Help with Noise Ninja

[Corkster52]

Okay, I have given a couple of hours to trying to fix this noisey photo in Noise Ninja and haven't been able to do much of anything. Anyone have an idea of what I may be doing wrong, or is it even possible with this photo? Thanks

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3218/...02213d6a6f.jpg

[mistermonday]

Try running Noiseware in Default Mode (Luminance -70; Color - 80) with no other settings. On the resulting image run a Selector Color Adj to reduce the remaining yellow blotches. The image you uploaded is low res and compressed. If you have a higher res original image you should be able to get much better results.
Regards, Murray

[lurch]

It's hard to tell what you're doing wrong without watching you do it. I did get some improvement in this image, so it is possible. In Lab, I profile each channel separately. On the a and the b I get pretty brutal. High strength and smoothness, low contrast - so all traces of noise disappear. I treat the L much more gently, just enough to suppress most but not all the noise. In this case the strength and smoothness were set at 8 or so, contrast 14 IIRC. First time through I had trouble losing the eyes, so next time I masked them out when smoothing the L. That's all that was done to the image attached.

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[Corkster52]

Okay, I was able to get the free version of Noiseware installed and do the default mode part, but you lost me on the "run a Selector Color Adj" part. I could find no such choice in Noiseware.....and heck I just got new glasses. :-)

[Corkster52]

Lurch, that sure does look better. Now if I can just figure out which 27 softwares to purchase I may get the hang of this yet. Spent around $85 today on Noise Ninja, and more than likely I am not doing it right....or....I bought the wrong software.

[lurch]

Corkster, good luck on your search. I've most always had good results with Noise Ninja, but there are others on this forum who swear by Neat Image or Noiseware. They're all good. I also use Topaz Vivacity with success - just to confuse things more. The secret with all of them, I think, is experimentation and practicing, and learning when to use what.

[Corkster52]

I went back and looked at my originals and found that the photos that I took at the very same ceremony ranged from 1.4 meg to over 4 and I (being the old geezer and novice that I am) have no real idea why. Maybe if I could figure out how to get higher res I would do better with cleaning them up (but that was already said). Thanks for the help folks. Today is that same daughter's 18th birthday and Thursday is her high school graduation. I hope I can figure out how to use my Kodak Z812 quickly so I don't mess up any more memories.