Really grainy photos

[bmphan]

Hello all,
A friend of mine sent me two photos, asking if I could help him improve the contrast. Ironically, I think the contrast is fine, it's everything else that needs help! Anyhoo, I'm no wizard at retouching, but some of the nice folks at the Adobe forum recommended y'all, so if you could take a look at the pics and give me some tips I'd really appreciate it!
Bao

Photos at: http://www.geocities.com/bmphan/restore.htm

[DannyRaphael]

Hi:

Welcome to RetouchPro.

You've found the right place for help, but I'm unable to resolve the link you posted. Are you sure it's correct?

Images now posted. It's possible the link was posted here before the web page was defined and populated.

Another option: Size your image to 100KB or less and "attach" to a post in this thread (or multiple posts, 1 pic per post). If you're using Photoshop, FILE/Save for the web... will walk you through the resize thing.

~DannyR~

[Doug Nelson]

Many possible responses, and I hope you get most of them

I took one of your images, duped the layer, ran a grain reduction program (in my case it was Grain Surgery, but there are many of them), changed blend mode to 'darken', flattened, applied a tiny bit of unsharp masking.

[bmphan]

Thanks for the replies. I've heard a lot about this grain surgery; I'll look into getting it (or getting the boss to buy it).

[Stephen M]

These are the usual suspects when it comes to grain and noise/artifacts:

* Free APS6 Actions:

http://www.2morrow.dk/75ppi/coolpix/actions/

http://www.digitalsecrets.net/secrets/denoiseISO.html

http://netnet.net/~llueck/NR.htm


* Mac and PC Plugs:

http://www.visinf.com/downloads/ (grain surgery plugs)

http://www.camerabits.com/QM2.html (quantum mechanic plugs and others)


* PC only stand alone application:

http://www.neatimage.com/ (neat image application)

There are demo versions of each, I suggest you try them all.


Stephen Marsh.

[bmphan]

Thanks for the links, I'm gonna get me some actions!