Neat Image Query

[Ollokot]

Hi Folks,
I was wondering if Raw Smart objects from Photoshop open in Neat Image software as a stand alone program or as a plugin, as I would like to bring certain images (still raw) into a program like Neat Image and then back into camera raw. I am thinking of getting noise reduction software like Neat Image as from time to time I get restoration and enhancement work to do on photos for people and some of the photos can be badly affected by noise and my scanner can make it worse so sometimes I take a raw photograph of the photo.
Best Wishes, Pat.

[herbert]

Hi Pat,

I would guess no. What you are suggesting is the equivalent of creating a new raw file to pass into Photoshop. I do not know of software that reads raw files and then outputs raw files but leave it to others to correct me. I think denoising works best on RGB images and not raw images and I explain my thoughts below.

A raw image is basically a set of values for each pixel. The file format should also specify that the pixels were under a red, green or blue filter.

The raw image is converted to a colour image by creating red, green and blue values for every pixel. This is done by mixing the RGB values from the appropriate surrounding pixels. The mix of red, green and blue that is used to make a neutral white colour is known as the white balance. This whole process is the demosaicing algorithm and can vary a lot between cameras and raw conversion software.

In the process of demosaicing an image you can make mistakes with the local blend of colours. This is seen as colour (or chroma) noise. You can also make mistakes in the total brightness of each pixel. This is luminance noise. This total noise is a combination of the errors in the demosaicing process and the noise in the light capture and record process.

Your image denoising program will be designed to combat both the chroma and luminance noise and I imagine it is designed to work on the colour image. As such the raw image is of no use to it.

It is possible to denoise the raw image using each raw channel separately. However you will be limiting your total information for the denoising process and so will probably get worse results than applying denoising to the demosaiced RGB image.

Alex

[Ollokot]

Hi Alex,
Thank you for your very informative reply. I will consider if it would be worth the expense to invest in noise reduction software, maybe it would if I continue to get some work restoring and enhancing photos.
Best Wishes, Pat.