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I have images @ISO 2500 with significant noise and wondered wether noise ninja could significantly reduce this. I looked on the website and could find no profile for the M8. Anybody out there with experience good or bad with this product? If not good what are the best settings for Capture 1?

Thanks for your advice.

 

Tony

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Agree with Ken. I have and use Neat Image, which is also very good.

 

Both Neat Image and Noise Ninja use noise profile-based algorithms to enable noise reduction with greater retention of fine detail than can be obtained using the "generic" luminance NR in most RAW converters.

 

One tip: use a gentle hand with luminance channel NR: what you want is to clean up the image without making it look artificial or over-processed. For example, the default luminance channel setting in Neat Image is 60%; I generally process my (profiled) files at 40%. This leaves a little noise in the image, but it retains structure and a more natural look.

 

While I try to avoid it, I do shoot the M8 from time to time at ISO 1280. One of these two programs is essential.

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I've had Noise Ninja for over three years now. It really saved my bacon on images from a certain marque (not Leica). I particularly like the way you can isolate chroma and luminosity noise. I don't use it much on M8 images, but when I buy another DSLR I'm certain it will see regular use again.

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Noise Ninja works as advertised, but I would also like to put in a plug ( in ) for Noiseware Professional.NP makes Imagenomic which I think is just a shade easier and better than Noise Ninja. Can't go far wrong with either. DR

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Noise Ninja is excellent. However for colour shots, ISO 2500 on the M8, I think it is really beyond its or any other program's abilities. It does a good job on ISO 1250 and below on colour and it is fine on ISO 2500 B&W, where chrominance noise is not an issue. I had the Kodak Professional anti-noise plug in (Digital Gem), which I bought just before I switched to Mac's. I thought it also was excellent and maybe a touch easier to use than NN. I was teed off as Kodak wanted to charge me the full price for the Mac version just a few weeks after I bought the Windows version, so gave my next lot of money to NN.

 

Wilson

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What one can do is lasso noise surfaces in the images and apply denoising selectively.

Another technique is to apply gaussian blur to the colour channel with the most noise before proceeding with further noise reduction.

Or make a denoised, smeared layer, make a layer mask and "paint" in denoised areas, reduce opacity to control the effect.

I am btw, another happy Neat Image user. Though I find I use it less and less, as noise seems to bother me less and less.

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thanks for your help - I will certainly try one of these systems. Noise Ninja has profiles for a number of cameras but not M8 - do any of the other systems support M8?

 

Tony

 

In Noise Ninja you can make your own Leica m8 profiles: a piece of cake!

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thanks for your help - I will certainly try one of these systems. Noise Ninja has profiles for a number of cameras but not M8 - do any of the other systems support M8?

 

Tony

Tony,

 

Here are tungsten Noise Ninja profiles for the M8, which is all I have. After you've downloaded them you'll need to rename the file extension on each one from txt to nzp and then copy them into your Noise Ninja Profiles folder. (I had to use the renaming trick to attach them to this post.)

 

Pete,

 

m8_160_tungsten.txt

m8_320_tungsten.txt

m8_640_tungsten.txt

m8_1250_tungsten.txt

m8_2500_tungsten.txt

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Tony,

 

I don't use Capture 1, I use LightRoom and then CS3 for dodging and burning and subtler processing. I use NN as a plugin to CS3 and vary the sttings to suit the requirement as lightly as possible.

 

Pete.

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Pete, is it not a simpler workflow to use ACR and then CS3? ACR is virtually identical to Lightroom and has the plus that you can open images as smart objects, allowing better dodging and burning, amongst other goodies.

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Jaap,

 

I hear what you're saying and I can't disagree but personally I prefer LightRoom's file management, its environment, its look, its multiple image processing, and its non-destructive editing. If I *know* that I'll want to post-process in CS3 then I'll use ACR. YMMV. :)

 

Pete.

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  • 2 years later...

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