howdy everyone!

I have a question about sharpening and noise-reduction software...

Let's say you shoot a high-ISO sports image and you'd like to improve on it using post processing, will it be a good idea to run it through a NR software then running unsharp mask on it?

I noticed that if I try to run a sharpening script on a noisy image, even the noise becomes exaggerated. But when I try to run a sharpening script on an image that was NR processed, it's as if the noise comes back.

thanks!

good question chewy.

normally, we'd suggest that you run Noise Ninja first before sharpening. At least, this way, luminance and color noise is reduced. After, run a sharpening script or your own technique to make your photo sharper. This way, you wont be sharpening the noise even more.

noise ninja also has a pretty good USM built in. i sugges that you play around with it for best results.

hi chewy!

adding to what nino has already said, you could also do this:

mask critical areas, those that you like to remain sharp, like eyes, foliage, etc. (takes a lot of work, i know).

run your noise filter.

mask those areas that are prone to noise (sky, dark shadows, takes more work, sorry...)

run your sharpening method....

ayun...just some thoughts...

its critical to do noise reduction first, ideally early in the workflow, because certain important photoshop commands tend to exaggerate your photo's noise.

if you can, try to read bruce fraser's real world sharpening book. in-depth discussion of both sharpening and noise control. lots of ideas there.

howdy everyone!

I have a question about sharpening and noise-reduction software...

Let's say you shoot a high-ISO sports image and you'd like to improve on it using post processing, will it be a good idea to run it through a NR software then running unsharp mask on it?

I noticed that if I try to run a sharpening script on a noisy image, even the noise becomes exaggerated. But when I try to run a sharpening script on an image that was NR processed, it's as if the noise comes back.

thanks!

Chewy, as a caveat... render your sharpenning at the end of your post processing workflow, and in increments... so as to minimize the introduction of more noise in your image...

An NR processed noisy image will definitely re-render itself noisy after running an ordinary sharpening script or a USM filter to it coz it will just return the messy detail found in the luminance channel of the image... My suggestion, or a way around this would be to indirectly sharpen your image after NR processing by adjusting your Shadows and Highlights, to increase image contrast... But be careful not to over do it coz this may in turn may lead to clipping and posterization.

Hope this helps. :)

if the noise is really bad in photoshop try to use smart blur and play with the radius. i think 0.5% is enough for a grainy pic. then use sharpen tool for the final touch.

you might also want to try sharpening in LAB mode. go to mode>lab then select lightness channel. do your sharpening here. that way, you can avoid worsening chroma noise.

he can take out the noise in lab mode, then sharpen there also.

cool! informative thread.

thanks for posting guys

if the noise is really bad in photoshop try to use smart blur and play with the radius. i think 0.5% is enough for a grainy pic. then use sharpen tool for the final touch.


This is a really good suggestion. Not too many people know the magic of smart blur.


My other recommedation to the OP-Chewy Chua is to look at the individual channels to see where the noise is. Sometimes if you are lucky, noise is contained in one channel and that gives you the room to sharpen the channels that don't have noise.

wow. so many new stuff to try out! thanks for the replies. I'll try em' one at a time.

red channel has more contrast while green channel has more details and blue channel has more noise....

never got around to play with the individual channels, and now i can mess around with them, esp the blue channel :) . thanks guys for the tips!

messing the blue channel will create more noise. I usually leave the blue channel alone.

red channel has more contrast while green channel has more details and blue channel has more noise....


Red channel doesn't always have the most contrast. Many times it doesn't. If you know your image is going to CMYK you might want to inspect the Black channel also. Most of the time the K channel has hardly any noise and you usually can hit sharpening here really hard.

What I usually do is open the image with corel paint shop pro then click on adjust>digital noise removal then adjust some settings until I get the desired effect then click ok... the noise is now removed or minimized... then edit photo with photoshop...