[HELP] Photoshop noise removing

[albesp77]

Dear all,
i have a picture with big noise as show here:

http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/6091/testcqg.jpg

How i can remove this noise with photoshop and some free/commercial plugins ?

Thanks

[mike20021969]

I did this to your picture with Photoshop Elements & Paint Shop Pro - adjusted contrast, brightness, denoised, sharpen slightly:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/mike20021969/testcqgcopycopy.jpg

[Usedocne]

Noise Ninja (http://www.picturecode.com/) (Payware).

[albesp77]

I did this to your picture with Photoshop Elements & Paint Shop Pro - adjusted contrast, brightness, denoised, sharpen slightly:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/mike20021969/testcqgcopycopy.jpg

great result, can you tell me the steps and value ?

[mike20021969]

great result, can you tell me the steps and value ?I didn't remember the settings first time. But I did it again and think it is slightly improved over the first attempt.
Here's the settings applied in the following order:

Import image into Photoshop Elements 6.0:

1) Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast.
2) Set Brightness=-50, Set Contrast=+50. Click OK.
3) Enhance>Auto Colour Correction.
4) Save and exit.

Then, import image into Paint Shop Pro XI:

1) Adjust>One Step Noise Removal.
2) Adjust>Sharpness>Sharpen.
3) Save and exit.

Job Done.

Here's the 2nd attempt:

http://i59.photobucket.com/albums/g302/mike20021969/testcqg1a.jpg

[audiohominis]

Excellent results, Mike.
I personally would leave out the final sharpening step because for a source this bad all it probably does is simply accent the artifacts without providing any meaningful visual enhancement. Additionally, it also may affect compressibility to an extent.
That's an opinion.

[yetanotherid]

Can I play??

http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a142/dashpb1/testcqg2.jpg?t=1298007577

I ran the standard denoiser using Noiseware Community Edition Standalone (http://www.imagenomic.com/download.aspx)
Opened it with Irfanview, used the auto colour adjust. A bit of manual fiddling.
Accidentally saved it as a gif.
Opened it with the Noiseware program again and ran the standard denoiser. Saved it as a jpeg.
Opened it with Irfanview again. Another auto colour adjust, then some more manual fiddling.
Saved it as a jpeg.
No way could I repeat it a second time and end up with the same result.

[Ghitulescu]

The problem is that the original (!!) image had too little dynamic, because it was shot in the dark. Someone raised the Brightness and thus got this noise (amplified it). Start again with the original image and try to improve the dynamic.

[Sharktooth]

http://www.webalice.it/f.corriga/temp/test1.jpg
Corel Photo Paint X5

[yetanotherid]

Start again with the original image and try to improve the dynamic.

Comedy gold! :D

[Stereodude]

What noise?

http://img823.imageshack.us/img823/9216/nrtake1.jpg

:p

[markanini]

http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/4939/testcqg0634x0456.png (http://img691.imageshack.us/i/testcqg0634x0456.png/)

Went for a less heavy handed aproach leaving luma noise alone, thus retaining some detail in the cup and hand. Also ends up having a artsy(fartsy?) grain effect. One could go further and mask out the hand and cup and apply stronger denoising or blur on the background. Another thing I would consider when dealing with an image likethis is turning it into a greyscale image, tweaking the RGB composition until a pleasant contrast and noise level is achieved.

Steps taken:
NLMeansCL with suitably insane values(a=20,b=5,h=25). Then in Photoshop reversed brightness adjustment in curves to avoid blowout and finally tweaked color balance using simple RGB levels.

There's a Photoshop plugin called Ximagic denoiser that has an NL-means mode that works well but can't be set as insanely to catch low frequency color noise in this example.

[Stereodude]

Here's my more serious attempt using NoiseNinja plug-in in PS.

http://img651.imageshack.us/img651/8414/nrtake2.jpg

[markanini]

http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/4939/testcqg0634x0456.png (http://img101.imageshack.us/i/testcqg0634x0456.png/)

Same as posted earlier by me except a blurred background layer and seperated hand and cup layer overlayed.

[edison425]

Whoah....they did a really good job on taking that noise out!! It almost looks like a completely different picture. I typically just use the noise reduction on LR and works just as well!

[pandy]

Few days ago i accidentally discovered this http://www.ximagic.com/ and... and IMO this one of best solutions and it's free... also color quantizer is highly sophisticated and give me impressive results when im doing picture conversion for Amiga limited display resources... - highly recommended.

Ok i see that markanini already mentioned ximagic - but anyway it is highly recommended as various strategies can be taken - with few other free plugins and gimp You can do a lot.