Topaz Denoise colour shift

[Merlin5]

Hi guys. I've edited a raw file long exposure night shot from Lightroom straight into Topaz Denoise. I just want to clean up mild noise in the sky. Here's the problem. Denoise AI cleans up the noise in the sky perfectly but it dulls or changes some of the colours. I've noticed on the Topaz forums others having similar issues but there's no clear solution that I could see. And I can't seem to fix the colours in the HSL/Colour panel after exiting Topaz.

When I tried the AI clear and Low Light options in Topaz, nothing changes with the colours, it's fine. But neither of those remove noise in the sky as well as Denoise AI. Seems odd to me that the Low Light option wouldn't remove as much or even more noise than the standard Denoise AI. So I want to use the Denoise AI option but does anyone know a way to fix the colour changing? For the time being I decided not to use Topaz and have used the lightroom gradient filter on the sky twice over and that's done a decent enough job of cleaning up the noise, but not quite as good as Topaz can do.

By the way, if it's of any help, when the edit options box comes up just before loading Topaz, this is what it's set to:

File Format TIFF

Color Space PRoPhoto RGB

Bit Depth 16 bits

Resolution 300

Compression None

Here is a crop of a small area where it's mostly noticeable. Look at the colour in the windows on the far right building and the ten orangey glows lining the bottom of the brighter building.

Before Topaz



After Topaz Denoise AI.

 

[Phil and Karen]

Hi Merlin5,

A ‘quick fix’ suggestion, if you only want to sort the noise in the sky, apply masking to just that area. If you do this, do you still get the colour shift in the rest of the processed image?

If this works fine, pass the image though DeNoise a second time, but mask the rest of the image and apply either of the other treatments (which don’t cause the colour shift issues).

Having said that, here are two images from the same (raw) file - one given noise reduction using LR, one treated with Topaz DeNoise AI (via LR using: TIFF, ProPhoto RGB, 16-bits, 300 Res, No compression) - and I cannot discern any noticeable colour shift between them.

(The shot was taken at ISO 8000).





I'm not sure where this takes you, but there you go...

Phil

 

[Joachim B]

where in the process did you export? Did you do it first after setting correct exposure, or dit you do it after you were completely done editing your picture? And did you do NR in Lightroom also, on top of Topaz?

I would suggest doing these kind of plug-ins first, and leaving NR in LR on zero, because you don't know exactly how the Topaz result will react with all the other settings in LR.

 

[Merlin5]

where in the process did you export? Did you do it first after setting correct exposure, or dit you do it after you were completely done editing your picture? And did you do NR in Lightroom also, on top of Topaz?

I would suggest doing these kind of plug-ins first, and leaving NR in LR on zero, because you don't know exactly how the Topaz result will react with all the other settings in LR.

Hi Joachim, you're absolutely right! I should have exported before editing and I normally do that. I usually do nothing other than disable sharpening in the detail panel and tick the remove chromatic aberration and profile correction in the lens corrections panel and then run the file through Topaz and then bring it back into LR to do my processing.

I only noticed noise in the sky after finishing my editing in lightroom, so I ran it through Topaz after. I didn't run NR in lightroom though before or after putting it into Topaz.

Ok, I'd better make a note of my LR edits, reset the raw file, run it through Topaz and then put my edits back in. Maybe that will fix it without any colour changes. I'll let you know how I get on. Thanks.

 

[Merlin5]

Hi Merlin5,

A ‘quick fix’ suggestion, if you only want to sort the noise in the sky, apply masking to just that area. If you do this, do you still get the colour shift in the rest of the processed image?

If this works fine, pass the image though DeNoise a second time, but mask the rest of the image and apply either of the other treatments (which don’t cause the colour shift issues).

Having said that, here are two images from the same (raw) file - one given noise reduction using LR, one treated with Topaz DeNoise AI (via LR using: TIFF, ProPhoto RGB, 16-bits, 300 Res, No compression) - and I cannot discern any noticeable colour shift between them.

(The shot was taken at ISO 8000).





I'm not sure where this takes you, but there you go...

Phil

Hi Phil, very cool, I didn't even realise I can do masking in Topaz! I've only ever run files through Topaz and let it do auto NR to the whole image. I've just found this quick tutorial on YouTube

So I'll give that a go before I reset my image just to see how effective the masking is. Yes, I can't see any colour shift in your images either. You probably did your workflow the correct way though as Joachim mentioned to me, you no doubt ran it through Topaz before editing?

 

[Phil and Karen]

Hi Merlin5,

A ‘quick fix’ suggestion, if you only want to sort the noise in the sky, apply masking to just that area. If you do this, do you still get the colour shift in the rest of the processed image?

If this works fine, pass the image though DeNoise a second time, but mask the rest of the image and apply either of the other treatments (which don’t cause the colour shift issues).

Having said that, here are two images from the same (raw) file - one given noise reduction using LR, one treated with Topaz DeNoise AI (via LR using: TIFF, ProPhoto RGB, 16-bits, 300 Res, No compression) - and I cannot discern any noticeable colour shift between them.

(The shot was taken at ISO 8000).





I'm not sure where this takes you, but there you go...

Phil

Hi Phil, very cool, I didn't even realise I can do masking in Topaz! I've only ever run files through Topaz and let it do auto NR to the whole image. I've just found this quick tutorial on YouTube

So I'll give that a go before I reset my image just to see how effective the masking is. Yes, I can't see any colour shift in your images either. You probably did your workflow the correct way though as Joachim mentioned to me, you no doubt ran it through Topaz before editing?

Hi Merlin5,

The only things I did with the Topaz bound image before sending it from LR was to apply the correct colour/ lens profile, adjust white balance (using the chart itself) and exposure and also apply Colour NR 25 (and therefore no Colour NR was applied in DeNoise AI).

With the LR only version, the same settings were applied apart from the NR/ Sharpening was carried out using LR instead of DeNoise AI.

With some very noisy images, I run an image through DeNoise AI twice - the first time to achieve a pleasing result with the subject, the second using a mask so I can apply a more substantial NR treatment to just the background. (Sometimes this works, other times it’s disastrous - Experimentation and learning are part of the fun... :-D ).

I use the Auto suggestions as a start point and will usually refine the settings from there.

Phil

 

[Regor250]

Can't you just ust mask out the sky, apply the denoising model of choice, reverse the mask, apply a different model to the other part?

 

[waysted]

Hi Merlin5,

Can you check and make sure the Color Noise Reduction option is set to 0 and see what you get.





I've found it best to do any colour noise reduction in lightroom and leave this at 0 in Denoise AI (V3.0.3). Anything above about 10 desaturates the colour.

If the color noise is bad and I need to use Topaz then AI Clear is the only method that works on the images I've tried. You could mask and do two passes, one with Denoise AI and one with AI Clear.

 

[Merlin5]

Hi Merlin5,

Can you check and make sure the Color Noise Reduction option is set to 0 and see what you get.



I've found it best to do any colour noise reduction in lightroom and leave this at 0 in Denoise AI (V3.0.3). Anything above about 10 desaturates the colour.

If the color noise is bad and I need to use Topaz then AI Clear is the only method that works on the images I've tried. You could mask and do two passes, one with Denoise AI and one with AI Clear.

That's interesting, I can't remember what the color noise reduction is set to but I'll try that. Might make the difference. Thanks.

 

[Sagittarius]

Hi Merlin5,

Can you check and make sure the Color Noise Reduction option is set to 0 and see what you get.



I've found it best to do any colour noise reduction in lightroom and leave this at 0 in Denoise AI (V3.0.3). Anything above about 10 desaturates the colour.

If the color noise is bad and I need to use Topaz then AI Clear is the only method that works on the images I've tried. You could mask and do two passes, one with Denoise AI and one with AI Clear.

That's interesting, I can't remember what the color noise reduction is set to but I'll try that. Might make the difference. Thanks.

I've noticed that applying color noise reduction de-saturates colors. The bigger amount the more de-saturation.

--
Best regards

 

[Erik Baumgartner]

If you use Denoise directly on the RAW file it will be doing the demosaicing and applying its own color profile which will account for the color discrepancy. I found using this functionality to be quite subpar with my Fuji RAFs. I export to DeNoise from LR in tiff form.

 

[Merlin5]

Hi Merlin5,

Can you check and make sure the Color Noise Reduction option is set to 0 and see what you get.



I've found it best to do any colour noise reduction in lightroom and leave this at 0 in Denoise AI (V3.0.3). Anything above about 10 desaturates the colour.

If the color noise is bad and I need to use Topaz then AI Clear is the only method that works on the images I've tried. You could mask and do two passes, one with Denoise AI and one with AI Clear.

That's interesting, I can't remember what the color noise reduction is set to but I'll try that. Might make the difference. Thanks.

I've noticed that applying color noise reduction de-saturates colors. The bigger amount the more de-saturation.

Well this is odd. My color noise reduction was set to 36, so clearly too high. However, for some reason I can't get my lightroom edited image to desaturate anymore even at 36, regardless of any option in Topaz. I'll have to reset the image and try again and then see if it desaturates and then reduce the colour NR to see if it stops the desaturation.

 

[Merlin5]

If you use Denoise directly on the RAW file it will be doing the demosaicing and applying its own color profile which will account for the color discrepancy. I found using this functionality to be quite subpar with my Fuji RAFs. I export to DeNoise from LR in tiff form.

Hmm, but I exported my raw file from LR in tiff form and then it desaturated the colours. Well, I'll continue working on it until I get the correct result.

 

[Erik Baumgartner]

If you use Denoise directly on the RAW file it will be doing the demosaicing and applying its own color profile which will account for the color discrepancy. I found using this functionality to be quite subpar with my Fuji RAFs. I export to DeNoise from LR in tiff form.

Hmm, but I exported my raw file from LR in tiff form and then it desaturated the colours. Well, I'll continue working on it until I get the correct result.

If you’re exporting a tiff to DeNoise there really shouldn’t be any color shift unless you are applying a ton of color NR. I don’t think that’s likely the problem, but it could definitely wash things out. You definitely want to use as little as possible.

 

[waysted]

Well this is odd. My color noise reduction was set to 36, so clearly too high. However, for some reason I can't get my lightroom edited image to desaturate anymore even at 36, regardless of any option in Topaz. I'll have to reset the image and try again and then see if it desaturates and then reduce the colour NR to see if it stops the desaturation.

This is very odd. I've just tried it again with some new images (deleted the images I was testing on yesterday so can't double check with them) and the colour saturation is OK to about 50, after that it desaturates gradually towards 100. Yesterday it was pretty bad by about 25.

I really have no idea what has caused the change.

 

[Regor250]

Well this is odd. My color noise reduction was set to 36, so clearly too high. However, for some reason I can't get my lightroom edited image to desaturate anymore even at 36, regardless of any option in Topaz. I'll have to reset the image and try again and then see if it desaturates and then reduce the colour NR to see if it stops the desaturation.

This is very odd. I've just tried it again with some new images (deleted the images I was testing on yesterday so can't double check with them) and the colour saturation is OK to about 50, after that it desaturates gradually towards 100. Yesterday it was pretty bad by about 25.

I really have no idea what has caused the change.

It only desaturate reds and green, so depending on your image it may have more or less of an effect. It is only useful when grey areas contain red and green color patches, otherwise set to zero as it serves no purpose.

 

[Glen Barrington]

I get MUCH better results by waiting to use the Topaz tools till AFTER conversion to TIFF (Which I use as an intermediate, bit mapped, working file).

My ACDSee workflow is as follows. I should think it would remain valid for any other raw to presentation workflow.

1. Do as much as possible from within the (Raw) Development tab, with the exception of sharpening, and denoising. I will, occasionally, dos some low-level noise and sharpening control if the photo is marginally acceptable, and I need to see if it is worth continuing further.
2. I then send the developed raw image to the ACDSee "Edit" Tab. This is, in effect, a conversion to a tiff based proprietary working file format which I can save or convert to any other format. It is here that I do any layers, or any other bit mapped editing.
3. I invoke the Topaz denoise and sharpening tools from within the ACDSee "Edit" tab. I never thought about it, but I assume ACDSee is smart enough to formally convert the proprietary file format to a true tiff file before sending it to Topaz, and reassociating the returning image with the file name and database entry of the sent file.
4. I then decide to move on to printing, other presentation, and/or archival as "Done"

This workflow gives me excellent and consistent results. I also have Topaz Studio 2, but I prefer the ACDSee workflow, since Studio 2 doesn't have a front-end file manager, and I'd have to use ACDSee as the Studio 2 front-end anyway, and ACDSee has much more fine control over many of the controls.

 

[aegfoto]

Small question regarding the sharpening in Topaz denoise. Do I set this slider to zero if I am going to use topaz sharpen in the end?

 

[Erik Baumgartner]

Small question regarding the sharpening in Topaz denoise. Do I set this slider to zero if I am going to use topaz sharpen in the end?

Yeah, I probably would. Frankly though, I almost never use Sharpen A.I. unless there is a actual problem (genuinely out of focus or motion blur), Denoise A.I. can sharpen things up very nicely all by itself.

 

[Sagittarius]

Small question regarding the sharpening in Topaz denoise. Do I set this slider to zero if I am going to use topaz sharpen in the end?

I do not set it to 0. After DNA i look at the image and decide if I need Sharpen AI. Sometimes I do, sometimes I do not.