New noise reduction king!

How many of the pro photographers shoot high ISO images in low light conditions, especially action shots? I'd be glad to pay 300$ for it if it'd whoop Neat Image. I'm not concerned how much a piece of software costs, just that it fits into a professionally designed workflow. Noise Ninja doesn't fit the bill yet as it's not a plugin, hence multi-layered workflows such as this: http://www.vizualgroove.com/digitalimaging/3200ISO1.htm
won't work.

Email me if you are interested in more indepth ideas regarding the use of your prog in a more editing based workflow.
Keep up the good work,
VG

PictureCode said:

Glad your getting good results.

I'm happy to debate pricing. It's a tricky thing to decide. The
Pro price was based on advice from a number of professional
photographers and the owner of the leading camera store in my area.
The clear consensus was that $99 was not a problem for pros if the
product does its job.

I have considered offering an "Enthusiast" version at an
intermediate price. The issue there is figuring out a feature set
that is meaningful to that segment of users without taking too much
of a bite out of the professional sales. If there's a big group
of potential customers that are "stuck" between the Home and Pro
editions, I'd like to try to find a solution.

What do you think would be a fair price? How would you describe
yourself (enthusiast, pro, etc.?) What features do you require?
I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks,
Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Dmitry K said:

Pro version IMO is overpriced, though.

Dmitry

Kiat said:

Check out Noise Ninja (tacky name huh?) at http://www.picturecode.com

I've tried a couple of noise reduction programs (such as Quantum
mechanic and DigitalGEM) and found that Neat Image would blow them
ALL away, especially for very noisy images.

But Noise Ninja seems to do a slightly better job (quite surprised
really). The program still has a few bugs (I can't build a noise
profile!) and the interface needs a bit of tweaking but this is one
program to keep an eye on!

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

PictureCode said:

I'd love to hear from other folks who use Noise Ninja for film scans.
What specific film/scanner combination do you use, and how well
does Noise Ninja cope with it?

Click to expand...

I have a large collection of thirty year old colour slides that I am slowly scanning in. They are mostly pretty poor and faded but have sentimental value. They are on Kodachrome. Since they are so poor I bought only a cheap slide scanner Microtec Filmscan. As one would expect the results are rather definitely noisy! I have not attempted a profile since I found that the Witch one does a job which can really only be described as superb. I'll post examples should anyone be interested. I've always been a great fan of NEAT but for the particular job I have described there is no doubt that it is inferior.

--
Anthony Game

PictureCode said:

Also, thanks for the heads up about the "hidden feature".

Click to expand...

I'd think pretty carefully about removing it if I were you. It allows a direct comparison which otherwise would not be possible. And the real enthusiasts who will probably be your customers are not likely to cheat you on a permanent basis.

--
Anthony Game

I too gave Noise Ninja a try (demo version) and like many others here I was quite impressed. Noise removal is at least as good as Neat Image, and it's much faster. Bravo!

As someone pointed out, it would certainly be more useable if a plugin version were available, but we can work around that for a while.

One thing that we cannot work around, however, is file format support.
I tried using JPEG images captured from a Minolta 7HI that were shot in
Adobe RGB, and therefore have an embedded color profile. NoiseNinja
refused to open them, saying they were an unsupported format.

Lots of people shoot with embedded profiles if their camera supports it, simply because it gives superior results. If Noise Ninja can't read (and respect) embedded color profiles like Adobe RGB, and it can't be used as

a plugin, then there's no way for me to use it on my images, short of converting to sRGB, which I am of course unwilling to do for obvious reasons. (I suppose I could go through a multi-step process to strip and

add the profile without converting the data, but then the process would take longer than NeatImage.)

It's the start of a great product. I hope it will soon support Adobe RGB, so that I can use it.

Will

PictureCode said:

I'm the developer of Noise Ninja. Feel free to send me email
through my dpreview profile if you have any questions, feedback, or
bug reports.

I'm glad to hear the favorable comparisons. I have a lot of
respect for
NeatImage, so it's good to hear that Noise Ninja is pushing the
envelope instead of just adding to the clutter.

I also want to squash any bugs quickly. The product has performed
flawlessly during testing, so please help me figure out what's
going on.
I'll try to contact those of you who have mentioned problems.

Cheers,
Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Kiat said:

Check out Noise Ninja (tacky name huh?) at http://www.picturecode.com

I've tried a couple of noise reduction programs (such as Quantum
mechanic and DigitalGEM) and found that Neat Image would blow them
ALL away, especially for very noisy images.

But Noise Ninja seems to do a slightly better job (quite surprised
really). The program still has a few bugs (I can't build a noise
profile!) and the interface needs a bit of tweaking but this is one
program to keep an eye on!

Click to expand...

--
Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Click to expand...

PictureCode said:

While it's not a substitute for a plug-in, you can drag images from
PhotoShop or another application and drop them into Noise Ninja.
At least it saves a couple of steps.

Click to expand...

If there is a way to drag part of an image a layer with transparent areas into Ninja and then drag the result back into the original image you can compete with the NI plug-in I'll look at it. Otherwise I'll wait for the plug-in version before I look at Ninja.

--
JJMack

Hi Will,

Thanks, I will add this to my to-do list. I agree, it's an oversight on my part.

Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Will Rose said:

As someone pointed out, it would certainly be more useable if a
plugin version were available, but we can work around that for a
while.

One thing that we cannot work around, however, is file format support.
I tried using JPEG images captured from a Minolta 7HI that were
shot in
Adobe RGB, and therefore have an embedded color profile. NoiseNinja
refused to open them, saying they were an unsupported format.

Lots of people shoot with embedded profiles if their camera
supports it, simply because it gives superior results. If Noise
Ninja can't read (and respect) embedded color profiles like Adobe
RGB, and it can't be used as
a plugin, then there's no way for me to use it on my images, short
of converting to sRGB, which I am of course unwilling to do for
obvious reasons. (I suppose I could go through a multi-step
process to strip and
add the profile without converting the data, but then the process
would take longer than NeatImage.)

It's the start of a great product. I hope it will soon support
Adobe RGB, so that I can use it.

Will

PictureCode said:

I'm the developer of Noise Ninja. Feel free to send me email
through my dpreview profile if you have any questions, feedback, or
bug reports.

I'm glad to hear the favorable comparisons. I have a lot of
respect for
NeatImage, so it's good to hear that Noise Ninja is pushing the
envelope instead of just adding to the clutter.

I also want to squash any bugs quickly. The product has performed
flawlessly during testing, so please help me figure out what's
going on.
I'll try to contact those of you who have mentioned problems.

Cheers,
Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Kiat said:

Check out Noise Ninja (tacky name huh?) at http://www.picturecode.com

I've tried a couple of noise reduction programs (such as Quantum
mechanic and DigitalGEM) and found that Neat Image would blow them
ALL away, especially for very noisy images.

But Noise Ninja seems to do a slightly better job (quite surprised
really). The program still has a few bugs (I can't build a noise
profile!) and the interface needs a bit of tweaking but this is one
program to keep an eye on!

Click to expand...

--
Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I sencond your findings and have e review online:

http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_25/essay.html

Uwe
http://www.outbackphoto.com/booklets/booklets.html

The author plans a Mac version.

Uwe
http://www.outbackphoto.com/booklets/booklets.html

Mike Warren said:

Kiat said:

Check out Noise Ninja (tacky name huh?) at http://www.picturecode.com

I've tried a couple of noise reduction programs (such as Quantum
mechanic and DigitalGEM) and found that Neat Image would blow them
ALL away, especially for very noisy images.

But Noise Ninja seems to do a slightly better job (quite surprised
really). The program still has a few bugs (I can't build a noise
profile!) and the interface needs a bit of tweaking but this is one
program to keep an eye on!

Click to expand...

--
Mike
---
http://www.pbase.com/mikew714

Click to expand...

VG said:

16 and 3200 ISO images are much different dogs than 800 and below.
VG

Click to expand...

This might be the case for a DSLR but on a small P&S (like my A70), ISO400 produces a LOT of noise. From the images I've seen, my A70 produces MORE noise at ISO400 than a Canon 10D at ISO1600. sigh

VG said:

Kiat said:

VG said:

It doesn't handle large, high ISO images as well as Neat Image. It
has difficulty with high frequency artifacts.

Click to expand...

Really? I tried both Neat Image and Noise Ninja on an ISO400 (very
noisy) photo I took with my A70.

The included A70 profile worked perfectly and the results were
noticeably better than Neat Image.

VG said:

It doesn't function
as a plugin for Photoshop. Doesn't allow custom camera profiles.
Noise profiling not as precise as Neat Image. More expensive than
Neat Image.
Anytime I hear someone mention 'plastic look' in Neat Image, it is
always an indicator that they don't understand how to use the
program.
Noise Ninja has promise but still needs a lot of work for serious use.

Click to expand...

Yes the interface is veru clunky and the program keeps crashing on
one of my PCs. Not worth the money yet but when v1.1 comes out (or
better yet v2), I may upgrade from Neat Image.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I agree with VG, a "pro" version really should have a PS plug-in. This would justify the $99 price-tag.

In my view, the enthusiast version should sell for around $59. It should have 16-bit processing/output and a slightly crippled batch processor (limited to 10 jobs maybe).

PictureCode said:

I have considered offering an "Enthusiast" version at an
intermediate price. The issue there is figuring out a feature set
that is meaningful to that segment of users without taking too much
of a bite out of the professional sales. If there's a big group
of potential customers that are "stuck" between the Home and Pro
editions, I'd like to try to find a solution.

What do you think would be a fair price? How would you describe
yourself (enthusiast, pro, etc.?) What features do you require?
I'm open to suggestions.

Thanks,
Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Dmitry K said:

Pro version IMO is overpriced, though.

Dmitry

Kiat said:

Check out Noise Ninja (tacky name huh?) at http://www.picturecode.com

I've tried a couple of noise reduction programs (such as Quantum
mechanic and DigitalGEM) and found that Neat Image would blow them
ALL away, especially for very noisy images.

But Noise Ninja seems to do a slightly better job (quite surprised
really). The program still has a few bugs (I can't build a noise
profile!) and the interface needs a bit of tweaking but this is one
program to keep an eye on!

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

PictureCode said:

Hi Dmitry,

Glad your getting good results.

I'm happy to debate pricing. It's a tricky thing to decide. The
Pro price was based on advice from a number of professional
photographers and the owner of the leading camera store in my area.
The clear consensus was that $99 was not a problem for pros if the
product does its job.

Click to expand...

IMO your mistake is that you count only pros. You may earn much more having affordable price from millions of amateurs who now are buying digicams like crazy (including myself). This is really huge and growing market but setting relativelyy high price you're at the risk to lose it.

Let's look at the price also from another point of view. I use PSP as my primary graphics editor. Bellieve me this is very complicated program with hunderds of basic functions and countless number of their combinations, developed for many years by a strong and big team; all in all it costs $99 -- exactly as you want for your pro version. So every user of PSP indeed would doubt whether adding a single (even coolest) function to PSP power worth doubling the price.

I'm not marketing expert indeed and I didn't run any surveys on this matter, so my estimation is very subjective, but for me the reasonable price for standalone app would be about $20 (8-bit TIFF + limited or no batch support) and about $40 for pro (+16-bit TIFF, +color spaces, +unlimited batch, +???). Plug-in may add $10-15 or so.

As of functionality of NN I didn't yet get deep enough into it; may be I may suggest something later. What's already obvious is that file browser with thumbnail preview will be big advantage. Always wondered why NI doesn't have it BTW.

Should you provide an email to contact you I may submit my wish-list later. Probably forum isn't the best place for that.

Congrats with the cool product

Dmitry

Jim, I'm glad t hear that NI is going to have some competition. I will follow this with great interest. Neat has some issues...

I speak as a professional studio and event photographer shooting 100% digital. I probably would shell out $100.00 for a "better" noise reduction program, but I wouldn't even consider doing so unless it was a photoshop plugin. My world is filed with actions and batch programs. To jump out of PS in another program would strike a major blow to my workflow. Its not untypical for me (and plenty like me) to process a couple of thousand images in a week.

Keep us informed. Robert

Well Jim, I think this view is something very typical for pro. Therefore until you deliver a plug-in version your market is (advanced) amateurs. Hence the price. :-(

Dmitry

robert east said:

Jim, I'm glad t hear that NI is going to have some competition. I
will follow this with great interest. Neat has some issues...

I speak as a professional studio and event photographer shooting
100% digital. I probably would shell out $100.00 for a "better"
noise reduction program, but I wouldn't even consider doing so
unless it was a photoshop plugin. My world is filed with actions
and batch programs. To jump out of PS in another program would
strike a major blow to my workflow. Its not untypical for me (and
plenty like me) to process a couple of thousand images in a week.

Keep us informed. Robert

Click to expand...

Robert,

of course Noise Ninja needs a PS plugin.

But on the other side you probably batch process a lot of your images and so you can do with Noise Ninja.

Uwe

robert east said:

Jim, I'm glad t hear that NI is going to have some competition. I
will follow this with great interest. Neat has some issues...

I speak as a professional studio and event photographer shooting
100% digital. I probably would shell out $100.00 for a "better"
noise reduction program, but I wouldn't even consider doing so
unless it was a photoshop plugin. My world is filed with actions
and batch programs. To jump out of PS in another program would
strike a major blow to my workflow. Its not untypical for me (and
plenty like me) to process a couple of thousand images in a week.

Keep us informed. Robert

Click to expand...

I notice a splash at program startup teasing me about the disabling of SSE optimations. Like a good deal of techo-enthusiasts, I use an AMD based PC that I built myself. My next PC will likewise be an AMD, since I could use the money on better things (like, your program perhaps?). Any chance of adding some AMD-specific speed enhancements, or will we be left to suffer instruction set envy?

So far, I like what I'm seeing. Looks to have a very gentle, sophisticated touch even when used 'straight out of the box' without customization (using pre-made profile for A70). To date, I haven't relied on much of any noise reduction (A70@ISO50 = smooth and creamy, in vast majority of situations).. but, I recently began searching for something to iron out the kinks on night shots that I've intentionally overexposed and some higher ISO shots I've started to allow myself to take (hate to give up the ISO50 quality).

Just a brief spell with your product gives me much hope. Maybe I can have my cake and eat it, too. It (so far) seems to strike a very nice balance between noise reduction and image detail retention. Keep up the good work, and give a thought to us AMD fans out here... (or, am I alone on this?.. can't be.. too many techies build with AMD and these forums are full of 'geeks').

-icmp

PictureCode said:

Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Mike Warren said:

Kiat said:

Check out Noise Ninja (tacky name huh?) at http://www.picturecode.com

I've tried a couple of noise reduction programs (such as Quantum
mechanic and DigitalGEM) and found that Neat Image would blow them
ALL away, especially for very noisy images.

But Noise Ninja seems to do a slightly better job (quite surprised
really). The program still has a few bugs (I can't build a noise
profile!) and the interface needs a bit of tweaking but this is one
program to keep an eye on!

Click to expand...

--
Mike
---
http://www.pbase.com/mikew714

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Hi,

Are you using an older Athlon (i.e. pre-XP)? The Athlon XP supports SSE instructions. Also, I have read that some motherboards need a BIOS
update to recognize SSE with the Athlon XP.

A friend of mine has tried Noise Ninja on an Athlon XP and it indeed recognized the SSE instructions. (He also tried an older Athlon, and SSE was disabled.)

Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad to hear your getting good results with Noise Ninja.

Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

icmp said:

So far, I like what I'm seeing. Looks to have a very gentle,
sophisticated touch even when used 'straight out of the box'
without customization (using pre-made profile for A70). To date, I
haven't relied on much of any noise reduction (A70@ISO50 = smooth
and creamy, in vast majority of situations).. but, I recently began
searching for something to iron out the kinks on night shots that
I've intentionally overexposed and some higher ISO shots I've
started to allow myself to take (hate to give up the ISO50 quality).

Just a brief spell with your product gives me much hope. Maybe I
can have my cake and eat it, too. It (so far) seems to strike a
very nice balance between noise reduction and image detail
retention. Keep up the good work, and give a thought to us AMD
fans out here... (or, am I alone on this?.. can't be.. too many
techies build with AMD and these forums are full of 'geeks').

-icmp

PictureCode said:

Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Mike Warren said:

Kiat said:

Check out Noise Ninja (tacky name huh?) at http://www.picturecode.com

I've tried a couple of noise reduction programs (such as Quantum
mechanic and DigitalGEM) and found that Neat Image would blow them
ALL away, especially for very noisy images.

But Noise Ninja seems to do a slightly better job (quite surprised
really). The program still has a few bugs (I can't build a noise
profile!) and the interface needs a bit of tweaking but this is one
program to keep an eye on!

Click to expand...

--
Mike
---
http://www.pbase.com/mikew714

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Will Rose said:

One thing that we cannot work around, however, is file format support.

Click to expand...

I tried using JPEG images captured from a Minolta 7HI that were shot in
Adobe RGB, and therefore have an embedded color profile. NoiseNinja
refused to open them, saying they were an unsupported format.

For a quality workflow you should convert the JPGs to TIFF anyway. Also here there are no profiles supported in Noise Ninja. But as you know your working space you will get a warning in PS and assign Adobe RGB.

I hope Noise Ninja overcomes these issues.

Uwe

Will Rose said:

As someone pointed out, it would certainly be more useable if a
plugin version were available, but we can work around that for a
while.

One thing that we cannot work around, however, is file format support.
I tried using JPEG images captured from a Minolta 7HI that were
shot in
Adobe RGB, and therefore have an embedded color profile. NoiseNinja
refused to open them, saying they were an unsupported format.

Lots of people shoot with embedded profiles if their camera
supports it, simply because it gives superior results. If Noise
Ninja can't read (and respect) embedded color profiles like Adobe
RGB, and it can't be used as
a plugin, then there's no way for me to use it on my images, short
of converting to sRGB, which I am of course unwilling to do for
obvious reasons. (I suppose I could go through a multi-step
process to strip and
add the profile without converting the data, but then the process
would take longer than NeatImage.)

It's the start of a great product. I hope it will soon support
Adobe RGB, so that I can use it.

Will

PictureCode said:

I'm the developer of Noise Ninja. Feel free to send me email
through my dpreview profile if you have any questions, feedback, or
bug reports.

I'm glad to hear the favorable comparisons. I have a lot of
respect for
NeatImage, so it's good to hear that Noise Ninja is pushing the
envelope instead of just adding to the clutter.

I also want to squash any bugs quickly. The product has performed
flawlessly during testing, so please help me figure out what's
going on.
I'll try to contact those of you who have mentioned problems.

Cheers,
Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Kiat said:

Check out Noise Ninja (tacky name huh?) at http://www.picturecode.com

I've tried a couple of noise reduction programs (such as Quantum
mechanic and DigitalGEM) and found that Neat Image would blow them
ALL away, especially for very noisy images.

But Noise Ninja seems to do a slightly better job (quite surprised
really). The program still has a few bugs (I can't build a noise
profile!) and the interface needs a bit of tweaking but this is one
program to keep an eye on!

Click to expand...

--
Jim Christian
PictureCode
http://www.picturecode.com

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

I agree with Dimitri... There is no pro version without a Photoshop
plugin, so you're currently mispriced.

Here's what I would suggest:

-Home version, $29: 8 bit, no plugin, no batch

-Enthusiast version: $39: 8 bit, no plugin, batch limited to 10

-Pro version: $59: 16 bit, no plugin, unlimited batch

-Plugin: $25 add-on to enthusiast (8bit) or Pro (16bit) version.

(This is equivalent to NeatImage pricing)

Noise Ninja is a new program, and I think it would be a mistake to price
yourself higher than Neat Image right now. NoiseNinja is faster than
NeatImage, but you need to give people a reason to switch. If NI is priced
at $75 for the pro version, as it is, and you price Ninja at $100, you're
offering a trade-off. That's not what a new product needs. If you are the
same price as Neat Image, AND you're faster, people will buy your product
hands down. Better speed at the same price is the hook.

And don't worry about will people buy the pro version if they can get
the plugin as an add-on to the enthusiast version: they will. Pros
really really want that 16 bit mode. They shoot Raw and use 16 bit
manipulations in Photoshop, so they have to have the 16 bit support.

Cheers,

Will

Several good points made by Dmitry, robert, & others. I'll take it all into
consideration.

-- Jim

Dmitry K said:

Dmitry

robert east said:

Jim, I'm glad t hear that NI is going to have some competition. I
will follow this with great interest. Neat has some issues...

I speak as a professional studio and event photographer shooting
100% digital. I probably would shell out $100.00 for a "better"
noise reduction program, but I wouldn't even consider doing so
unless it was a photoshop plugin. My world is filed with actions
and batch programs. To jump out of PS in another program would
strike a major blow to my workflow. Its not untypical for me (and
plenty like me) to process a couple of thousand images in a week.

Keep us informed. Robert

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Jim, haven given some thought to this, and IMHO, you might price yourself out of the market. At $20 to $40 you will get the attention of the of the advanced ametures, and these folks really put a program through its paces. I site the people on this forum as an example !!

I think that I can speak for other pros; new software isn't an experiment, it needs to perfom. Quetions I ask: Will the computer be stable (is this good code), is the software intuitve (can my employees and assistants use the program without hours of training), how long has the software vendor been in business (i.e. will they be around for the next generation of "whatever", will Adobe include the features in the next generation of PS, and the bottom line (will this software contribure to the saleabiliy of my product).

Wanna get rich Jim? Develop your program to the point that Adobe purchases the rights for the next generation.

Code on my friend and warm regards, Robert