Better way to denoise?

[Isedo]

Hi guyz,

Can u please tell your method to denoise a photo like this?
This shots are made with a mobile phone, so Raw is not avaible.

My client is an artist and he wants to denoise this shots. I'm doing the job manually using mostly color range to find pixels with noisy color in the way to change it. Other manual techniquis also involved. It takes me about 2 hours to complete one shot.

Some guyz here told me that my process is to long for a denoising. Can someone please show me a better and more eficient way to do that?

Thanks,
Isedo

[Markzebra]

its impossible to tell what to do, with such a small area. Is that 100%? whats the total size of the image and the output going to be? That looks like a severely damaged image, and a tricky rescue to be sure.

What I can tell I think so far…*Looks perhaps more digitally damaged than natural camera card noise, or grain. For one thing the shadow is blown completely, what type of noise is that? Its not even consistant across the surface

[Isedo]

Hi, this shot is 100% of zoom yes. I can' post the full image.
The image is 1239 x 972 at 72 res made with a mobile Phone.

They want to print it 30x40cm if possible but for now this is not the point.

The problem this is a photo made by a mobile phone and not from a digital camera, this is the reason of this noise.

Thanks for your comments.

I'm denoising it with color range and hoing there pixel by pixel replacing the "wrong" pixels often manualy. Seems the only way is old fashioned hard work.

I post another part of the image.

[Southbay]

One click with Neat Image 60%Y.

[Isedo]

Hi, what is neatImage?

Anyway it seems to be to blury effect, not really a clean and professional job in my opinion. It's really a one click job..no detail preserved and bad color.

LOL

[0lBaldy]

Levels adjustment...
Image Analyzer (restoration by Deconvolution)
Neat Image (maxed out all sliders then readjusted)

[Southbay]

Originally Posted by Isedo

Hi, what is neatImage?

PS noise reduction plugin. You can alter the strength of it or brush it on. It's usually the first thing I try. Sorry it's not up to your standards.

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by Isedo

Hi, what is neatImage?
Anyway it seems to be to blury effect, not really a clean and professional job in my opinion. It's really a one click job..no detail preserved and bad color.
LOL

You have peeked my interest now!
How bout a before and after of a shot similiar to this, with a work flow, so we can learn from you...

Neat Image "best noise reduction for digital cameras and scanners"

LOL..... no detail preserved!

BTW I not professional ... just trying to help!

show me detail please!

[Isedo]

Originally Posted by Southbay

PS noise reduction plugin. You can alter the strength of it or brush it on. It's usually the first thing I try. Sorry it's not up to your standards.

Thanks for your help my friend. I just know what the clients wants...but anyway thanks for trying to help!

[Isedo]

Originally Posted by 0lBaldy

You have peeked my interest now!
How bout a before and after of a shot similiar to this, with a work flow, so we can learn from you...

Neat Image "best noise reduction for digital cameras and scanners"

LOL..... no detail preserved!

BTW I not professional ... just trying to help!

show me detail please!

I'm really apreciating your help guyz. I'm still trying to make somethink good from this pic...I don't really love to work with plugins.
Neat Image can be the best plug in for noise reduction but here we have a really demaged shot and what really a denoiser do, is simply blur pixels trying to make the image cleaner.
What I need to do in this shot is clean it but have still the original detail and colors without losing detail.

I think you can see by your self that the NeatImage results are to heavy in this shot or not? Do you think the quality is still good using that plugin?
It's not really about standards or not, it's just about what the final result have to be.

Here one of my tries working on this image with color range with layer mask in the way to color just wanted areas.

[Isedo]

Originally Posted by Southbay

One click with Neat Image 60%Y.

It does a noce job on the green part on the left

[Markzebra]

Ok - that noise is honestly like noting I've ever had to work with before. Your method of selecting color ranges (CS4?) and then bringing them into line, may actually be one of the few ways to do it.

The way I would work on this is to make up a series of automated (action based) processes - and then mask them in. Takes out a lot of the labor this way. May be what your doing already. Calculations (probably multiplying channels together) to fill in the broken areas is another possibility. There's some very odd compression method going on in that mobile phone, what type was it? maybe its damaged, or old

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by Isedo

I think you can see by your self that the NeatImage results are to heavy in this shot or not? Do you think the quality is still good using that plugin?

Short answer.. NOOOOO! Quality SUCKS!!! But is more recognizable than before.. but still terrible!!!

Tell your client that OlBaldy said to take that Phone cam and stick it up his .... errrrr, I meant to say... throw it away... there are too many other good, small, shirtpocket cams available for anyone to be using a phone cam.. and if he/she is local... go and re-shoot it for them! It would be much quicker and a whole lot less of a pain!

Good Luck!!

[Southbay]

Originally Posted by Isedo

I think you can see by your self that the NeatImage results are to heavy in this shot or not?

Yes, agreed. It's just a quick example to illustrate the noise reduction "look" of this software. I applied it globally in the first example, and it certainly has a softening effect at the strength I used it at.

Of course you can apply Neat Image in other more localized ways to avoid your edges and key elements from blurring. However, as others suggest, you've got some nasty noise there and perhaps a cleaner capture is in order.

[TommyO]

Well, I had to have a try at it also. I decided to use tools within PS only.

1. dust & scratches, 3, 15;
2. copy;
3. reduce noise, red channel only, 10, 5.

It's not bad and certainly could save some time if used with some masking, then the other techniques listed by yourself or others.

Best of luck with those !

[igot2pman]

If you can get it close enough to where TommyO got it, you could then colorize it in color blening mode to finnish it off. Once you colorize, there could be some white spots... clean them up by making a duplicate of the colorized layer then set it to overlay blending mode. Use blend if to protect the blacks.

Another thought,
-Keven

[Isedo]

Thanks to all for your help. Every single message is very apreciated!
I let you know how it will finish ;.D

[MilanS]

I know it's an older post. but I got intrigued with the challenge! Anyway this is my attempt. Took me 10-12 min with experimenting! If this post is still a live and if somebody is interested in my method, let me know!

[aartist]

Originally Posted by Isedo

<snip> I let you know how it will finish ;.D

Umm, I read through this thread and see Isedo did not let us know how his finished results came out. Alas he never...

[MilanS]

Well since somebody made a reply, here is how I did it:

First I used external filter: PictureCode Noise Ninja v2.3.2
Than I fixed some small detail with simple cloning, and made another pass with the same filter, but this time selectively (Mostly on the red surface). Than I applied Shadows/Highlight filter to bring back some detail in the face. This was done selectivly, again with masking. A bit more cloning, and finaly I applied Median filter to smooth outh the evan surfices. That too was selectivley applied! And that's it!

P.S.
Depending on I image but with some actions I think it could be done in about 3-5 min per image.