Help on Neat Image

[paul chiu]

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my one month old m8 with much older 35 1.4 has been great as a snapshot camera; especially in low and indoor lighting.

 

i read about neat image and gave it a try.

i'd love to get some pointers from neat image users.

 

take this 35 1.4 shot indoors at iso640

 

 

here's 100%

 

 

here's neat image using all auto settings.

 

 

While the image is real smooth, i guess some form of gaussian blur, can the details be sharper?

 

Thanks,

 

paul

[psquared]

Paul,

 

You should experiment with the sliders, especially the Luminance Channel in the Noise Reduction Amounts. You likely had this all the way up to 100%. Here's a sample adjustment. I hope you don't mind my retouching your photo.

 

[ATTACH]35838[/ATTACH]

 

I used 20% luminance noise reduction on the picture. Then I basically selected the face in Photoshop, inverted the selection then did a 50% luminance noise reduction to selective reduce more noise in the background (dark areas where noise is greater and where you don't particularly care whether details are lost in the noise reduction process).

 

Hope this helps,

Peter

[paul chiu]

peter,

 

thanks!

what exactly is "inverting the selected" in photoshop?

 

paul

 

btw, what you did is super....

 

 

 

 

Paul,

 

 

 

I used 20% luminance noise reduction on the picture. Then I basically selected the face in Photoshop, inverted the selection then did a 50% luminance noise reduction to selective reduce more noise in the background (dark areas where noise is greater and where you don't particularly care whether details are lost in the noise reduction process).

 

Hope this helps,

Peter

[psquared]

What I did was do a quick and dirty selection of the face by using the lasso tool. Then, I just inverted the selection by using Select|Inverse command in the menu so that what was selected (the face) is NOT selected, and all the other part of the picture is now selected.

[paul chiu]

thanks peter!

 

your work made it look iso320 or even iso250. some improvement!

 

paul

 

 

 

What I did was do a quick and dirty selection of the face by using the lasso tool. Then, I just inverted the selection by using Select|Inverse command in the menu so that what was selected (the face) is NOT selected, and all the other part of the picture is now selected.

[Guest sirvine]

Why not shoot with a Canon if you are applying NR to ISO 640 in daylight? This is a serious question...

[paul chiu]

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i am also a nikon user with d2x/d1x/most f's and a closet full of nikkors.

i do admire how excellent canon d-slr's with it's sensors and computers handle iso1000 to 3200, but i am not getting a third system as leica and nikon pretty much serves my needs,

 

so, yes, i know about the strengths of canon noise handling.

 

finally, the above was indoors with mixed lighting. the ambient light was minimal as it was a cloudy day. under auto, the leica m8 handles well mixed indoor lighting.

 

here's iso1250 with candlelight:

 

 

paul

 

 

Why not shoot with a Canon if you are applying NR to ISO 640 in daylight? This is a serious question...

[wparsonsgisnet]

Paul, I can't do anything in Neat Image with this baby jpg. If you send me the original file, I'll play with Neat Image to see if I can clean it up without smoothing it to death.

 

Try at yousendit.com (for wparsons@gis.net).

[paul chiu]

bill,

 

thanks a ton for helping as one of your posts really got me to get the neat image software in the 1st place.

 

i sent you 3 images.

amazingly, i didn't know to shoot in DNG (stupid!), so i send you either jpeg or bmp from the original jpeg...

 

hope they work.

love to see how you work them over....

 

paul

 

 

 

 

Paul, I can't do anything in Neat Image with this baby jpg. If you send me the original file, I'll play with Neat Image to see if I can clean it up without smoothing it to death.

 

Try at yousendit.com (for wparsons@gis.net).

[wparsonsgisnet]

... i sent you 3 images. amazingly, i didn't know to shoot in DNG (stupid!), so i send you either jpeg or bmp from the original jpeg...

 

Paul, I'll look tonite. I shoot both (what the M8 thinks is) hi-res jpg and dng. I use the dng's for processing and the jpg's for handoff at the shoot and for browsing the images.

 

On 2 occasions, a file has failed to write in a shoot. In one case, the jpg was there and the the other the dng. In any case, I still got a copy of the shot. That's the good news: the bad news is that Ansel wouldn't have been interested in either image.

 

Nice shot of the kid, btw.

[wparsonsgisnet]

Paul, I'm not at my home computer (Sony 19 inch DVI screen) and can't see the difference in these two images, but the one with Neat Image didn't go all soft on me. On this screen I can't actually see a difference in the images.

 

I took the 3rd image you sent me, where the face is the largest, and applied Neat Image NR to it. Then I took both the one you sent me and the NR'd image and reduced them to a 960 x something jpg and that is what is being posted.

[wparsonsgisnet]

What I did is to select an area for profiling, in that case the lower right portion of the pic, including both "white" and "gray" areas. After selecting the area (NI puts a box around the selected target area when the Device Noise Profile tab is selected), I hit the F2 key (build profile). When that process was complete, I clicked on the Auto Fine Tune box. When that was complete, I hit the F9 key (make the output file).

 

Sometimes I let NI choose the profiling target and see what it chooses. If NI chooses an area and doesn't also tell me that all 3 colors are not equally represented, I'll get NI use the area it chose on its own. If I see an area that is grayish, and this can be dark background all the way up to a sort of white area, I choose that one. I prefer to choose a slightly darker area, where I can see lots of apparent noise. I look for lots of little dot detail on the screen.

 

As I said, I can't see the difference between the 2 images here because of my screen -- BUT the NR'd image didn't go all soft the way your example above has. The file with the NI applied is about 5% smaller than the downsized original file.

 

I looked at the images again, and I can see a slight difference between the two, as posted. I can't see any difference in the originals when I look at them in ACDSee on my office screen. Of the posted images, I would say that the first has brighter highlights, but the second has an immediacy to it.

 

How 'bout taking some shots of your son using dng's? If you send me one of those (yousendit.com, of course), I'll work with it and post comparisons.

[paul chiu]

thanks bill for the directions.

 

i'll try them next sessions

 

as for the dng, i thought i did set up for dng+jpeg for the trip but amazingly the only thing i found were jpeg.

maybe something is wrong there

 

paul

[norm_snyder]

Thank you both for this highly informative series of posts. I had been trying to decide about whether or not to go with neat image, and this left no doubts as to its value and effectiveness.

 

--NS

[wparsonsgisnet]

thanks bill for the directions.

 

i'll try them next sessions

 

as for the dng, i thought i did set up for dng+jpeg for the trip but amazingly the only thing i found were jpeg.

maybe something is wrong there

 

paul

 

Paul, there may be a problem with your card reader. A number of lurkers have mentioned this problem. A new card reader solved it.

 

You might look at the Sandisk ImageMate series. I have a 12-in-1 that cost $40 and is faster than greased lightning (usb2). It's always in the bag with the camera.

 

Nice pix.

[paul chiu]

bill,

 

are you saying that the dng files may still be there and not "read" by my lexar card reader?

 

this is really bad as i only have this reader and i was almost ready to format it for my next session

 

i will go to compusa and get yours.

 

thanks again bill!

 

paul

 

 

 

 

 

Paul, there may be a problem with your card reader. A number of lurkers have mentioned this problem. A new card reader solved it.

 

You might look at the Sandisk ImageMate series. I have a 12-in-1 that cost $40 and is faster than greased lightning (usb2). It's always in the bag with the camera.

 

Nice pix.

[wparsonsgisnet]

bill,

 

are you saying that the dng files may still be there and not "read" by my lexar card reader?

 

this is really bad as i only have this reader and i was almost ready to format it for my next session

 

i will go to compusa and get yours.

 

thanks again bill!

 

paul

 

Yup. Don't format that card till you run it thru another reader.

 

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