Photo too grainy?

[tigerphoto]

Is this photo too grainy? How can I un-grainify it?

[Juergen D]

Yes, try NeatImage. This is done with the free trial version.

Juergen

[Wolfman]

I used Noiseware, but tried to keep it natural and not too soft. I opened it up a bit also.

[Soul_of_Kilik]

Looks more like compression issues than grain. How did you save this file?

Wolfman, you are right, it def needs opening up. Juergen - that's maybe a bit too smooth. It seems that it's an event photo, and one needs to be subtle when treating images of that nature.

I was dealing with a similar problem this morning with BBDO. Making use of blur and noise reduction filters (in Photoshop) solved our problem.

I'll post a result in a moment.

[Soul_of_Kilik]

BTW... Grain isn't always bad. I think it looks great with the grain. Here's a link to the noise reduction result.

http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/b.../Picture-1.jpg

[igot2pman]

Brighten and made more vibrent. Then used my own brand of light de-noise.

I think the main problem here is the under exposure. The noise is subjective, and can be removed in too many ways, and at diffrent levels of intensity.

Hope it helps,
-Keven

[Soul_of_Kilik]

Hi igot2pman (that name cracks me up every time)

I agree that the noise is subjective. I like it. Personally I'd keep it there.

You didn't say how you de-noised the pic. No details, just a rough explanation, pls. This is like show and tell. You just showed, LOL... now you gots to tell!

[igot2pman]

Originally Posted by Soul_of_Kilik

You didn't say how you de-noised the pic. No details, just a rough explanation, pls. This is like show and tell. You just showed, LOL... now you gots to tell!

Hello back...

I have worked really hard on the things I have learned. I will tell you that my way is non destructive and does not involve a smart object. But as some people just seem to suck info around here, I have to keep the truly great to myself as a trade secret. I share a lot of my thoughts and knowledge here but I have to keep a little for me. So forgive me if I do not disclose all, but appreciate what I do disclose.

As a matter of fact, you didn't really disclose what exactly you did or used either.
_______________________________________________________________________________


On the lighter side, Filter>>>noise>>>despeckle does the same thing if not even a little better. People forget about despeckle... but it’s actually a very good tool.

See the screenshot for what I did to brighten and saturate the image. Vibrence is only for CS4, my bad; i should have used the more universal hue/sat adjustment (it can do the same thing).

-Keven

***images show a 100% crop so you can more easily see the reduction.

[Soul_of_Kilik]

Thanks Kev.
I hear ya on the sharing of info. Trade secrets... You can't just give it away. I also just mention what route I take, and don't really expand much on it.

But thanks for sharing. I was just interested to know the different routes one can take, as I had this exact problem with a picky client yesterday.

Don't mess with Texas...

[Cupcake]

Duplicate the layer and make it screen.

Use photoshop noise tool;

ajust color and levels.

[tom60634]

I did a quick levels adjustment.

Used Neat Image's jpg noise reduction setting.
Then some photoshop adjustments.

I tried to keep the adjustments as natural as possible.

[mikedimples]

One big trick to noise reduction is to bring back the lighter luminosity values with the blend if sliders (aka. luminosity blenders found under layer styles) or luminance masking. Usually noise is concentrated in the darker tones due to the way camera sensors work. Focusing the noise removal on these areas while protecting the cleaner light areas give more natural noise reduction.

-duplicate the layer
-run noise reduction of choice
-open layer styles, then at the bottom of the panel find the "blend if" section
-alt+click (this splits the slider) and drag the top right white triangle tab to the left and you'll see the original light luminance levels pulled through. If you want to preserve more, then pull the remaining half of the white triangle slider to the left as well until you like what you see.

I also think frequency separation works well here. After separating the noise on the HF layer, we can sharpen the LF layer to bring back some more detail.

Finally, downsizing help hide the noise.

[chillin]

I increased the size to 400%, added different noise level to each channel,
applied different levels of a "noise-ware" to each channel separately,
change back to the original size (25%), applied again a "noise-ware" selectively to some stubborn parts.