Best noise reduction software

[gregbradley]

I found Noise Ninja plugin for Photoshop worked the best of any noise reduction software.

But its no longer supported as a separate plug in.

What noise reduction software have you found to be effective?

I have Topaz noise reduction but its a rather poor piece of software and basically just blurs the hell out of an image. Noise Ninja was selective.

Greg.

[RickS]

Hi Greg,

PI! PI! PI! :lol:

I've tried a few over the years but I haven't found anything I like better than careful masking and MultiscaleLinearTransformation.

Cheers,
Rick.

[h0ughy]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^:rofl:

that was the reason i bought PI so so many years ago, and using a few other tools;)

[Atmos]

Between MultiscaleLinearTransformation, TGVDenoise and ACDNR I’m set ;)

I do remember discussing Noise Ninja a few years ago at my photography club and everyone that had used it then said that it was amazing.

[LewisM]

Lots of exposure time and Dithering :lol:

I run a very mild sweep of atrous in PI. I have no problem leaving some noise as it maintains sharpness.

[Slawomir]

I also prefer PI above all - my fav is selective masking & a gentle touch of TGVDenoise.

[gregbradley]

Great responses. I have PI so I should give PI's noise reduction a go.

Greg.

[Geoff45]

The MURE denoise script in PI is an exceptionally good starting point. I use it for almost all my processing
Geoff

[LewisM]

If I remember correctly though, MURE Denoise must be run on the mono subs prior to integration. I have tried running it on my OSC shots before, but it requires mono/grayscale. Or do you do denoise PRIOR to integration?

[RickS]

You run Mure Denoise straight after integration.

[LewisM]

Ok thanks. Probably won't work OSC since you debayer prior to integration

[gb44]

Greg
Are you sure Topaz is not working?
I was just looking at Christopher Go's you tube video and he raves about how good it is.
Wondering whats happening...? I dont have that program.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MeZhlV7p_Y

time ref 29.05

GlennB

[LewisM]

Noise Ninja Plugin: https://en.softonic.com/download/noise-ninja/windows/post-download?sl=1 (32 bit)

[LewisM]

I just installed the entire Photo Ninja stand-alone - not bad! The Noise Ninja app within it runs nicely, and is a very good noise reducer like Greg says.

Worth it.

[ChrisV]

PI. So many denoise scripts !
I've used few but now just use TGV denoise while data is linear then after stretching. It's easy and does a nice job.

Does this sound reasonable ? Which is the best for what type of image ?
And I'd never even heard of MURE until this thread ...

[Andy01]

In addition to the above, Startools has a brilliant noise reduction process.
Also Nik filters- DFine works well :thumbsup:

[RickS]

I don't get on with TGV denoise but plenty of people get good results with it.

Doing a little NR while linear and then some more after stretching is a good practice. A few subtle applications is better than hitting hard once.

Mure denoise can do a really nice job of initial NR but doesn't work well with distortion correction or Drizzle so I don't use it much.

Cheers,
Rick.

[LewisM]

TGV destroyed my Corona Australis before and after yet worked well on others. It’s a little finicky.

[gregbradley]

Great responses here, thank you.

I should explore that video about Topaz denoise before I write it off as I have only been using the presets which may be not the best.

Imagenomics noiseware is good as well but US$79.95.

Noel Carboni deep space noise reduction is good too. Mine developed an error though. I may have to reload it.

I tried PI but it was on a semi finished image so I take it that it was no longer linear data. It didn't seem that great in that instance. I'll try it again as I don't want to have user error confused with capability of the software.

Greg.

[multiweb]

I used startools a lot for noise reduction and sharpening if needed. Although as I go I tend to do less and less NR in my processing.

[gregbradley]

Yes the less NR the better and its no substitute for long exposure time and dithering.

But we often operate in less than ideal circumstances so its good to have some good tool to handle when needed.

Lightroom has a nice noise reduction slider at least for digital camera images.

Noise Ninja plug in stopped getting support a few years back so its only a 32bit plug in. But its still in PhotoNinja. I just tried it again in that program and it works really well.

I also tried Topaz a bit more and played with the sliders and yes it does seem a lot better than I initially thought.

I also have a Franzis Pro Noise reduction software I hadn't really been using. It seems to be useful.

Nik free filters define seems good but comes up with a repetitive message that won't stop. So a little buggy perhaps with the latest Photoshops.

Capture One may be good as well.

Greg.

[gregbradley]

This also opens up the question what point is best in the workflow to do noise reduction?

I have tended to do it late in the workflow but it makes sense to do it earlier so the noise does not get stretched and boosted.

My workflow has traditionally used CCDstack 2 and Photoshop. I have a few plug ins and Carboni actions in Photoshop that are useful but basically its mostly Photoshop basic tools that I use:

CCDStack2 :
1. Callibrate (often trial and error to make sure I get the best calibration). Dark subtract with a bias and flat with a flat with no bias subtracted when I made the master but rather click the bias in the flat menu box in CCDstack 2. It would seem to do the same but it sometimes doesn't and with a tricky scope to flat field I find this works best.
Part of this step is to check each sub and see if its useable. I reject cloud damaged subs (they bloat the final combine) or bad eggy star images. If I have enough data I would reject enlarged star subs with bad FWHM. Sometimes I don't get that luxury of excess data.
2. Register (align).
3. Normalise bright and dim areas.
4. Data reject hot and cold pixels and interpolate the result. I don't use any of the other data reject tools as I have never seen them improve an image but others may see a result.
5. Combine I use Median as it gets rid of satellite trails etc. Perhaps Average gets slightly better results in PI but I don't see any gain in CCDstack 2.
6. I may do some gentle Decon on the luminance at this point or on a colour R G or Blue that has larger stars to get them to be more or less the same size between RGB masters. As Mike has pointed out Decon is a touchy tool so I usually only use it lightly but also have done multi layered decon as per Ken Crawford to get extra sharpness out of galaxy shots. Not usually though.
6. Save as a master file as 32bit floating. I reregister the masters using the luminance as the base image.
7. Do the above for all LRGB or Ha O111 S11 files. Sometimes I save the resulting master as a scaled TIFF. If I do that I always open the histogram and make sure the background is boosted slighty as the auto button in CCDstack 2 tends to clip the black point.
8. Do a colour combine in CCDStack 2 using the LRGB. Sometimes I find I need to normalise the RGB if I get a whacky result (seems like a lottery ticket sometimes). Save the resulting colour image in 16 bit TIFF ready for Photoshop.

Photoshop:

9. Stetch the image using curves and levels. Leave some room to the left of the histogram so no black point clipping occurs.
10. Do whatever processing to tweak the colours etc. Selective high pass filtering to sharpen bright areas, here I would probably do some noise reduction or a little later once colour is to taste and saturation etc is good and after any Ha blend. Ha blends I use the Don Goldman screen technique although I don't use Screen but soft light blend instead. Screen mode is too harsh.

Greg.

[LewisM]

Early. I do it post integration.

[RickS]

I like to do a light noise reduction with the linear data and then a little more late in the process if required, but typically targeted carefully with a mask.

[gregbradley]

Yes I think that makes the most sense to do some early on so the noise doesn't get the later processing which tends to boost the noise as well as the signal and cause a breakdown.

How do you do it straight after combining? At that stage its merely a master image in 32bit FITs? Do you reduce to 16 bit TIFF and use some noise reduction tool in Photoshop or do you do something else? I do data rejection which is a kind of noise reduction but mostly I find it gets rid of the colour specks that appear near the end of your processing if you don't do this step.



That sounds very smart. I think I will try that.

[multiweb]

That's the way startools does it as well. The NR is the last step but is applied on the linear data prior to stretching and deconvolution/sharpening.