I just purchased NEAT IMAGE Home+ version (with standalone and PLUGIN). It's a denoiser that I plan on using on the majority of my photos from now on as well as all my archived work. It works very well indeed in PhotoImpact10 (and earlier versions too, from what I'm told). The process of denoising digital photos (especially high ISO/low light ones) has just become a joy!
The process is much faster than a demo of NEAT IMAGE I had tried some time ago, very easy to learn, and the few moments it takes replaces quite a few steps of messing with various modules to find the right settings to get rid of grain and miscolored pixels - NOISE - without throwing away actual detail and contrast. This thing just ROCKS!!! The image quality is so much better in spite of the simpler workflow and applying it globally versus the old way of often applying processes differently to various selections or objects.
If it was just a timesaver I wouldn't rave about the NEAT IMAGE plugin. But it also produces better image quality than I have been able to achieve with the most painstaking application of techniques I have battered away at for years of image processing. It seems to work the same magic on scans. Now I'm going back to my scanner and NOT using any of its TWAIN driver's features for denoising etc - because they are not nearly as effective as NEAT IMAGE's algorithms.
This plugin is what it takes to make a garden variety digicam image with a small CCD look like it was taken with a digital SLR with a large one!
Fantastic denoising! - NEAT IMAGE plugin
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greenboy
I suppose not everybody knows about Google / search engines, so: http://www.neatimage.com/
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Legend
Could you post before and after pix? I have web space so if you have nowhere to host them you can email them to me directly @section38@hotmail.com; I will upload them.
-Larry
-Larry
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greenboy
Hey Legend,
Straight off the camera from a 3.2 megapixel Christmas display shot the camera saved in fine jpeg to 1.21 megabytes -
Cropped and saved to jpg (YUV422 80) : http://phinixi.com/~greenboy-/Image00/0001.jpg
WITH DEFAULT, NON-Tweaked AUTO-PROFILED Neat Image process and saved to jpg (also YUV422 80) : http://phinixi.com/~greenboy-/Image00/0 ... tImage.jpg
Without jpg compression again it'd be even better. I tried to find a balance between a size people here can look at without hating their ISP but doesn't destroy the extra quality achieved too much ; } ... That shot (and this crop) was just lit by the XMas lights and as I said, has not yet been tweaked or toyed with. Besides the corner/walls, look at the dresses of the angel and caroler lady.
EDIT: I should note that a view that allows you to quickly flick back and forth between the two images is preferable to looking at them in browser windows.
In context at full 100% mag or at even 50% the difference for many images is appreciable, and if sharpening is applied it's even more dramatic because no noise is getting sharpened. And if you've ever cranked up the saturation when there is chrominance noise you know how many red, blue and green pixels are being thrust to the front. But with this process that's pretty much a non-issue - especially if you post-process after all other tweaks and bends, as well.
I'm hoping the Clean Image crew will build a chromatic aberration / purple fringe filtering plugin as well, since that's the other notable flaw for consumer digicams, especially ones with more zoom range.
Straight off the camera from a 3.2 megapixel Christmas display shot the camera saved in fine jpeg to 1.21 megabytes -
Cropped and saved to jpg (YUV422 80) : http://phinixi.com/~greenboy-/Image00/0001.jpg
WITH DEFAULT, NON-Tweaked AUTO-PROFILED Neat Image process and saved to jpg (also YUV422 80) : http://phinixi.com/~greenboy-/Image00/0 ... tImage.jpg
Without jpg compression again it'd be even better. I tried to find a balance between a size people here can look at without hating their ISP but doesn't destroy the extra quality achieved too much ; } ... That shot (and this crop) was just lit by the XMas lights and as I said, has not yet been tweaked or toyed with. Besides the corner/walls, look at the dresses of the angel and caroler lady.
EDIT: I should note that a view that allows you to quickly flick back and forth between the two images is preferable to looking at them in browser windows.
In context at full 100% mag or at even 50% the difference for many images is appreciable, and if sharpening is applied it's even more dramatic because no noise is getting sharpened. And if you've ever cranked up the saturation when there is chrominance noise you know how many red, blue and green pixels are being thrust to the front. But with this process that's pretty much a non-issue - especially if you post-process after all other tweaks and bends, as well.
I'm hoping the Clean Image crew will build a chromatic aberration / purple fringe filtering plugin as well, since that's the other notable flaw for consumer digicams, especially ones with more zoom range.
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Legend
Wow that is pretty good, thanks for the info. I am going to look into this.greenboy wrote:Hey Legend,
Straight off the camera from a 3.2 megapixel Christmas display shot the camera saved in fine jpeg to 1.21 megabytes -
Cropped and saved to jpg (YUV422 80) : http://phinixi.com/~greenboy-/Image00/0001.jpg
WITH DEFAULT, NON-Tweaked AUTO-PROFILED Neat Image process and saved to jpg (also YUV422 80) : http://phinixi.com/~greenboy-/Image00/0 ... tImage.jpg
Without jpg compression again it'd be even better. I tried to find a balance between a size people here can look at without hating their ISP but doesn't destroy the extra quality achieved too much ; } ... That shot (and this crop) was just lit by the XMas lights and as I said, has not yet been tweaked or toyed with. Besides the corner/walls, look at the dresses of the angel and caroler lady.
EDIT: I should note that a view that allows you to quickly flick back and forth between the two images is preferable to looking at them in browser windows.
In context at full 100% mag or at even 50% the difference for many images is appreciable, and if sharpening is applied it's even more dramatic because no noise is getting sharpened. And if you've ever cranked up the saturation when there is chrominance noise you know how many red, blue and green pixels are being thrust to the front. But with this process that's pretty much a non-issue - especially if you post-process after all other tweaks and bends, as well.
I'm hoping the Clean Image crew will build a chromatic aberration / purple fringe filtering plugin as well, since that's the other notable flaw for consumer digicams, especially ones with more zoom range.
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greenboy
I was putzing about last night with an outdoor shot of a couple of hikers, a torso shot with a great foliage and rock backdrop. The lady had some odd reflections in the otherwise shadowy area around her neck, so I placed my analysis rectangle there and processed only the areas of her that were not clothing. It did a fantastic job of smoothing the arms and face while it also removed all chrominance oddities in that neck area. Also it left the glasses and all facial detail, hair, eyes, etc, fully detailed. Actually, when the noise is gone, details seem so much crisper - they really stand out. This is unlike some other approaches taken I did not have to mask any features off to be assured of this. A great alternative to beautify skin while also removing other noise...
I doubt I will have clearance from the couple to place examples here, but it only takes a few moments on one of your own fotos to find out that Neat Image can be used in many ways besides the most obvious : } ...A few plugins added to the already-powerful PhotoImpact, and you can really get incredible results quickly!
I doubt I will have clearance from the couple to place examples here, but it only takes a few moments on one of your own fotos to find out that Neat Image can be used in many ways besides the most obvious : } ...A few plugins added to the already-powerful PhotoImpact, and you can really get incredible results quickly!