RAW Noise v Noise Ninja

[DaveO1959]

Hi,

I have ASP with the full version of Noise Ninja unlocked but I am confused as to the presence of what appear to be two different ways to deal with noise in RAW files.

There is standard RAW Noise which the user guide says deals with Impuse Noise Removal (which reads like it is dealing with Chroma noise) and RAW Noise (which reads like it is dealing with luminance noise).

Then we have Noise Ninja registered which deals with "Coarse Noise" i.e. chroma noise and then it has controls for luma noise reduction which deals with luminance noise as the name suggests

I have been told on the dp review forums when I asked about this they are just two different ways to achieve the same goal.

Is that correct?

Is one considered better then the other? The documentation says Noise Ninja is "state of the art" so does that imply the standard RAW Noise is less capable?

I find it confusing that even if you don't go for the registered version of Noise Ninja there are still two alternatives to noise reduction.

[afx]

There is standard RAW Noise which the user guide says deals with Impuse Noise Removal (which reads like it is dealing with Chroma noise) and RAW Noise (which reads like it is dealing with luminance noise).

It deals with noise before demosaicing to be precise...

I have been told on the dp review forums when I asked about this they are just two different ways to achieve the same goal.
Is that correct?

Sort of. There are different approaches to noise reduction and depending on the noise characteristics, their effectiveness varies.

Is one considered better then the other? The documentation says Noise Ninja is "state of the art" so does that imply the standard RAW Noise is less capable?

State of the art?
Me thinks this is marketing speak.

And, in addition, there is also the highly recommended Wavelet Denoise Plugin.

NN used to be king of the hill. Currently it is ok depending on image content.

If you only want to get rid of color noise, I think Wavelet Denois is miles ahead.

RAW impulse noise reduction gets rid of CMOS pixel dust as well as broken pixels. As it does not have any negative effects on images, leave it on by default.

For the rest, experiment. It all depends on your images.

cheers
afx

[DaveO1959]

Thanks for your reply.

If I have understood you correctly in theory I could leave RAW Impulse noise on at default values and use Noise Ninja to deal with colour noise and the two would not interfere with each other in a detrimental way?

I recently came across a topic elsewhere that discussed "pixel dust" in reference to a Canon 7D. That was the first I had heard of it and I am not sure how I would recognise it and hence the need to get rid of it using RAW Impulse noise redcuction. I don't suppose you could point me in the direction of any images that show this phenomena?

[afx]

If I have understood you correctly in theory I could leave RAW Impulse noise on at default values and use Noise Ninja to deal with colour noise and the two would not interfere with each other in a detrimental way?

RAW impulse noise removal is only on or off.
The sliders there are for the raw denoising tool that runs before demosaicing. That is a different story, use only if needed (I rarely use it for my D700 files, but it is helpful together with NN or Wavelet Denoise on my Oly XZ-1 files)

I recently came across a topic elsewhere that discussed "pixel dust" in reference to a Canon 7D. That was the first I had heard of it and I am not sure how I would recognise it and hence the need to get rid of it using RAW Impulse noise redcuction. I don't suppose you could point me in the direction of any images that show this phenomena?

Hmm,
There is a comparison made by an earlier version of Pixie for Bibble 5 in this thread: http://support.bibblelabs.com/forums/vi ... pixel+dust

If you use NN (or other noise reduction..) on CMOS sensors in dark parts of high ISO images, then there will be a point where the image looks still reasonably detailed with very little noise but it still has pixel dust. When you pull up NN enough to kill the pixel dust, your details are totally lost.
The Pixie plugin for B5 fixed that. The Raw Impulse Noise Reduction for AS is even better than Pixie.

cheers
afx

[DaveO1959]

OK thanks I reckon I understand what RAW Impulse noise removal is about now.

I reckon Corel should provide some explanation or tutorial about the noise reduction features supported by ASP as it looks on a read of the user guide you have two tools that do the same thing or at least it can be interpreted that way as I did.

It is the Corel user guide that says NN is "state of the art" so this reinforces the idea that this is the tool to use for noise reduction and is partly why I asked the original question. If Corel are stating NN is state of the art then why provide a presumably inferior alternative(?) was my thinking.

[DocBrown]

The Raw Impulse Noise Reduction for AS is even better than Pixie.

cheers
afx

I'm very glad you mentioned this. I tried Pixie and had so-so results. I recently bought a Canon 7D and found that while it doesn't produce less noise than my 20D, it is a finer grained noise almost like film. As an example of experimenting in ASP to get good results, when needed I check the Raw Noise sliders and more often than not the defaults work fine. Sometimes I bump it up a bit. then turn on NN Standard at a very low strength and smoothness. This gives me very clean output without losing any discernible detail. Finally I have the full version of Neat Image which then does a beautiful job of cleaning up the remaining noise. Again, if the output from ASP even needs any further noise reduction.

[KeithR]

I recently bought a Canon 7D and found that... it doesn't produce less noise than my 20D

Yeah, it does. At the image level it's easily two stops better (I still have a 30D - same sensor as the 20D).

Try doing this with your 20D - 5000 ISO, 1/25, f/4, handheld at 420mm, converted in Lr, no additional NR.

[claudermilk]

Gotta agree with Keith. The 7D is much less noisy than the 20D (good as it is). That's going to be partly from having 2 1/4 times more pixels, but I'm also seeing at least 2 stops better performance. I still have my 20D as a backup & ran at least 100k images through it (it's earned the break).

That said, I've been kind of disappointed in the way ASP handles the noise in my high-ISO 7D images.

[DocBrown]

I recently bought a Canon 7D and found that... it doesn't produce less noise than my 20D

Yeah, it does. At the image level it's easily two stops better (I still have a 30D - same sensor as the 20D).

Try doing this with your 20D - 5000 ISO, 1/25, f/4, handheld at 420mm, converted in Lr, no additional NR.

That's excellent. I shot some photos of the back of our data center racks at 1600 with my 7D and got great results like your example. But I'm not sure you fully understood the context of my post. Here's where I see the noise, shoot a dawn or dusk landscape with a lot of blue sky at 100 or 200 ISO, one shot with each camera body. In these conditions, the 7D has just as much noise (if not more), but as I said much finer grained and easier to deal with. More important, the 7D captures a LOT more detail. There are examples of this all over the Internet. I came very close to sending my 7D back until I shot the photos of our data center racks.

Gotta agree with Keith. The 7D is much less noisy than the 20D (good as it is). That's going to be partly from having 2 1/4 times more pixels, but I'm also seeing at least 2 stops better performance. I still have my 20D as a backup & ran at least 100k images through it (it's earned the break).

That said, I've been kind of disappointed in the way ASP handles the noise in my high-ISO 7D images.

See my comments to Keith. As far as how ASP handles the noise, I was of the same mind until I experimented with the Raw Noise checkbox and sliders as I said in my previous post. That coupled with NN standard and I'm pretty happy with the results.