Remove digital noise in Photoshop. Photoshop Tutorial - Get rid of digital noise in a photo. Dust and scratches

Today we will look at what noise is in digital photographs and how to avoid it.

Noise in digital images is a legacy of the grain found in film negatives and positives. However, grain is considered a noble phenomenon, but noise is not. In order to understand where the noise comes from and how to deal with it, you need to understand its nature.

Digital noise appears as an element digital image. Its dimensions are close to the size of a pixel. There are two types of noise - chromatic and luminance. The noise level depends on the set ISO value - ISO sensitivity, as well as the black level. The black level is a systematic correction based on the value of the dark current level. The level of dark current is measured by the device by a group of pixels that are in complete darkness. Let's not dive too deeply into the physics of the process. To put it as simply as possible, chromatic noise appears at high ISO values. Each camera has its own high ISO value. Let's take an example. The Canon 350D exhibits noise at ISO 600. The noise is clearly visible. At the same time, the Canon 5D mark II only starts making noise in the photo at ISO = 3000.

There is one rule to remember. It is better to avoid noise when shooting than to deal with it during processing. You should also follow a few more rules:

1. At night and at dusk with a high ISO value, it is better not to shoot.
2. Dark indoor environments are best taken with a tripod.
3. When shooting sunsets or sunrises, it is better to use slow shutter speeds than high ISO.
4. In low light, use a flash, but in any case, do not overestimate the ISO.

If, after shooting, you find noise in the photographs, you can use its suppression using software methods. It will not be possible to completely get rid of noise, it will not be possible to remove it, but it is quite possible to significantly reduce the noise level. All programs give a side effect after applying the filter. It manifests itself in a decrease in contrast and blurring of the image. If, for example, a snapshot of a car is used, then applying a noise filter will result in loss of detail in the body edges, wheel pattern, radiator grille, etc. Although smoothing the texture of the image will benefit the photo. To restore the sharpness and details of the image, you will have to use not only the program for removing noise, but also use masks and layers.

We will compare the working principles and effectiveness of two noise suppression programs. The test will use an image of a Mazda car from Premus.

Let's look at two popular software product is Imagenomic Noiseware Professional and also Noise Ninja. Both are available as an add-on for Photoshop and as a standalone application. Let's get to the test.

This is our test shot:

Let's try out the Noiseware plugin first.

Here's what the interface looks like:

To basic functions programs include: noise reduction, amplification and detail protection. There is also a set of presets for different types and shooting genres. There are blanks from portrait to landscape. There are also tabs for more detailed settings Plugin is Detailing (Detail), Frequency (Frequency), Color Range (Color Range), Tonal Range (Tonal Range). Without going into details of the program, let's look at the effect of applying the filter.

As you can see, the result is obvious. In a few clicks, we managed to rid the image of a huge amount of noise, remove noise. Part loss is negligible. Notice how flat the sky has become.

The second is the Noise Ninja plugin.

Here is what its interface looks like:

In this test, we don't use any special settings. All processing is done in automatic mode. And here's what we got.

The amount of noise has been significantly reduced. Like Noiseware, Noise Ninja also reduced the detail on the grass.

The following image shows the effect of overlaying a duplicate of the original layer with a mask that restores the grass detail.

Here's what it looks like:

Everyone who deals with photo processing faces problems caused by noise. The use of the described filters significantly improves the quality of the image. I hope this tutorial was useful to everyone who is facing the problem of noise in the photo.

But such photographs are not always obtained, to put it mildly, and sometimes there are cases when out of the corner of my eye I saw something and reacted immediately. And only then I realized that the frame was spoiled. I didn’t set the correct exposure, nor the aperture, except that the photograph is in focus, and that’s good. The result is a photo that is either underexposed or overexposed. But this photo is one, there are no repetitions and I don’t want to delete it. And if in cases with an underexposed photo it can somehow be saved, then serious problems begin with an underexposed photo. In particular, when converting, terrible digital noise comes out. Here I will show you how to deal with it. I will say right away that there are a lot of methods for dealing with noise and my method is not the only one, and even more so the truth in the highest instance. I just share it. Would it come in handy?

So let me tell you howI get rid of noise in photos. For a clear example, I deliberately took an underexposed photo. Well, let's get started?

So, there is this photo:

After converting, we get this picture with terrible noise:

Step 1. Duplicate the layer in any known way.
Step 2. Here I must say that there is an incredible amount of noise reduction filters. Personally, I use two. Noise Ninja and Imagenomic Noiseware Professional. Why exactly these two? Because I like them. I will not talk here how each filter works, otherwise I will read this text to you until the morning. On the Internet you can find a lot of information about the algorithm of their work.

So, step two. We need to find out on which channel, and there are three of them in the RGB color space, more noise. In my case, there is a lot of noise on the red and blue channels.

Step 3. I open the Noise Ninja filter, select the red channel in the settings, put down the necessary settings. I don’t say exactly what numbers, since each photo has its own settings. And press OK.

I repeat the same steps, but choose the blue channel. As a result, I get this image:

A little blurry, the texture of the skin is lost. But it's not scary. We'll get it all back later.

Step 4. I open the Noiseware Professional filter and put down the settings as in the screenshot. I repeat, for each photo the settings are individual.

As a result, I get an even more blurred photo. But we are not afraid grey Wolf and we move on.

And now the most interesting. The picture is blurry, but the noise is still there. Well, what to do? For many years of working with photographs, I tried a bunch of all kinds of ways and came to the conclusion that once and for all this rest of the noise removes the blur. There are several blur options in Photoshop, but I chose Gaussian blur. And here there is a small nuance. If you blur a photo, then it will be simply unrealistic to restore clarity and texture to it later. That's why I'm cunning. I blur selectively. There is a very famous easy way to get rid of the raster on the scans of magazines. That is what I use for my own selfish purposes. I'll tell you step by step what I do.

Step 5: Create a new 8x8 px document:

Step 6. I select the Rectangular Marquee Tool in the toolbar and put down the settings as in the screenshot:

Step 7. I make a selection on a transparent layer, go to Edit-Stroke:

Step 8. I put down the settings as in the screenshot and click OK:

Step 9. Go to Edit-Define Pattern and click OK.

Step 10 Back to our photo. Create a new layer and fill it with the created pattern:

Step 11. On the layer with the pattern I press CTRL + mouse click. I make the layer with the photo active and press CTRL + J. Delete the layer with the pattern. We don't need him anymore. As a result, I have a transparent layer as in the screenshot:

Step 12 This is the layer I am blurring according to Gauss. Each photo has its own settings. I have 1.7

Step 13. I merge the layers with the key combination CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + E. I remove the layer that I blurred and start jewelry work. It consists in the fact that I create a layer mask on the resulting merged file and carefully mask those places that are responsible for the sharpness of the photo. Namely, wrinkles, pupils, cilia, etc. I deliberately did everything with a mouse, not a tablet, so that it was clear that for this piece of jewelry it is not necessary to have a tablet at hand.

Step 14. So, we coped with the noise. It remains to restore the sharpness of the photo. Merge all layers key combination CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E. We duplicate and sharpen in any known way. I am making an unsharp mask. Add a layer mask, change the layer's blending mode to Soft Light, reduce the layer's transparency to 50-30 and carry out another jeweler's work, but this time to remove noise in several places again.

Step 15 Merge the layers in the same way. Duplicate. And we sharpen again. This time I used the High Pass to bring out the lost lines. Create a layer mask, change the blending mode of the layer to Overlay, reduce the layer's opacity to 50 and again do the fine work of removing the noise that has come out.

Step 16 Merge all the layers, add some contrast and voila - the photo is ready.

This method is quite laborious, but the result is worth it. I wish everyone to create such photos so that no methods need to be used, but still I hope this lesson will be useful to someone.

Noisy photos are a kind of marriage resulting from poor lighting. A large number of blurry color spots are distributed throughout the picture, greatly reducing its quality. This article will show you how to remove noise in Photoshop. There are several options for solving the problem.

Instruction

by the most the best way The fight against grainy noise is to prevent its occurrence. Poor-quality pictures are obtained in low light conditions, when the photographer has to increase the ISO values a lot.

Already at a value of 400, extraneous elements appear on the images. If the ISO is increased to 800, noise cannot be avoided. Due to blurry spots, the quality of the photo is greatly reduced. Defects can be removed using the tools built into the image editor.

How to remove noise in Photoshop using a filter

What if the photo is not in RAW format? How to remove noise from a photo in Photoshop if they were not removed at the stage of converting the file? To do this, open the image in an image editor. Then you need to open the "Filter" section in the main menu. Next, go to the "Noise" tab.

Here is the first filter to be tested. You need to select the "Reduce noise" line. Next, proceed to the settings. The "Strength" and "Keep Details" sliders are responsible for removing or reducing luminance noise. If you increase the first indicator to the maximum value, you will notice that the defects in the photo will be eliminated, but the text in the picture will become blurry.

The problem is that the fight against luminance noise causes a decrease in sharpness and detail in the image. Attentive users will notice that the second slider is added to the program so that the photo does not lose quality. After increasing the indicator, sharpness and detail appear, and with them noise. If there are no small elements in the image, then you can leave the second slider untouched.

Other settings

How to remove color noise in Photoshop? To do this, move the Reduce color noise slider. This will not reduce the sharpness of the text, noise will disappear, but small details will lose saturation. Users will notice that a colored halo has formed around the red spots. In rare cases, such changes may not be acceptable for the image. For this reason, you should set the minimum noise reduction values. If ISO 6400 was set when shooting, then it will not be possible to remove all defects in the image using a filter. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid high sensitivity of the matrix.

How to remove noise in Photoshop using the Adobe Camera RAW filter

First you need to download and install the plugin. Then you need to launch the Photoshop program and go to the menu. After that, you need to mark the line "Open" in the "File" section. To open the photo upload window, you can press the CTRL + O keys. Next, you need to select a picture with noise. To the right of the "File name" line, specify the Camera Raw type. The snapshot will immediately open in the program filter.

Then you need to go to settings. After that, you need to open the "Filter" section in the menu. Next, you need to mark the Camera Raw line. The filter window will appear. It can also be opened with SHIFT + CTRL + A.

Plugin setup

How to remove noise in Photoshop using this filter? First, the user needs to configure the plugin. You must check the box next to the "Control View" item. When working with the filter, the user will be able to immediately see the changes in the image. Next, go to the "Details" tab. It's the third icon from the left. You can zoom in on the photo using the slider in the bottom corner. It is necessary to increase the indicator to 300%. This is necessary so that the user can see the changes made.

Defect removal

How to remove noise from a photo in Photoshop using a plugin? To do this, find the "Color" slider and move it to the right. Do not try to remove this stage luminous noise. It is enough to remove the color dots. After completing the task, you can begin to reduce the luminance noise. To do this, find the "Luminance" slider and move it to the right. It is necessary to observe the photograph in parallel. In each case, the value is determined individually. It is important to keep in mind one rule: the luminosity index must always be greater than the chromaticity value.

As a result, the sharpness of the photo will decrease. To make the image sharper, you need to move the "Effect" slider to the right. You can also increase the Brightness Info setting. To save the result, click on the "OK" button.

conclusions

When working with raster images, it is not recommended to use the built-in filter of the Photoshop program. The main reason is the appearance of color halos around the bright elements of the image. It is very difficult to remove luminance noise from smooth surfaces without losing the sharpness of fine details. The Camera Raw plugin allows you to increase ISO up to 6400 even for commercial shooting. The user can remove luminance and color noise while maintaining fine details.

Reducing noise on any photo or image is now a reality with Photoshop CS2. This program has a feature called "Reduce Noise". You won't be able to completely remove it without hitting important details of the subject in the picture, but there is a real opportunity to greatly improve the sharpness of the photo. This article will cover the main ways to remove noise in Photoshop: colors, brightness and other image artifacts.

Why do artifacts appear in photographs? The fact is that not every camera is capable of capturing an object in a gloomy time with high quality. Even if the building has poor lighting, the photo created by a low-quality camera is obtained with noise that needs to be removed. This is exactly what noise reduction for Photoshop does without causing damage to the photo.

The main types of noise in photography

As mentioned above, there are three main types of noise in the image. brightness, color, and other defects in a JPEG resolution image. Zooming in on the captured object in some photographs, you can see blue, green and red pixels along its contours. Such an artifact is color noise, which can be reduced using a Photoshop filter specially designed for this purpose. Let's see how it works. In the menu we are looking for the “Filter” item, clicking on it, select “Noise” -> “Reduce noise ...” from the drop-down list and proceed to the photo editing settings.

The filter is not a program for photoshop photos, but a common additional built-in function. It is necessary to consider in more detail what you will have to face while editing a picture.

Settings window

The noise reduction filter contains a fairly large preview area on the left side and several sections with different settings on the right. Just like in Photoshop's workspace, in the settings window you can immediately see the changes made to the image.

intensity;
reduce color noise;
sharpness;
detail contour storage level.

Most of the settings are edited as a percentage using a slider, and the intensity is edited on a ten-point scale. Thanks to such easy settings and an intuitive editing window, you can easily deal with the question of how to remove noise in Photoshop. In order to get the highest quality result in noise reduction, you must first of all set all the sliders to zero and check if there is a checkmark next to removing JPEG artifacts. After that, you can start adjusting different noise effects to the optimal level of photography.

The viewing area can be zoomed in and out by zooming in and out of objects in the photo. So the changes made to the image are much more visible.

Color Noise Editing

Let's start editing the photo by reducing color noise. What does he represent? These are blue, green, and red pixels around the outline of an object. We will try to remove them using just a noise reduction filter. So let's get started.

After we uploaded a photo and selected the "Reduce Noise" item, a window appears in Photoshop in which we need to enlarge the photo so that red, green and blue dots are visible.
Next, we proceed to remove them by dragging the slider on the ruler with the name of color noise reduction. During editing, we immediately look in the preview area at the result. As soon as the multi-colored dots disappear, you can immediately stop the slider at the required level and proceed to editing the next type of noise. It is impossible to specifically say what percentage to choose, because each photo is unique and distinguished by its artifacts.

How to Reduce Brightness Noise in an Image in Photoshop

After removing the color defect, you are still not happy with the result and are still wondering how to remove noise from a photo in Photoshop? The next step is to reduce the luminance noise. Unlike the previous defect, black, gray and white dots appear in the photo. This is the brightness noise. To get rid of it, you need to do a two-stage adjustment of the settings. First of all, you need to set the intensity slider to zero level and then start the settings. It is important to remember that the photograph should remain as realistic as possible. To achieve this result, you need to look at the preview window and compare with the original image. Along with the intensity settings, it is important to preserve the details. Therefore, we monitor not only the disappearance of noise, but also the safety of the object.

Advanced filter settings

If no photo editors on your computer are able to remove noise without significant loss of image details, then advanced noise reduction filter settings will help. They are in the same window as the regular settings, the only difference is that you need to move the checkbox from the "Basic" item to the "Advanced" item. New settings will appear to the right of the editing window. You need to click on the tab with the name "Channel". How to remove noise in Photoshop with this little add-on? The bottom line is that here you can get rid of defects separately for each channel. So, for example, there is one line to reduce blue pixels, another to remove green pixels, and a separate one for red dots. For each of them, you can edit the intensity of the brightness noise and save details on each of the channels.

Why exactly these three channels need to be edited? The fact is that most of the images are created on the basis of blue, red and green colors. It can be assumed that it is on one channel that there will be much more noise than on the other. That is why it is effective to suppress them separately. This leads to the fact that the details of the objects in the image will be much better preserved.

We have figured out how to remove noise in Photoshop using a noise reduction filter, now it is worth paying a little attention to JPEG format artifacts when saving a photo.

JPEG Artifacts

What is this defect and why does it appear? No matter what image is used: fresh, just taken with a high-quality camera, or already saved in Photoshop with a .jpeg extension, noise appears in the image during compression. It doesn't even matter what photo editors you use on your computer, a JPEG image will always be of lower quality, perhaps even looking like individual pixels. To get rid of such defects, you need to check the box next to the item to remove JPEG artifacts in the settings window of the noise reduction filter. Such actions will lead to the solution of the question: "How to improve a photo in Photoshop?"

Set the initial parameters of the noise reduction filter to zero position by dragging all the sliders to the left side. Then make adjustments starting with color noise.
Watch the result immediately in the preview window. Zoom in and out of the image in it for the highest quality effect.
If you are unable to de-noise your photo, go to additional settings filter and get rid of the green, red and blue dots around the object channel by channel.

More photos to computer to improve images

To date, there are many different programs for removing photo artifacts, ripples and noise. And all to ensure that your pictures are of the highest quality and beautiful. You don't have to use Photoshop to remove brightness and color noise from your photo. You can download a specially created program for this purpose, for example, such as Color Reconstructor. Or install a plugin Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw is special program for photoshop. You can process a huge number of photos in it, and with any known graphic extension and compression type. But in order for your picture to look as high quality and beautiful as possible, it is necessary not only to be able to process images correctly, but also to select a high-quality camera.

Photoshop filters Sharpness adjustment(Sharpening) and Noise reduction(Noise Reduction) - two functions that will help improve the quality of photos taken in poor lighting conditions, especially if you can not control the light - for example, at concerts (in this tutorial, a promotional photo of the musical Fame, taken by photographer Tigz Rice) or weddings.

Translator's note : To work with the lesson, you will need the Camera Raw plugin and Adobe Bridge of the same version as Photoshop. If you are using the versionAdobephotoshopCS6 then for photo editing modecameraraw,need to go to the menu File> Browse in Mini Bridge (File>BrowseinMiniBridge), then find the desired photo and right-click on it. From the drop down menu select Open with > camera Raw (openwith >cameraraw). When working withPhotoshop CS6 can skip the first two steps. If you are working in Photoshop CC, then forphoto editing modecameraraw,you need to go to the menu Filter - Camera Raw.

By using these Camera Raw filters, you can save photos that aren't as sharp as expected.

In this tutorial, Tigz will demonstrate how you can use these tools in a comprehensive way, including information on how each slider will affect the retouching result.

You will find out why the filter Noise reduction(Noise Reduction) need sliders Color(Color) and Brightness(Luminance) - and which one to touch first - and why do you need Details(Detail) Contrast(Contrast) and Mitigation(Smoothing).

As a result, Tigz will show you how to apply these filters so that you can come back to them later - in case they need to be edited due to other adjustments made.

Step 1

Open the desired image, convert the background layer to a Smart Object. To do this, right-click on the layer, then in the drop-down menu select Convert to Smart Object(Convert To Smart Object). This will allow you to edit the applied filters later.

Step 2

Go to menu Filter>Camera Raw(Filter > Camera Raw). The Adobe Camera Raw plugin menu will open.

Step 3

Step 4

When you are satisfied with the result, move on to the tools Sharpness Adjustment(Sharpening) and Noise reduction(noise reduction).

Both tools are on the tab Detailing(Detail), third from the left.

Step 5

Sharpness adjustment(Sharpening) is controlled by one main slider - Effect(Amount) - and three additional ones: Radius(radius) Detailing(Detail) masking(masking).

Slider Effect(Amount) controls the amount of sharpening applied to the image. The "right amount" of sharpening depends on preference, but the value 25-35 will be optimal.

Step 6

Radius(Radius) controls the area of sharpness compression around the edges of objects in the photo. The default value is 1.0, which means only one pixel of width along each edge. You can group up to three pixels in total.

Again, the "correct amount" of the parameter will depend on the particular image and personal taste, but 1.0 will do a great job.

Step 7

Slider Detailing(Detail) is responsible for the location of the sharpness in the photo: it is applied to an image with contrasting edges or low values when shooting at high ISO.

Default setting Detailing(Detail) is set to 25, but as with the previous settings, the "correct amount" depends on your preferences as well as the photo itself. For live footage, which can often be too grainy, the value 25 will be great.

Step 8

masking(Masking) completes the set of four instruments in the group. Sharpness adjustment(Sharpening) and is the best of the three additional sliders. It allows you to have maximum control over where in the image the sharpening is applied.

If you hold down the Alt key while dragging the slider, you can see which areas will be sharpened. All black areas will be untouched, while white areas will be sharpened.

Step 9

Now let's move on to the module Noise reduction(noise reduction). It removes noise from images that occurs when shooting at high ISO, and also smooths out tones if the camera sensor was set to maximum.

Working with noise reduction(Noise Reduction), start with a slider Chroma(Color). It evaluates the color of the noise and mixes it with a suitable color to match a specific area of the image. Usually it is enough to set the slider at the mark 20-30 .

Step 10

To improve the final result, you can use secondary sliders - Detailing(detail) and Mitigation(Smoothness).

Slider Detailing(Detail) controls how much detail will be shown after color sorting. I usually leave it at the default value - 50% .

Step 11

Slider Mitigation(Smoothness) smoothens uneven color that occurs when shooting, and works best at the mark 60-80% .

Step 12

Work with Chroma(Color) allows you to make small adjustments before moving on to the most serious slider - Luminosity(Luminance). The latter smoothes the entire image, so the result can be loss of sharpness.

Slider Luminosity(Luminance) is an incredibly powerful tool. For images taken at ISO up to 2000, a mark is sufficient. 25% .

Step 13

About brightness(detail) and Brightness Contrast(Contrast) allow you to return some of the details lost after applying Luminosities(Luminance). However, noise usually returns along with the details.

We first went to Chromaticities(Color), thereby minimizing the effect of Luminosities(Luminance), so both sliders mentioned above can be left at their default values.

Step 14

Once you are satisfied with the result, click OK to confirm your changes. A new layer will appear in the layers panel Smart Filters. It contains all the Camera Raw filter information.

Step 15

Since we were working with a Smart Object, the changes made can be corrected. To do this, simply double-click on the Camera Raw Filter layer in the layers panel.

Translator's note: inAdobephotoshopCS6 this feature does not work. To edit your changes, double-click on the small button with two stripes and two triangles above the photo thumbnail in the panelMiniBridge.

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