Neat noise

[dabhand]

Does anyone have experience of 'Neat Noise' as either a plugin or standalone application they would be willing to share ?

I'm not looking for alternatives as I don't / won't be using it as I use another product, but a friend is very interested in it, asked me what I thought and I know nothing about it.

TIA

steve

[Cantab]

Although I've downloaded it, I've yet to use it. The CiC tutorial on noise reduction speaks well of it.

[Stagecoach]

Yes Steve.

I have this loaded as a plugin in Elements and have used it for both it's noise removal and sharpening of primarily close macro work.

I suspect that equivalent noise removal could possibly be obtained by more diligent use of the tools/methods available in my PP editing software but I found in certain cases it gave me good very quick solution to achieving a result that was acceptable to me.

Unfortunately I only have the trial version which limits images that can be worked on to 1024 px width.

I would certainly recommend that it's worth trailing.

Grahame

[Brownbear]

Hi Steve,

If you mean Neat Image, I have this plug-in and I like it. That said, all I really use if for is to reduce noise in skies and water photographed with high ISOs (ie; I'm not using the program to its full potential)

But what I absolutely love about it is that I can use it in Photoshop and apply noise reduction selectively to certain areas and colour channels (usually blue), typically skies for me, and lower the opacity of the layer for less noise reduction.

[dragon76]

Does anyone have experience of 'Neat Noise' as either a plugin or standalone application they would be willing to share ?

I'm not looking for alternatives as I don't / won't be using it as I use another product, but a friend is very interested in it, asked me what I thought and I know nothing about it.

TIA

steve

Steve
I have not used Neat Image for noise reduction but this article compares Neat Image to other plug-ins. It is a very good article for those who are in the market for Noise reduction software. I use Topaz Denoise 5 almost exclusively and it’s relatively cheap. One thing to bear in mind before deciding which noise reduction software to buy is how often you have a very noisy image like a 12800 ISO image in the article.
Cheers

Dean

[dabhand]

Thanks all - I'll pass the info on to him - for anyone else interested in noise reduction, the url provided by Dean leads to a well balanced review.

Dean, I too use Topaz and really like it, but I didn't want my own preference to cloud the issue and as we all know, what suits one person's workstyle may not suit anothers.

steve

[DanK]

The article posted is 6 years old. A lot has changed since that time. Back then, I chose Noise Ninja over Neat Image because it did better at preserving colors. However, I haven't used it in years. Lightroom's noise reduction has become so good that I don't bother with an add-on any more. I don't do much very high ISO shooting, but for what I do, I find that LR is entirely sufficient now.

[dragon76]

Steve, we'll said. I just like topaz for the ease of use as I don't want to get bogged down with noise reduction in my work flow.

Dan

I don't think it was written 6 years ago. The date is 20/8/2013. Besides, topaz denoise 5 only available at around mid to late 2010.

[DanK]

I don't think it was written 6 years ago. The date is 20/8/2013. Besides, topaz denoise 5 only available at around mid to late 2010.

Sorry, right you are. I misread something in the article. He doesn't compare LR 5, however.