Noise problem (300dpi photo)

[mbl]

Hey, this is my first post here but I have been reading these forums for a good amount of time now and I just recently stumbled across a photo I can not really seem to repair.

http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/2...otoext1ni8.jpg

The thing that bothers me with the picture is the noise I cannot seem to get rid of and I want to fix the noise before I can start retouching the colors and contrasts the way I want them.

I would be really happy if someone here can come up with a technique for that kind of noise issue, because I have multiple photos that have the exact same problem that I need to fix.

[mistermonday]

The image has some color noise but what you are foremost seeing is the texture of the scanned media. You could try an FFT filter such as in ImageAnalyzer or for this image I find that the noise filter plugin called Noiseware does an acceptable job. See attachment below.
Regards, Murray

[mbl]

Acceptable job indeed. Although im I am still curious if there is a way to reduce the unwanted noisy pattern in the photo other than re-scanning it or just blurring and fading the blur etc. The 'pattern' is in all 3 channels (worst is the blue channel) so im not sure how that would be possible unless im missing something.

[mistermonday]

When you have a repetitive patterns in an image you can run a Fast Foruier Transfer filter on it. There is a free program you can download which is called Image Analyzer (I think it is by Mesoft - just google Image Analyzer) that lets you run an FFT and apply a reverse pattern to map over the original pattern.
It does a great job on some patterns not so great on others as it tends to blur similar to the noise reduction filter.
Sometimes scanning tricks with light and direction will minimize the pattern to begin with.
Regards, Murray

[yangez]

I tried it just with Topaz Vivacity. It has advanced settings that, if the noise is a specific size, it reduces the noise of that size but tries not to affect details. I don't fully understand it but for this image it worked fairly well.

I had to go through each channel. Man, blue channel was a nightmare.

[coilte]

Here is my quick attempt at only the pattern. I used FFT and then NeatImage. I know I got it to smooth but I did get rid of the pattern A bit less neatimage next time and some sharpening it would probably be ok.

Jim

[TommyO]

The FFT filter seems to work well on this photo. I tried a quick run to be sure. You can see a tutorial for it here at RetouchPro. The basic steps are:
duplicate the background;
apply the FFT to the duplicate;
view the red channel and paint black over white patterns that appear;
restore the RGB view;
run the inverse FFT;
this creates a layer based upon luminosity only;
slightly blur the underlying layer using noise.. median;
then merge visible layers to a new wip layer;
apply a slight unsharp mask to this top layer.

Your first try will take longer. After a few runs, you'll get the time down to less than 1 minute.

By tweaking the various settings in each step, fine tuning the painting in the red channel, and adjusting opacity of layers, you can get a very clean image.

[philbach]

I used Neat Image another noise reducing filter on the blue channel first using aggressive settings then again on the combined image and finally I sharpened the image some.

[skydog]

This has been discussed before...
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/rp-...r-texture.html

[plugsnpixels]

Originally Posted by yangez

I tried it just with Topaz Vivacity. It has advanced settings that, if the noise is a specific size, it reduces the noise of that size but tries not to affect details...

Vivacity is just about to be released for Intel Macs! See a Mac screenshot at the link. Besides being an image enhancement plug-in, it is also used for unique artistic effects not reproducible anywhere else (though reminiscent of the image simplification of the late buZZ, but with sharp edges as opposed to a soft watercolor effect).

[plugsnpixels]

The Mac version of Vivacity is now available!