Noise reduction - ACR6/LR3B2 vrs. third party plug-ins

Hi,

as i am mainly a photographer i have been very interested in the new RAW engine of Adobe's new LR3B2/ACR 6 which ships with PS CS5.

So i did a quick comparison of LR3B2 and Nik Dfine2.0/Neat Image 4.7. You can find it right here: http://web.me.com/donnie_darko/Gefrorene_Zeit/Noise_Reduction.html .

Even though my website is mainly in German these comparison is done in English. You also find the link to this comparison at the Link section of my website - you find it at the navigation bar at the top of each page.

You are also able to download those files including the RAW images/TIF files to play for yourself with them. I used a 1DsMkIII at ISO1600 and ISO3200 under tungsten light which is a tad on the worst case side rather than a optimal setting noise wise. This body is by no way a low noise wonder as the Nikon D3s.

Is it the one and last answer to that question how Adobe's noise reduction stacks up against the third party plug-ins? No, by no means. But it sure should help to get an idea how far Adobe has come in this regard. Please keep this in mind while reading it. I am no full time tester - and i never want to be one. I am a photographer and thats what i like.

Andy

P.S.: feel free to ask any question you might have. If something i have written is unclear just ask. If something is plain wrong written with my English help me to correct. Be gently with me in this - English is not my first language!
--
whatever you do - do it with passion.

http://www.gefrorene-zeit.de

The link appears to be invalid.

Thanks,
Ken

You need to remove the period after html in your link.

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Sam

Previous profile: http://www.dpreview.com/members/?User=hjizididheid

Sorry! Here:

http://web.me.com/donnie_darko/Gefrorene_Zeit/Noise_Reduction.html

--
whatever you do - do it with passion.

http://www.gefrorene-zeit.de

I'm a long time user of Photoshop and Neatimage Pro Plug-in and not a big fan of Lightroom because it lacks Automation facilities like Photoshop features Script and Action. I did not try to evaluate LR2.3 Beta NR when I tried it so I'll take your word that its very good. Neatimage current version is 6.1 yours is quite old. Neatimage has many features like Action support and the ability to select NR profile to use in an image by matching the image's EXIF data Camera model, ISO and exposure to the users collection of NR Profiles. IMO NR should be one of the first thing done in a post processing work flow. Having good NR is ACR Plug-in is a good thing however I do not think ACR NR will replace third party plug-inn like Neatimage. As you know all of the top rated NR programs work very well and they are integrated into established work-flows.
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JJMack

I use Noise Ninja, Dfine 2.0 and Topaz DeNoise 3. Even in LR2, if one knows how, you can get good noise reduction. However, any of the 3 plugins I use give me significantly better results. With Lightroom 3 Beta 2, in most cases I can get results that are MUCH better than LR2 and very nearly as good as the plugins.

In order to get good results in LR or ACR, it's critical to identify the type of image edges (High frequency vs low frequency) and apply both noise reduction and sharpening at the same time. Because LR editing is parametric, one can adjust, re-adjust and tweak as much and as often without making any permanent edits to the image. I have a handful of sharpening and noise reduction presets created that make this easy and fast. I'll need to update them for LR3 b/c it's a different set of controls but the concept is the same.

I shoot high school sports (think f/2.8 @ ISO 1600). I may need to sort through 400 shots, find the 40 keepers and then process them for lens correction, noise reduction, sharpening and maybe some fast retouching on the best 4-5. Getting this done in LR is a huge time savings. Knowing I can go back and spend more time later because it's all non-destructive is a great bonus.

I'll still need to do some NR/sharpening work in Photoshop but much less.
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-Dan Rode
http://rodephoto.com

Thanks for posting your test.

It looks to my eye (using a low-end laptop monitor at the moment) that the third party plug in programs are a little less noisy than the Adobe product, but it looks to me that Adobe has preserved a bit more detail.

Does anyone else see that, especially on the winding knob and face of the watch images?

I regularly use both Topaz and Noise Ninja, but I'm going to have to say I really like the LR-3 beta noise reduction, especially since it can be tweaked later on.

Bob
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Bob, I agree. It seems to me like Adobe is preserving more detail too. I think it could be how the others are achieving more noise reduction though, they sacrifice some detail...I believe that they can all be set to sacrifice less detail.

I like that Adobe has incorporated this into their products.

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Thanks,
Magic Captain Mario

Bob,

As a PSCS5 prerelease tester, I've been using the files with ACR 6.1 dropped three weeks ago. (I just noticed there's a new build.) I'll try it with the new build when I get a chance. Not sure what they've done from build-to-build.

The old 6.1 build NR is very good, rivaling the plug-in or stand-alone programs. This is one of those things that seemed like a low-hanging fruit and should have been tackled a few releases ago by Adobe. It has now; it is easy to use and works well.

Bob Walters said:

Thanks for posting your test.

It looks to my eye (using a low-end laptop monitor at the moment) that the third party plug in programs are a little less noisy than the Adobe product, but it looks to me that Adobe has preserved a bit more detail.

Does anyone else see that, especially on the winding knob and face of the watch images?

I regularly use both Topaz and Noise Ninja, but I'm going to have to say I really like the LR-3 beta noise reduction, especially since it can be tweaked later on.

Click to expand...

I agree with your findings. Just a remark: i used very light handed settings in LR3. I am pretty confident that you are able to match lets say Dfine's result if you tweak it a bit further. Download the files and give yourself a spinn in LR3B2!

Andy

--
whatever you do - do it with passion.

http://www.gefrorene-zeit.de

Here are the results from ACR in CS5.

I like the fact that nondestructive Lightroom noise reduction can be applied, then tweaked with variations in sharpening--and then tweaked again, if necessary. I'd rather do noise reduction that way than with a Photoshop plug-in. It's a good product, and in combination with the new lens-specific chromatic aberration and distortion correction it makes Lightroom an even more appealing product.

bwalsh said:

I like the fact that nondestructive Lightroom noise reduction can be applied, then tweaked with variations in sharpening--and then tweaked again, if necessary. I'd rather do noise reduction that way than with a Photoshop plug-in. It's a good product, and in combination with the new lens-specific chromatic aberration and distortion correction it makes Lightroom an even more appealing product.

Click to expand...

The default global NR in LR3 is often enough for many images but selective NR can sometimes be required and better performed with plugins like Boundary Noise Reduction and Topaz Denoise together with layer masking in Photoshop.

Thanks for sharing the link to your review, nice job!

Here is a medium level noise reduction solution (1 click solutions - new one actually not yet released) on one of your sample images at ISO 1600.



Thanks,
Ken

Ken Carlno said:

Thanks for sharing the link to your review, nice job!

Here is a medium level noise reduction solution (1 click solutions - new one actually not yet released) on one of your sample images at ISO 1600.



Thanks,
Ken

Click to expand...

No that was not good because of

a) to much lost detail,

b) general blurring,

c) insufficient chroma noise removal.

Topaz Denoise 4 will be released monday, just wait for that. They worked for one year on this and it will be revolutionary. No more worms artifacts like Denoise 3 produced.

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Pushing the Nikon D90
http://floppyrom.deviantart.com/gallery/

It really depends upon the image itself. As an extreme test I tried shooting at ISO 1600 on my P&S (Ricoh GX200). This camera's images aren't usable above ISO 200 (IMO) due to noise so obviously 1600 is just a mess.

ACR 6 didn't do nearly as well as Topaz Denoise at this task. Here is a 100% crop from Denoise where IMO, it did a decent job of cleaning things up. I"m hardly going to use this camera at this ISO now, but I may try it at 400.



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-paul

Ronny

My try





F>

Thank you very much for your thorough test, which clearly shows that, beyond any shadow of doubt (or should I say - Noise - ), Adobe's noise reduction algorithm stacks up against two of the best - Noiseware, NoiseNinja and DeNoise being the other three missing references - third party plug-ins/siblings.

IMO, "Adobe's Noise Reduction Engine" finally is a valid option - It all comes down to a compromise depending on how much detail/color you want to preserve/loose, while cleaning your images inherent sensor noise.

Thus, it looks like third party software noise developers will have a harder time justifying their services from now on...

Best regards,
Pedro