Noise from low light photo

[BBBS]

The attached photo was taken in very low light and as such it has lots og noise on the photo. To me the colours are a right off and I have tried to recover as much as possible by desaturating the photo.

Any help on how I could improve the photo with ot without the colours would be a great help.

Many thanks
Richard

[chrishoggy]

Deleted and leaving this forum due to the actions of member rondon

[v.bampton]

The colours really are quite strong, although using CS's Photo Filter cooling did about the best I could come up with. I personally like it in black and white, or how about a nice soft sepia for a baby pic...

To get the black and white, I used a Channel Mixer layer set to 60, 30, 10, hence reducing the noise which was largely in the Blue channel. Adjusted density slightly using levels, and then finally duplicated the layer and ran Noise Ninja on it. The effect was unnaturally smooth, so I reduced the opacity of that layer to 50% to show through a little of the noise.

I then did the sepia using the same file. Added a Hue/Saturation layer set to 34, 14, 0, colorize. The effect of the Channel Mixer layer underneath was too harsh for a sepia picture, so reduced the opacity of that layer to 53%.

Oh, by the way, cute pic!!!

Victoria

[FrannyMae]

I gave this a quick try by replacing the blue channel with a copy of the lightness channel (from a copy of the orignal picture that I changed to LAB mode.) I then used apply image to replace the green channel with the red channel info at 75% opacity, blending mode ADD. This seemed to get rid of most of the noise and correct the worst of the color problems. The only other thing I did was add a curves adjustment layer and selected the white point on the blanket. Hope this helps.

What a beautiful baby! Those eyes....makes me want another one! Just kidding, honey! (in case my husband happens on this!)

[chrishoggy]

Deleted and leaving this forum due to the actions of member rondon

[Duv]

I tried to retain the slight ruddy complexion of many newborns.

Cheers
Dave

[Flora]

Hi everybody,

Richard,

Welcome to RP!

What a lovely and very, very 'new' baby!!!!!!

Like FrannyMae, I also replaced the damaged blue Channel, but I used the Green as substitute.
After that I run Levels on each Channel individually to correct color, tone and contrast.
I then used Selective Colors and Color Balance adjustment Layers to finish 'normalizing the colour.

[Leah]

I like baby photos in black and white anyway...

Looking at the channels the red seemed the best so I took that and converted to grayscale, did an adjust of white and black points using Levels, then added a Curves adjustment layer to adjust the contrast on the skintones.

Then either (a) used Xero SoftSmooth and AutoFX DreamyPhoto (both free downloads) or (b) used Gaussian Blur (depending on whether you want to spend the time downloading), masked off over the face and particularly the eyes.

Then selectively lightened the irises and whites of the eyes a little.

Finally changed mode to Duotone and used one of Photoshop's default quadtones (can't remember which, I'm afraid).

[Gary Richardson]

Hi Richard, Colour corrected image as much as possible, de-saturated colours, then painted in colours taken from image on new colour blend layer, adjusted opacity of layer.

[Duv]

Sure. Why not plug another one in here. Selected some natural skin and in Color mode painted out some of the strong yellow skin cast.

Cheers
Dave

[TokenArt]

Well here is another attempt using paint shop pro 9 and neat image..hope it works for you

TokenArt

[chrishoggy]

Deleted and leaving this forum due to the actions of member rondon

[BBBS]

Thanks everyone - plenty of ideas to work with here.

Richard

[ajcutler]

Richard:

Like several others, I duplicated the image, and converted it to Lab Color, and then copied the lightness channel to the original.

I then opened up tone and contrast with a levels layer, and then used a color layer (with a color selection of the Baby's skin) and painted to even out the color on the baby's face and body.

Added a color balance layer to give a little yellow toning to the skin. Took out a fair amount of color from the blanket and surrounding area by reducing saturation with a Hue/Saturation layer at 60% opacity.

Alan

[swanseamale47]

I gave it a go, I tried to keep some of the babys red colour (newborn) Wayne