Noise Reduction Mask

There is no masking tool for noise reduction like there is for sharpening (only the other way round, so it masks out sharper transition) either in Lightroom 3 or Lightroom 4. I cannot hazard a guess why not and wonder whether such a thing could be included in the final version?

+1!
The inverse of the Sharpening Mask! Hold down ALT while adjusting the Luminance and Color sliders to view in real time. Would be awesome.
In the interim I've found the following workflow helpful when applying global NR...
1) Get rid of color noise first - easily done, get it out of the way for when you evaluate detail
2) Crank Luminance NR, crank NR Detail, zero out NR Contrast
3) View at 3:1, nice and tight, find a section that has smooth and detailed areas
4) Move the Detail slider back and forth and pay attention to the blur on the fine detail. Too high and you'll get the detail back but noise as well. Too low and will be blurred into obscurity. Look for the best balance
5) Do the same thing with NR Contrast. Up and down and watch for changes. Frankly this control is so subtle I find it insignificant. Probably aren't looking for right things.
6) Settled on those zero out the Luminance NR and start to raise until you are satisfied with the overall noise levels, knowing that your detail will be protected from above. Work your sharpening to compensate for any softening (and use the mask so noise in flatter areas isn't exaggerated).
Now we can add the local NR brush to fine tune further and add or reduce that global application selectively.

Similar Messages

Noise reduction, Clarity and Masking Vs Sharpness

Maybe I have been using too much noise reduction and clarity for bird photos. Some people on dpReview recommend no noise reduction and now I am inclined to believe them. Recently I tried using little to no noise reduction, little to no Clarity, lots of sharpening and about 40% masking.This gives the bird good feather detail and anything with less detail has little noise and better bokeh. In low detail areas it looks to me like masking reduces the noise caused by Sharpening but it has less affect on the noise increased by Clarity. Is this true? If it is, in bird photography is Clarity best used sparingly and selectively like on there heads?
Another reason for asking all this is I once read that even a little masking degrades sharpness but now I doubt that. Maybe LR has improved that through the years.
Thanks,
Doug

Indeed luminance noise reduction (and to some extent color noise reduction) has a tendency to wipe out fine feather detail.
I recommend:
* lowered noise reduction, and if you do use it, crank the nr.detail slider way up - this will help maintain fine feather detail and is superior to sharpening detail for maintaining feather detail otherwise lost due to noise reduction.
* lowered sharpening detail, to keep noise down, and reduce the "need" for noise reduction.
* and sharpen masking to taste..
Also note: local sharpening at exactly -50 masks all global sharpening, and so can be used in conjunction with noise reduction to smooth the bokeh areas.
And of course you can add sharpening and/or clarity locally too.
I realize I didn't answer your exact question perfectly as asked, but I'm not sure what else to say, so..
Have fun,
Rob

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.

How do PS CS3 Noise Reduction Filters compare with dedicated third-party plug-ins?

Am I missing something by not installing a dedicated Noise Reduction application into my PS CS3? Can Neat Image, Noise Ninja, Noiseware Pro, etc. do something that the PS CS3 Noise Filters can't do? Do these third-party aplications do it better?
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.
Kindest Regards,
Conrad

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.

RAW conversion bug with Noise Reduction

Hello,
I have found a serious bug in the RAW conversion when noise reduction is applied. When converting from two types of Canon RAW files (a CRW from a Powershot G6 and a CR2 from a 20d) I found that if you apply Noise Reduction to a RAW file on very low settings (the default setting in the NR function will produce this reliably) single-pixel lines appear at regular intervals throughout the image. Here is an example:
You can see several lines in this image:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/140/3821480263171e76604b.jpg
A 100% detail of which is here:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/179/382148021af6586d27eo.jpg
Has anyone else had this problem? Can someone from the Aperture dev team fix this?
-Steve G

Well I find this filter is quite good in 'masking' block artifact that codec like xvid, or other low compression codec have. I only apply it if I find the block artifact is too much and I find this filter is less offending to my eyes than the block artifact.
In manual it said that if you have noisy video and want to lower the size then you can use this filter. It also blur the video a bit. But I suspect it is more than blur as I try gaussian blur in time line and the result is not as good. You can see the result as well. There is the tab between source and target and you can compare the result by togling between source and target tab.
BTW, anyone with 1 core, dual, or quad core, can you tried to encode with it? Just cancel it after few minutes as I want to see what is your processor utilization with this filter on. Also you can see how long does it take to process this video from the 'estimation time left'.

Local noise reduction too weak

I often need to add a touch of additional noise reduction to some image areas such as the sky and use to apply the adjustment brush (can't say how much Lightroom lacks a layers feature). In some cases, even increasing the noise lever to 100% will still not give me enough noise reduction. I currently don't know any other way to get what I want than to escape to Photoshop with its masks, layers and filters. I'd prefer to stay in Lightroom for noise reduction, is there something I could try or would the developers need to make the effect of the slider stronger?
Andreas

Andreas: the solution is simple, even if it isn't intuitive. Just click on the "new" button next to the adjustment brush to start a new adjustment in a new location. Now start painting in another location in the sky. (Don't get to close to the original pin you started with your you'll reselect it and continue that adjustment.) Now you can paint 100% noise reduction over the sky a second time for a total of 200%. If that's still not enough, lather, rinse and repeat.
I first learned about this technique from Matt Kloskowski's Lightroom Killer Tips blog. Here's a video he created that shows this technique in action: http://lightroomkillertips.com/2010/video-stacking-multiple-adjustment-brush-settings/
Brad

Any chance Photoshop itself will get Camera Raw's noise reduction and sharpening?

I would love to have the noise reduction and sharpening from ACR 6 in Photoshop itself for JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files. Yes, I know I can open those files in ACR, apply noise reduction and sharpening, and then have it then open the files to Photoshop. But it would be so nice if we could do that without having to go through Camera Raw.

Matt Howell wrote:
Yes, I am absolutely saying that the noise reduction and sharpening of ACR 6 is vastly superior to any filters in Photoshop CS5.
For those who only work only with RAW files this is a non-issue, but I sometimes prefer to use TIFF files generated by CANON DPP software or occasionally even JPEG's straight out of Canon DSLR's. Going through ACR just for noise reduction causes unnecessary color space conversions, as well as just a needlessly complex workflow.
Perhaps you should ask Canon to make DPP noise reduction better. I also do not think is a good idea to get too aggressive with noise reduction and sharpening when you first bring a image into Photoshop unless you only use the image single use for a particular output device. Your better off working with a somewhat soft image till you ready for output and then sharpen for the output devive being used. If you use strong sharpening and NR up front sharpeing again for your output device may produce unwanted sharpening and NR artifacts... There are several third party noise reduction and sharpening plug-ins that are better then Adobe Photoshop built in ones. Noise reduction has to be balanced too much will loose detail masking detail is important. ACR noise reduction provides masking adjustments and works well. Third party plug-ins offer offer advanced masking features also. Photoshop noise reduction filter has a basic preserve detail slider which I presumes does some kind of masking but this is not as good at ACR masking and third paty masking. You can of course add you own masking before using photoshop noise reduction filter. Sharpening also needs masking for sarpening will sharpen noise as well as detail.
IMO your better off with third party plug-ins that are designed to be the best. They keep getting better there is no clear winner for all images. I'm been satisfied with NeatImage and I have only had to pay for two upgrades. I had to pay for the addition the 32 bit plugin then and for the addition a 64 bit plugin. All other updates to NeatImage has been free of charge even the lates version 7 of the 64 bit plugin was no charge for me.

Feature request: local noise reduction...

I love the local corrections in LR2, and I'm using especially the local sharpening feature a lot. But I'm really missing a local noise correction feature (at least for luminance noise). It's such a shame to be able to do about any correction that I need inside Lightroom, but still having to make a round trip to an external noise editor to remove local noise. Especially since doing noise reduction as the last step doesn't seem to be very efficient at all.
Local noise reduction would make this already great program so much better (at least, to me).
Richard

>My understanding is that sharpening does not add noise, but emphasizes the noise that's already there, making it appear from being insignificant to noticeable.
We're being overly semantic here of course, but it just depends on how you define it. If you define noise as for example the root-mean square deviation from the "real" image (a very common definition but it ignores the noise's spectral distribution), than absolutely sharpening a noisy image adds more noise. Sharpening operates as a high frequency amplifier, amplifying edges that are just noise instead of real edges, so it basically amplifies the noise that is there, leading to an increase in apparent noisiness. The same is true for clarity. Clarity is basically a sharpening operation at a very high radius. If your source image is noisy (especially if it has a lot of low-frequency noise - i.e. "grain"), it will also amplify it. Conversely, negative sharpening results in reducing high frequency noise. as it is just a small radius blur effectively.
>Moreover, sharpening in LR develop is considered capture sharpening, where the small loss in sharpness form the RAW format is regained.
The sharpening brush is different as it is meant to be a creative sharpener. It definitely amplifies noise if you push it. And even so, using Develop's capture sharpening, it is indeed possible to amplify (=add) the noise using the capture sharpening if you use the controls wrong. The capture sharpening has the superb mask generator that can be used to protect areas that are not edges, limiting its tendency to amplify noisiness. However, it will amplify noise near edges, sometimes making them appear as if you have a waterpainting. This is also an example of amplifying noise. Remember, even if these tools are meant to do a certain thing, it doesn't mean they cannot be made to do something else.
>To just regain lost RAW sharpness at the expense of noise would seem almost like defeating its own purpose.
Sharpness and noise go hand in hand. There are smarter and less smart algorithms but fundamentally, sharpening always amplifies noise, and noise reduction always reduces sharpness. As I said some algorithms are better and limit the effect, but the bottom line is that there really is no way around this.
>Or, is it more correct to say that applying -ve clarity/sharpening will make the noise "Appear" less obvious, but not actually get rid of it.
Appear less obvious is exactly the same as reducing it. Your eye is very good in judging noisyness as it is very good at recognizing patterns and so you can easily see what is noise and what isn't. If an image appears less noisy, it is less noisy. Computers are not that smart yet and if you call a tool clarity, it does not magically know how to not amplify noise or how to not reduce noise when using it negative. Same with sharpening.
Conclusion: negative sharpness & negative clarity == noise reduction. They are just not as good as some dedicated noise reduction algorithms as they are not primarily coded to do noise reduction. They do have that effect however.

LR3: lack of processing feedback after applying noise reduction

Now with the bigger RAW files (7D's 18Mpix) Lightroom is becoming really slow.
On several ocassions after applying some noise reduction, and waiting for some 20-30sec for a visible result, I moved the slider back and forth in the wrong assumption that nothing happens, but in fact I was disrupting an ongoing operation. The problem in LR3 is that it does not show any of its tooltips with an information that a noise reducing operation is in progress.
I hope that the team would improve this in the next version 3.01, we need at least the tooltip to appear.
Thomas

i absolutely agree!
Now, in LR3 you can move the sliders very smoothly - but nothing happens for seconds.
Same happens with the local adjustment brush. You click on the picture and start to paint but nothing happens. After a few seconds the pin appears and MAYBE the first click for the mask is set. After that you can paint further.
Another thing is, that it takes longer for a RAW to be loaded. Sometimes i see the "Loading"-Hint for 10 Seconds or more. If i need to scan fast thru hundreds of pictures to clone away some things or make a face a little bit brighter, these loading times feels like ages.
Both is very annoying and was better in LR2.
BTW: I think LR3 has a serious memory leak because i can see LR3 slowing down over time. After developing about 20 pictures everything slows down, sometimes to a point where i think LR3 has frozen (no CPU usages, just standing still for 30 seconds or more). When i quit and restart LR3, everything is quick until the next slow down.
(older iMac 24", white model, 3GB RAM that can be used) - you may see this at a later point if you have 8GB or more RAM of course.

Noise reduction radius past 2.0?

I was originally going to ask if it was possible to set the NR radius past 2.0 but I found after a little playing that, while the slider only goes to 2.0, you can click the number and drag it to 4.0.
Unfortunately, I still have an unsatisfactory amount of sensor/low light noise (from a Canon SD600 @ IS400). Are there strategies other than noise reduction to help correct this? (like gaussian blur followed by unsharp mask or something?)
Since I don't have PS for Mac yet, I hoping for an Aperture only solution at this point.
Thanks!
-Miles

I am having the same problem plus I get an "Uncaught Exception" error when I try to use it and then it crashes.

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

Noise reduction adjustments

The blue skies are often noisy, and look ugly, while some details of the image may also be noisy, but in an irrelevant way. How about making it possible to adjust noise reduction based on color? After all, LR already has lots of great color based modification possibilities, why not also one for noise reduction? Also, I guess it'd be nice to have different noise reduction strength modifiers for shadows/midtones/highlights, maybe even a "noise reduction curve"?

Personally, I like the total control aspect of Neat Image. It allows you to make a mask based on (I think) 10 levels of luminosity and per RGB color channel. Then it allows you to adjust noise based on frequency, and color/luminosity.
I realize this amount of control over noise may be toooo much to ask for in LR. But I would like some of it. As this approach to noise control is the most effective!
For example:
Allow adjustable masking in the Shadows/midtones/highlights based on rgb data. Then allow luminous and color noise reduction. This level of control I think would do well in LR

Noise reduction before or after enlarging ?

Hi. I'd be interested in your opinion:
If the circumstances force me to work on images with noise which have to be enlarged, and if I use noise reduction based on noise-pattern-recognition, is it better to carry out the noise reduction before or after the enlargement (and in case the answer is after, which resampling method would resample the image (and thus the noise) best for subsequent noise reduction?)
And what's the logical rationale behind the answer ?
Thanks a lot!
PS: I think the answer will be the same for any type of noise, but if there are significant differences between noise types, I'd be interested in that, too.

Thanks for all your comments.
I also thought that NR should be applied as soon as possible, leaving the noise patterns intact. On the other hand I thought that enlarging also enlarges residual noise, so maybe the bottom line is to do a regular NR initially and then, after enlarging, a second weak/careful one on parts of the image if need be.
@Freeagent: very good tip the inverse luminosity mask! As for ACR: From my personal experience, ACR noise reduction is very effective on RAW material, but on all other sources it far lags behind noise-pattern-recognition methods.

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

Nikon D70s + Process 2010 + Luminance Noise Reduction + Adjustment Brush = blurry picture

Please let me know if you have experienced the following and if it is a known bug:
I'm processing a very noisy Nikon D70s raw photograph with Lightroom 3: In the develop mode, I applied the 2010 process under Camera Calibration, and then set the Luminance Noise Reduction to 98 in the detail panel. At this point, the resulting improvement over the original is dramatic and the details are rather crisp given the original condition of the photo.
However, the moment I apply a local adjustment to the photo, bluriness is introduced to the photo; the bluriness affects the entire photo and not only the areas impacted by the local adjustment. This undesired effect appears with the adjustment brush and gradient and the only parameter that the local adjustment applies is an increase in the exposure by 0.01, which should normally not produce much of a visible effect.
I exported the photo to a jpeg and found the undesired effect in the jpeg file.
I believe this issue has a relation with the RAW file coming from a Nikon D70s as I performed a Sync of all the settings on RAW photos originating from a Canon 30D, and from a Canon XSi and did not see any of the undesired effect.
These steps appear to be reproduceable on any of the Nikon D70s RAW photos that I have in my catalog.
Please share some feedback.
Thanks,
Bruno

The NEF and xmp files are now available at http://drop.io/LR3BugAdjBrushNoise8736
In the current development settings, I added an adjustment brush to the ceiling with an exposure adjustment of +0.01 simply to demonstrate the issue. As soon as the adjustment is applied, bluriness can be seen and is most apparent in the faces but can also be seen on the wooden floor and everywhere else.
I also noticed that by setting the mask to show (O), ditthering can be seen in the mask even though it was applied with feather, flow and density all set to 100%.
Let me know what you think.
Bruno

Noise Reduction Mask

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for