How to reduce camera noise?

[SadonnaL]

I am looking for a way to reduce camera noise in a few of my images. I photographed a wedding and when I thought I had decent lighting I didn't. Now after adjusting levels and such I am having high camera noise. Is there a plug in or steps to do in Photoshop CS3 that I can do to correct this problem. I have downloaded Picture Code camera noise plug in but if you don't pay for it you get a grid over your image.



Any tips or advice would be great thanks!

[amica999]

Hi SadonnaL, without seeing the actual noise it's a bit difficult. You could of course try to use the de-noise functions in Photoshop directly, or try the trial of Neatimage, if you pictures are not that voluminous, that is: http://www.neatimage.com/download.html - or - a freeware of Topaz http://www.foto-freeware.de/topaz-dejpeg.php. Hope that helps some...

[William Wilson]

Are you shooting jpeg or raw as there are a few steps that can help to reduce noise. Biggest issue is exposure make sure you are bang on and that will help with the least noise for your shooting conditions if you're adding exposure compensation in PS that's making life hard. For those particular instances where noise can't be avoided I find Noise Ninja pretty good. Alternatively look at your hardware as particular bodies are better at coping with noise than others Nikon D700, D3 and Canon 5D both mkI and mkII.

[mistermonday]

Sadonna, welcome to RP. Most digital cameras are prone to noise. It gets worse with underexposure or shooting at High ISO values. Some cameras are a lot worse than others. The only really effective way I have found to reduce the noise has been a dedicated filter / filter plugin because the Noise Reduction tools in Photoshop are rather inadequate. I have tried all of the popular noise filters but I fine Noiseware by Imagenomic to be the best. Unfortunately it is not free but it is not expensive and is an excellent investment if you shoot a lot of digital photos.
Regards, Murray

[TommyO]

When the images are good otherwise (just color, exposure problems) it is advantageous to start in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR), which comes with CS3 (as I'm sure you know). The advantages being:
- it's faster to make multiple adjustments;
- it is less destructive to the image(s);
- you can save adjustments to apply to multiple images, or do them all at once;
- depending on your preferences, the adjustments can be saved into sidecar files so they are not permanent.

I happen to like the speed and control. The noise removal in ACR is geared toward camera noise and may be all you need. Without an example of the noise, it's hard to be sure.