Options for Denoising High ISO RAW Files

[Bob A L]

But the unedited version is enlarged much more than the other one. Wouldn't that give it a disadvantage in sharpness and noise?

 

[sybersitizen]

But the unedited version is enlarged much more than the other one.

No, it isn't. It's just cropped differently.

Wouldn't that give it a disadvantage in sharpness and noise?

You're supposed to look at the full size versions at 100%.

 

[baker123]

But the unedited version is enlarged much more than the other one. Wouldn't that give it a disadvantage in sharpness and noise?

They are cropped slightly differently, but both are 100% crops (full resolution). Make sure you click on "original", which should open it in a new tab, then click on the image so that your cursor shows a "-" (minus sign). Clicking on the image toggles to full size.

 

[Zeee]

But the unedited version is enlarged much more than the other one. Wouldn't that give it a disadvantage in sharpness and noise?

That makes a difference

 

[JxM]

@baker123 - I have two issues with Topaz: First, they were still selling upgrade licenses for the discrete products (Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI, and Gigapixel AI) when they had slowed or stopped development and knew there'd be few meaningful updates forthcoming. I suppose it's not technically fraud, but it sure feels it: The regular updates stop and shortly thereafter, an entirely new replacement product appears (Photo AI). Topaz isn't the only software company that pulls this trick. (Serif pulled a similar trick by offering free lifetime updates for V1 of their Affinity products, literally up until the moment they changed their website to hype V2. Buy V1 earlier today? Well, it's obsolete and incompatible with V2, and there's no upgrade path, so just buy it all again because at least we're not Adobe.)

My second Topaz complaint is, their main demo photo for Sharpen AI was an "out of focus" owl close-up, which makes the software seem miraculous. Yet if you examine the image, rather than being "out of focus" in the common sense of the term, it appears to have been intentionally manipulated and pre-blurred. If you have Sharpen AI, look for C:\ProgramData\Topaz Labs LLC\Topaz Sharpen AI\tgrc\Out of Focus Sample.png on your hard drive. FWIW, I've never had any Topaz product make a photograph that I'd term blurry or out of focus actually usably sharp. Nowhere near it.

All that said, this is about noise reduction, so here's a photo of Spot, a little wild raccoon recovering from mange. I stripped the EXIF because I'm paranoid, but this was shot with a Nikon Z9 at ISO 22,800, f8 @ 1/320. She's chewing, producing a lot of facial contortions, which translates to motion blur if you don't use a relatively high shutter speed. The RAW-to-JPEG was processed in Nikon's freebie NX Studio, which is slow but feature-compatible with their cameras. All camera/software noise reduction is turned off:


Raw processed in Nikon NX Studio. Neutral profile with no additional sharpening and all noise reduction off.

Putting the JPEG through the Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0 "Autopilot" produces noise reduction plus sharpening, and this is the result:


JPEG after Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0

The Topaz Photo AI appears softer to me. Which one is "better" probably depends on how far you zoom/crop and who you ask. I could probably get better Topaz results if I tweaked things, but there's just too many settings to futz with given how slowly it refreshes (Ryzen 1700X, Radeon 6700XT w/12GB, 64GB system RAM), and the lack of an efficient way to compare or save tweaks. Plus, I'm paying for an automatic AI solution, and shouldn't have to tweak in the first place.

This image is copyrighted, but feel free to use, manipulate, ignore or repost within this thread. Repost it elsewhere or use it commercially, and I'll hunt you down and give you rabies.

 

[baker123]

@baker123 - I have two issues with Topaz: First, they were still selling upgrade licenses for the discrete products (Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI, and Gigapixel AI) when they had slowed or stopped development and knew there'd be few meaningful updates forthcoming. I suppose it's not technically fraud, but it sure feels it: The regular updates stop and shortly thereafter, an entirely new replacement product appears (Photo AI). Topaz isn't the only software company that pulls this trick. (Serif pulled a similar trick by offering free lifetime updates for V1 of their Affinity products, literally up until the moment they changed their website to hype V2. Buy V1 earlier today? Well, it's obsolete and incompatible with V2, and there's no upgrade path, so just buy it all again because at least we're not Adobe.)

I vaguely remember this, appreciate the reminder.

My second Topaz complaint is, their main demo photo for Sharpen AI was an "out of focus" owl close-up, which makes the software seem miraculous. Yet if you examine the image, rather than being "out of focus" in the common sense of the term, it appears to have been intentionally manipulated and pre-blurred. If you have Sharpen AI, look for C:\ProgramData\Topaz Labs LLC\Topaz Sharpen AI\tgrc\Out of Focus Sample.png on your hard drive. FWIW, I've never had any Topaz product make a photograph that I'd term blurry or out of focus actually usably sharp. Nowhere near it.

The only one I used was "Focus Magic", which actually works well. It gives you good controls, but requires some time to use properly.

All that said, this is about noise reduction, so here's a photo of Spot, a little wild raccoon recovering from mange. I stripped the EXIF because I'm paranoid, but this was shot with a Nikon Z9 at ISO 22,800, f8 @ 1/320. She's chewing, producing a lot of facial contortions, which translates to motion blur if you don't use a relatively high shutter speed. The RAW-to-JPEG was processed in Nikon's freebie NX Studio, which is slow but feature-compatible with their cameras. All camera/software noise reduction is turned off:


Raw processed in Nikon NX Studio. Neutral profile with no additional sharpening and all noise reduction off.

Putting the JPEG through the Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0 "Autopilot" produces noise reduction plus sharpening, and this is the result:


JPEG after Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0

The Topaz Photo AI appears softer to me. Which one is "better" probably depends on how far you zoom/crop and who you ask. I could probably get better Topaz results if I tweaked things, but there's just too many settings to futz with given how slowly it refreshes (Ryzen 1700X, Radeon 6700XT w/12GB, 64GB system RAM), and the lack of an efficient way to compare or save tweaks. Plus, I'm paying for an automatic AI solution, and shouldn't have to tweak in the first place.

This image is copyrighted, but feel free to use, manipulate, ignore or repost within this thread. Repost it elsewhere or use it commercially, and I'll hunt you down and give you rabies.

Give us a non-denoised jpeg, and I will show it all the respect I can muster.

 

[Zeee]

@baker123 - I have two issues with Topaz: First, they were still selling upgrade licenses for the discrete products (Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI, and Gigapixel AI) when they had slowed or stopped development and knew there'd be few meaningful updates forthcoming. I suppose it's not technically fraud, but it sure feels it: The regular updates stop and shortly thereafter, an entirely new replacement product appears (Photo AI). Topaz isn't the only software company that pulls this trick. (Serif pulled a similar trick by offering free lifetime updates for V1 of their Affinity products, literally up until the moment they changed their website to hype V2. Buy V1 earlier today? Well, it's obsolete and incompatible with V2, and there's no upgrade path, so just buy it all again because at least we're not Adobe.)

My second Topaz complaint is, their main demo photo for Sharpen AI was an "out of focus" owl close-up, which makes the software seem miraculous. Yet if you examine the image, rather than being "out of focus" in the common sense of the term, it appears to have been intentionally manipulated and pre-blurred. If you have Sharpen AI, look for C:\ProgramData\Topaz Labs LLC\Topaz Sharpen AI\tgrc\Out of Focus Sample.png on your hard drive. FWIW, I've never had any Topaz product make a photograph that I'd term blurry or out of focus actually usably sharp. Nowhere near it.

All that said, this is about noise reduction, so here's a photo of Spot, a little wild raccoon recovering from mange. I stripped the EXIF because I'm paranoid, but this was shot with a Nikon Z9 at ISO 22,800, f8 @ 1/320. She's chewing, producing a lot of facial contortions, which translates to motion blur if you don't use a relatively high shutter speed. The RAW-to-JPEG was processed in Nikon's freebie NX Studio, which is slow but feature-compatible with their cameras. All camera/software noise reduction is turned off:


Raw processed in Nikon NX Studio. Neutral profile with no additional sharpening and all noise reduction off.

Putting the JPEG through the Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0 "Autopilot" produces noise reduction plus sharpening, and this is the result:


JPEG after Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0

The Topaz Photo AI appears softer to me. Which one is "better" probably depends on how far you zoom/crop and who you ask. I could probably get better Topaz results if I tweaked things, but there's just too many settings to futz with given how slowly it refreshes (Ryzen 1700X, Radeon 6700XT w/12GB, 64GB system RAM), and the lack of an efficient way to compare or save tweaks. Plus, I'm paying for an automatic AI solution, and shouldn't have to tweak in the first place.

This image is copyrighted, but feel free to use, manipulate, ignore or repost within this thread. Repost it elsewhere or use it commercially, and I'll hunt you down and give you rabies.

Who will complain? Spot or PETA? :-D

--
You just need to keep the forests wet

 

[JxM]

The first image is not denoised, at least intentionally by me. You have to look at 100% to see it. Or did I miss something?

 

[baker123]

The first image is not denoised, at least intentionally by me. You have to look at 100% to see it. Or did I miss something?

I tried to open it with DXO PureRaw3, and it refused it. I opened it with PS, converted it to tiff, and it refused that. I'll try it with Topaz.

 

[baker123]

I'll try more with DXO later. Here's a resized crop (I clipped his ear to reduce file size.) done with Topaz AI:

 

[sybersitizen]

Give us a non-denoised jpeg, and I will show it all the respect I can muster.

The first image is not denoised, at least intentionally by me. You have to look at 100% to see it. Or did I miss something?

You didn't miss anything, but baker123 did. As you say, the first image is a JPEG with no NR.

I tried to open it with DXO PureRaw3, and it refused it.

PureRAW doesn't open JPEGs.

I opened it with PS, converted it to tiff, and it refused that.

PureRAW doesn't open TIFFS either.

Supported image formats

Supported formats and cameras will continue to evolve as DxO PureRAW 3 is updated.

• DxO PureRAW 3 supports common RAW files, including images from Fujifilm X-Trans sensor.
• Original DNG files from cameras using this format.
• DNG files from RAW formats supported by DxO and converted with Adobe Lightroom Classic, Lightroom, Camera Raw, or Adobe DNG Converter.

 

[tbcass]

Raw processed in Nikon NX Studio. Neutral profile with no additional sharpening and all noise reduction off.

Putting the JPEG through the Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0 "Autopilot" produces noise reduction plus sharpening, and this is the result:


JPEG after Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0

The Topaz Photo AI appears softer to me. Which one is "better" probably depends on how far you zoom/crop and who you ask. I could probably get better Topaz results if I tweaked things, but there's just too many settings to futz with given how slowly it refreshes (Ryzen 1700X, Radeon 6700XT w/12GB, 64GB system RAM), and the lack of an efficient way to compare or save tweaks. Plus, I'm paying for an automatic AI solution, and shouldn't have to tweak in the first place.

This image is copyrighted, but feel free to use, manipulate, ignore or repost within this thread. Repost it elsewhere or use it commercially, and I'll hunt you down and give you rabies.

Noise gives a false impression of sharpness. When I look carefully at the fine hairs, I see that the detail is the same in each photo. The denoised version is superior because all that noise doesn't represent reality.

--
Tom

 

[Richandhiscat]

PL6 Prime XD


LR AI Denoise

LR by a nose IMO.

These results mirror my experience, I'm finding LR does an excellent job.

 

[ProDude]

Raw processed in Nikon NX Studio. Neutral profile with no additional sharpening and all noise reduction off.

Putting the JPEG through the Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0 "Autopilot" produces noise reduction plus sharpening, and this is the result:


JPEG after Topaz Photo AI v2.3.0

The Topaz Photo AI appears softer to me. Which one is "better" probably depends on how far you zoom/crop and who you ask. I could probably get better Topaz results if I tweaked things, but there's just too many settings to futz with given how slowly it refreshes (Ryzen 1700X, Radeon 6700XT w/12GB, 64GB system RAM), and the lack of an efficient way to compare or save tweaks. Plus, I'm paying for an automatic AI solution, and shouldn't have to tweak in the first place.

This image is copyrighted, but feel free to use, manipulate, ignore or repost within this thread. Repost it elsewhere or use it commercially, and I'll hunt you down and give you rabies.

Noise gives a false impression of sharpness. When I look carefully at the fine hairs, I see that the detail is the same in each photo. The denoised version is superior because all that noise doesn't represent reality.

To me this is the essence of reality. Our eyes do NOT see digitally generated noise that cameras produce, when we look at a REAL scene of virtually anything. I prefer a picture to emulate what our eyes see, NOT some electronically generated noise infested mess. Grain to ME is nothing but an enemy. It has, to ME NO redeeming feature whatsoever. I've also found in ISO's above ISO6400 on up, Photo AI does the finest results available in eliminating the noise factor but retaining the detail. This is at times, when one takes control of the sliders and not allowing a completely auto mode to make the final determination.

I've found ON1 to do a fine job up to and just above ISO3200 or so. Their sharpening I find the best as well.

 

[baker123]

But the unedited version is enlarged much more than the other one. Wouldn't that give it a disadvantage in sharpness and noise?

That makes a difference

Noisy files are much larger than clean ones, if you're referring to file size.

 

[sybersitizen]

But the unedited version is enlarged much more than the other one. Wouldn't that give it a disadvantage in sharpness and noise?

That makes a difference

In this case it makes no difference at all because that strikethrough text is incorrect. The only difference is the cropped area that's presented.

 

[baker123]

But the unedited version is enlarged much more than the other one. Wouldn't that give it a disadvantage in sharpness and noise?

That makes a difference

In this case it makes no difference at all because that strikethrough text is incorrect. The only difference is the cropped area that's presented.

Got it, thanks.