Noise Reduction

[senecabeach]

What "stand alone" noise reduction software do you suggest or are using.... Noise Ninja, Neat Image, other??

 

[MarkBarbieri]

The three that I hear about most often are Noise Ninja, Noiseware, and Neat Image. I use Neat Image but I have friends that have moved from it to Noise Ninja and prefer it.

I have to admit that I do less with it than in the old days. Modern DSLRs suffer less from noise issues and the built in noise reduction in Lightroom helps a bit more.

One nice thing about Neat Image is that they also have a video/movie noise reduction package. There isn't really any synergy between the two, so I suppose there is no disadvantage to using their video package and some other photo package.

 

[frugal_mar]

I have a copy of noise ninja and it does a pretty good job.

 

[Steve's Girl]

I have a little dilemma. DH and I went to Best Buy to replace our PC. We knew exactly what we wanted, etc... Fast forward an hour or so - DH walks out of Best Buy with a Mac. What? I wasn't prepared for that. (nor was I prepared for the fact that my camera replacement fund is now sitting on my desk with a little apple insignia on it. Grrr... But, hey, they gave us free bumper stickers. What a deal!)

My dilemma is that I can no longer use Noiseware which I love! I had the stand alone version on my PC. The stand alone version is Windows based only. The Mac version is a plugin for Photoshop, which I do not have. I don't care for the noise reduction in LR. So, any Mac users that can recommend a good noise reduction program? I am using a D80, so I really need a good noise reduction program! I was hoping to upgrade my camera in the next few months, but it isn't looking like that will happen now.

 

[annnewjerz]

Noise Ninja seems to be one I have noticed mentioned quite a few times. On their site, it says that they can be a stand-alone with Windows or MAC, or a plug-in for Photoshop and Elements. I don't know if you have a specific budget in mind, but it looks like for standalone you have the regular for $35ish and the "pro" for $70ish.

Plug-in or standalone Noise Ninja runs on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (standalone only). It is available as a standalone application, and as a plug-in for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and compatible hosts.

I haven't used them, and have never had a MAC (although when we got a new laptop this summer I begged DH to convert to the apple family). Good luck and have fun learning a whole new operating system!!

 

[frugal_mar]

I have noisenija and I am very pleased with it. I use it on Windows, but I assume that the OS X version would be just as good. It is a great program and it really works well.

 

[Chikabowa]

I don't use noise reduction software, but all my friends recommend noise ninja as well.

BTW - I was a reluctant Mac convert - literally, a MacBook Pro fell into my lap free. But, after using it for the last 8 months, I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I never had problems with PC's, but when it comes to using the machine for photos, it just runs seamless. It's frustrating at first, but I'm sure you'll end up loving it.

 

[Steve's Girl]

Thanks, I had a feeling I would end up with Noise Ninja. Unfortunately, I will have to get the pro version to get batch processing. So, it will end up being quite a bit more expensive than Noiseware.

The Mac has been a little frustrating. Nothing is where it is supposed to be. But, I will say that LR runs so much smoother! I was pretty impressed with the difference. And the monitor is quite nice too. I had my PC monitor color calibrated, but the colors are so much nicer on the Mac.

 

[YesDear]

I use PCs and my family is a big mac family. Between me DW, DS we have 5 macs. I promise you in two months tops you will love it.

I use the noise ninja plugin in CS3 and really like it. I am sure you will like the stand alone version.

I am typing on a powerbook right now. We only use PC's at work and have two at home for stuff that does not run on a mac. I also use them for storage. They are connected to the macs on the network and I can pull things for the mac from them.

Which one did you get?

 

[Steve's Girl]

Which one did you get?

iMac with the 24 inch screen

 

[ukcatfan]

My suggestion is to box the mac up and return it! Seriously!

 

[Groucho]

As a guy who does IT work for a living, I'd agree with ukcatfan. I'd be very hesitant to buy anything like that based on the recommendation of a Best Buy salesman without doing additional research first. Chances are any increased smoothless is just from having more modern hardware - it's the same guts in PCs and Macs.

But seriously. I would email the company and see if you can switch your license from one platform to the other. They may not be willing to do it (there's probably no way to revoke the existing PC license) but it can't hurt to try! Maybe at least there's a discount to be had.

 

[Steve's Girl]

DH has wanted a Mac for a long time. I use PCs for my business and had convinced DH (or so I thought) that staying with a PC platform at home would be simpler. Our local Best Buy is pretty lame. So, last weekend we went to a larger store because it had a better selection of PCs. When we walked in, I saw that they also carried Apples. I knew we were in trouble. Our PC has been dying a slow death for a few months and DH has been researching replacement options. I handle the computer stuff for my business and leave the home stuff up to DH. I feel pretty neutral about the issue. I buy what I want for the business and he gets what he wants for home. However, I do use the home computer for my photography stuff. So, as long as I can still do that, I really don't care. What I do care about is the extra funds that were taken out of my camera replacement fund to go towards the Mac. DH promised to replace that when he get his bonus in March. He tends to have a short term memory though.

 

[DisneyDreamerK]

iMac with the 24 inch screen

It's such a gorgeous machine! I'm an Apple technician and I want to get that for my next Mac. LOL

Like what other's have said, you're prob going to hate it at first, but once you are used to it you are never going to want to go back!

"Once you go Mac, you never go back!"

 

[fitzperry]

Chances are any increased smoothless is just from having more modern hardware - it's the same guts in PCs and Macs.

Not trying to start a pc/mac debate, but this has not been my experience at all. I think it's the OS. I'd been intrigued by the idea of switching to Mac for years but never wanted to spend the additional $$. Then last spring dh won a Macbook Air at work which he didn't need to use because he already had a notebook, so he let me take it. The Air has a wimpy little processor, and several articles I read about it suggested that it would be worthless for image processing. Yet Capture NX and LR both run far better on it than they did on my pc, which had a much faster processor and the same RAM (2gb). All my other pc hardware was as good or better than the Air as well. I loved the Mac so much that I've upgraded to a Macbook Pro for the larger hard drive and a few other features that the Air lacked, and it's now my only computer.

So I agree with the others that in a couple of months you'll love it. Just make sure dh replenishes your camera fund.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

Have you considered manually editing your photos instead of using noise reduction? Noise reduction software can't really tell the difference between noise and fine detail. It guesses and so you lose detail as you lose noise. You can get better results if you magnify your image to 400% and manually clone out noise pixels. You are (or should be) a much better judge of what is noise than a mindless piece of software. It's somewhat more time consuming, but the results can be much better. Personally, I'm lazy so I use noise reduction software, but don't let my laziness sway you.

As for Macs vs PCs, I think that the PC OS was clearly better (the underlying OS, not the UI) until recently. I think that the architecture of OSX is better than XP. Vista is unspeakably bad. I stick with Windows because I want a homogeneous set of computers (we run 9 at the house), it's cheaper, I can build my own boxes, and there is much more software available for it. If I was a one or two computer house and was content with the software available for the Mac, I'd definitely switch.

 

[DisneyDreamerK]

Forgot to add that you have iPhoto which will let you adjust the noise....I use it for my photos. It's not spectacular, but it works for me! You might want to hit up a free iPhoto workshop in an Apple Store near you. The trainers are really great!

 

[Experiment_626]

You do know that you can also install and run Windows on any modern Mac, right? It is sacrilege, of course, but if you need or want Windows you can have both it and the Mac OS on the same machine. And I'm not talking about running it in software emulation -- it runs native at full speed.

SSB

 

[Steve's Girl]

Have you considered manually editing your photos instead of using noise reduction?

I've considered it. But also considered it way too much work. My camera is pretty noisy at ISO 800 and above. I run a lot of photos through Noiseware. I would much rather just push the "run batch" button. I frequently do entire folders since pretty much anything I shoot indoors is noisy. (hence, the importance of the camera replacement fund!) But I can see the merit in manually editing if you only had a few photos that you wanted to work with.

 

[Groucho]

As for Macs vs PCs, I think that the PC OS was clearly better (the underlying OS, not the UI) until recently. I think that the architecture of OSX is better than XP. Vista is unspeakably bad.

From most things I've seen, OSX is built on FreeBSD, which is a spectacular unix (and can legitimately claim to be unix, unlike linux.) So that part is good. (And FWIW, the guts of XP and Vista are very similar, it's the UI that changed so much in Vista - and in many ways, they were improvements. The big annoyances are related to the new lower-privilege user model.)

But I wouldn't touch any Apple product. I do too much computer work to deal with the countless software and hardware limitations, and I can't say that I'll be sad if/when Apple finally goes belly-up. They are one of the most evil anti-consumer corporations out there - certainly worse than Microsoft, who I also detest but tolerate. I am also cheap and refuse to pay twice as much for the same hardware (which I can't upgrade myself later) nor for their frequent OS updates. Not to mention, I can't stand the "cute" nor the "shiny white" look - and still a one-button mouse?

Speaking of cheap, I'll probably be making the Vista 64-bit jump here pretty soon. I just picked up four gigs of Crucial DDR2 for $15 after rebate - and XP just won't be able to take advantage of six gigs! I think Vista has its fair share of problems but also has taken a bit of an unfair rap. MS is in a difficult position, trying to add security to a system that was never designed to be secure. Having users always run in a lower-privilege mode the majority of the time is a very good idea (that unix has always done) but the transition to people being "users" instead of "administrators" is a very painful one, after many years of software and hardware designed for the user to have full rights all the time.