. Above and beyond the call of duty!
M

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Matt Howell wrote:
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Sent from phone.

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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

Why is Noise Reduction only available with some raw files

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Another way is to just go into the Camera Calibration tab and select the 2010 process.
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Since I like flashless photography, and I generally carry with me small-sensor compacts when I travel, I'm frequently confronted with the problem of digital noise. I've always wondered how the third-party noise reduction applications perform in comparison with the Photoshop Noise Filters. I hope someone in this Forum has been able to acquire direct experience on this topic and will be kind enough to share this experience with us.
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Conrad,
ACR 4.3 has better NR (noise reduction) than previous versions and can handle NR in most normal situations. However, available light photography with a small pixel sensor may require more NR and the specialized plugins such as Noise Ninja, NeatImage, and NoiseWare Pro can do a better job. I have all three and they do an excellent job, but I currently use NoiseWare most of the time.
Here is a demonstration of NoiseWare vs ACR NR, using 100% crops of an image taken with the Nikon D200, 1/320 sec at f/2.8. The image is reasonably sharp at normal viewing conditions, but has quite a lot of luminance noise. It was rendered with ACR and the settings were exposure +0.85, brightness +60. One thing you learn early in this type of shooting is to expose to the right to reduce noise, but this may conflict with stopping action and reducing camera shake. More exposure would have helped this image, and one should try to avoid exposures requiring this amount of positive exposure adjustment.
The results are shown below, followed by some discussion. Other comments are welcome. Color noise is not prominent in this image and I left color NR at its default.
ACR, No sharpening, no NR
ACR, Luminance NR 53, no sharpening
ACR, No NR, No sharpening, NoiseWare default, no sharpening
Noise reduction and sharpening are antagonistic processes. It is important that NR is applied before sharpening--you don't want to sharpen noise. Following NR there is an inevitable loss of detail, and some sharpening is necessary to restore the detail, but this also brings back the noise. One can use masks and blend if sliders in Photoshop in both NR and sharpening to mitigate some of these effects, and Bruce Fraser discusses the details in his excellent book on sharpening.
If you use an add on such as NoiseWare, you should turn off luminance sharpening in ACR. In doing so, you lose all those nifty sharpening features that have recently been added to ACR. I leave color NR at the default. It has a minimal effect on detail.
In adjusting the NR in ACR at 100% viewing, I estimated that a luminance setting of +53 was optimal. Beyond that, blotchy artifacts appear in the image.
For NoiseWarePro, I used the default settings with no sharpening. The NR effect is dramatic, but detail is lost and some sharpening is needed. This could be applied in NoiseWare or in Photoshop, perhaps with a plugin such as PhotoKit Sharpener. Personally, I have found that PK does not work well with this type of image because it bring back noise and produces artifacts.
In all of these examples, sharpening is needed following the NR. One could try to use surface masks to keep sharpening in Photoshop with the unsharp mask away from the edges. However, I find it is difficult to get a good surface mask, and I don't take the trouble.
For now, I use the sharpening built into NoiseWare. I don't know how it works internally, but it does have a slider for detail protection, and you can play with this to get the best result. It would be best to have the robust NR of the add ons built into ACR much like NoiseNinja is built into Bibble Pro. However, this is an ACR forum and I would expect that ACR is the preferred raw converter of those who frequent this forum.
After expending this much effort on the post, I hope to get some helpful feedback.

Upscaling and noise reduction in ACR

I've been thinking about upscaling images and the best time to do so (if I need to of course) in my workflow. As I understand it, it's always best to carry out any noise reduction prior to upsampling an image, as this helps avoid increasing the size of any noise that may be apparent in the image.
However, I'm thinking that in ACR, this in theory would not be neccessary as ACR would carry out any noise reduction and upsampling in a pre-defined processing order. So put simply, I could increase the image size and then carry out any NR as required after upscaling. This would allow me to tailor the NR to fit the increased image dimensions (and of course I could then carry out capture sharpening for the larger image as well).
Is my thinking correct here - does it not really matter in terms of image quality if I don't do any NR before changing the image dimensions in ACR?
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I did a lot of experimentation with upsampling during conversion.
I found that - in my opinion - upsampling during Camera Raw operation yields superior results to doing it later. I also believe that dialing in some noise reduction during Camera Raw is needed, as even low ISO images get pretty grainy otherwise.
Every camera is different, but what I ended up saving for defaults is this, keeping in mind that I do my conversions to the largest possible image size, then downsample later for specific uses.
Only you know what your goals are and what you like in your images, so I encourage you to experiment as I did with different combinations of settings to try to find the right balance.
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Noise reduction did nothing - no instructions for the process

I entered noise reducer in the help menu and "what's new in imovie comes up" - I am looking for info on the process to apply noise reduction and nothing applied even two layers down in what came up in "what's new in imovie".
I have bought the book iMovie HD 6 & iDVD 6 and it does not give direction on how to apply. It does say page on 157, "this effect minimizes white noise, crowd noise, and hum - but nothing else - no directions on how to apply!
My audio clip is selected in the time line and if it is as simple as selecting the apply button in audiofx, then select noise reduction, then select apply - IT DID NOTHING.
Is this how it works for application and out come?
Can anyone help,
jim

No, but the Help menu in iMovie does:
To add an audio effect:
Click the Timeline Viewer button (shown above).
Select the audio clip or clips you want to add an effect to.
Tip: To learn how to select multiple clips, see "Selecting clips" below.
Click the Editing button, and then click Audio FX at the top of the Editing pane.
Select the audio effect you want from the effects list.
Adjust the settings for the effect.
Different controls appear depending on the effect you select. For example, if you select Reverb, you can adjust the intensity of the reverberation by choosing a reverb style and dragging the Less/More slider.
Click Preview to hear the effect.
To stop previewing the effect, click Preview again.
If necessary, repeat any of the above steps until you have the effect the way you want it.
To add the effect to your selected clips, click Apply.
When you add an audio effect to a video clip, iMovie automatically extracts the audio from the clip. The extracted audio with the applied effect appears as a separate clip in one of the audio tracks in the timeline viewer. If you want to add multiple audio effects to the same portion of video, be sure to select the extracted audio clip to add the additional effects to.

In-camera noise reduction

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