Panasonic FZ200 - noise removal

Topaz DeNoise 5 is very good to reduce picture noise without affecting detail, if you know how to use it.


original image


original image enlarged


image after noise removed


image enlarged after noise removed



My personal settings i use for Topaz DeNoise:

Overall Strength: 0.15

Adjust Shadow: -1.00

Adjust Highlight: -1.00

Adjust Color - Red: -1.00

Adjust Color - Blue: -1.00

Clean Color: 0.00

Correct Black Level: 1.00

Recover Detali: 0.30

Reduce Blur: 0.15

Add Grain: 0.00



This is for ISO 100. For other bigger ISO settings, i increase only overall strength on Topaz DeNoise.

From my tests this method works best with standard photo style with 0 contrast, -1 sharpness, 0 saturation, 0 noise reduction.

I'm interested to know if you have better method of removing noise. Thanks

A subject of general interest to many here. An example of effectiveness at, say, ISO800 or ISO1600 would be more meaningful. At ISO100 noise levels are not usually an issue. Also, original in RAW or JPEG? If JPEG what were settings Saturation, NR, etc?

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Stuart
Latest uploads http://www.flickr.com/photos/dieselgolfer/
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Aurora Borealis https://www.flickr.com/photos/dieselgolfer/albums/72157663549812064

Thank-you. Would very much like to see noise removal at ISO 400 and above. Thanks also for your settings.

David Dollevoet

Anyway... i always try to avoid shooting with FZ200 over iso800

I'm not a noise removal expert, but I've heard that Photo Ninja, Topaz Denoise, and NeatImage are among the best tools for this purpose

I have the FZ200 as well and I usually use NeatImage at its default settings and automatic profile selection when noise removal is required. For your example ISO 800 image, however, NeatImage using defaults couldn't match your Topaz result. Perhaps if I knew what changes to make from its defaults NeatImage could do better than it did for me. NeatImage did note for this example that only a small area was acceptable for its noise profile, which usually limits the noise reduction performance. I tried selecting my own, larger areas, but for each NeatImage complaineed that there was clipping of data in one or more color channels - again limiting its result.

Your test certainly supports the notion that Topaz Denoise is among the best noise removal tools available and can certainly improve results from the FZ200. Nice work!

Serban Claudiu said:

Anyway... i always try to avoid shooting with FZ200 over iso800

Click to expand...

I used to have ISO Max set to 400 on my FZ200 but found that too limiting so I bumped it up to 800 a few months ago. Noise removal does a fairly good job and definitely allows ISO 800 to rival or better native ISO 400 shots.

Maybe it is just me but I do not see a great improvement using the noise removal.

estero said:

Maybe it is just me but I do not see a great improvement using the noise removal.

Click to expand...

The improvement can often be somewhat subtle. Here's a full-res crop from the ISO 800 examples where the top half is the original while the bottom half comes from the denoised version. Viewed at Original Size, you can see that the grainy noise in the walls and pipe has been reduced.


ISO 800 example with bottom half denoised using Topaz Denoise

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Bruce
You learn something new every time you press the shutter

This technique is useful when making crop. Here's an example.






After noise removal

Also, birds shooting involve crop sometimes when editing, because often zoom is not enough.