February 5, 2008...1:25 pm
Reducing Noise with ACR (and Lightroom)
It’s been commented on several reviews that the G9 is a little noisy due to having so many pixels on a small sensor (less and bigger is better for cutting noise) but its is not as bad as every one makes out, a lot of reviews seem to want the ultimate perfect camera and now! They are getting frustrated at the slow speed of technology and overtly nit picking because the camera manufactures put in features that in some ways is a step backwards.
To reduce noise the exposure is an important aspect and is best moving the exposure to the right (on the histogram) and so it is not touching the Left hand edge. Noise is caused by light hitting the pixel but not being enough to measure a bit like putting a bucket out to catch rain, it may be wet inside from a light shower but can be hard to measure so deliberately adding more exposure is like adding a measured amount of rain so the bucket (pixel) has something to measure
For the G9 at ISO 800, Thomas Niemann (of PTLens fame) has suggested the following settings in ACR Details page: (ACR = Adobe Camera Raw as found in Photoshop CS/Elements and Lightroom)
Sharpening
amount=60
radius = 0.8
detail = 30
masking = 0
Clarity -25
Noise reduction
luminance = 80
colour = 100
Source: Luminous Landscape forums
These settings can be saved as a preset in ACR and Adobe Lightroom
There is also Neat Image, Noise Ninja and Noisewear that are specific noise reduction programs and are worth checking out, the pro versions also work with RAW files and Noisewear do a limited but free community edition
6 Comments
February 5, 2008 at 3:41 pm
[...] Read the rest of this great post here [...]
February 5, 2008 at 11:52 pm
That explanation of cause of noise in digital cameras is really helpful… thanks.
Also, I’ve used Neat Image for noise reduction on quite a few photos and its really good… particularly for a relative beginner.
February 7, 2008 at 2:49 am
Enjoyed reading this. Nice job explaining…appreciate it!
February 7, 2008 at 5:37 am
Great to see you started this blog on the G9. I was thinking of doing the same thing.
February 12, 2008 at 5:28 pm
[...] film grain, that said I shoot RAW and prefer to do this in post processing, see my previous post ‘Reducing noise with ACR and Lightroom’ [...]
February 17, 2008 at 12:36 pm
[...] Also see the post on noise reduction for Lightroom and ACR [...]
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