# Topaz DeNoise or other plugin



## rpt (Feb 11, 2013)

Hi,

I find myself shooting a fair amount of photos at and above 8000 ISO. I have been using LR4 to clean the noise but I feel I need a better solution. I saw the demos on the Topaz site and was impressed. I recall Jrista mentioning this plugin. What do you people suggest? Are there other plugins I should look into? Btw, I have a Windows setup so Mac only options are out 

Another thing to consider is that Topaz has a host of plugins that I like. So if I like the DeNoise, I might buy the pack. So if you are suggesting some other company's noise removal tool, I would like to know if they have other plugins that you use.

Thanks in advance.


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## wickidwombat (Feb 11, 2013)

rpt said:


> Hi,
> 
> I find myself shooting a fair amount of photos at and above 8000 ISO. I have been using LR4 to clean the noise but I feel I need a better solution. I saw the demos on the Topaz site and was impressed. I recall Jrista mentioning this plugin. What do you people suggest? Are there other plugins I should look into? Btw, I have a Windows setup so Mac only options are out
> 
> ...



I have the topaz suite
its got some usefull stuff the B+W effects is really good too

Adjust can be handy for certain things
And Remask is realy good for complex masking jobs

I used to use denoise alot but to use the plugin in LR it creates a copy of the file which is annoying and also I have found on the 5Dmk3 LR4 actually does better with the base NR
Denoise is cool in that you can apply different degrees of NR to the Shadows midtones and highlights
it also has a way to accomodate pattern noise however i have not been successfull using this effectively

I would suggest downloading the 30 day free trial firat and trying it
if you do buy it I think the STUCKINCUSTOMS discount code still works giving a 20% discount


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## Brand B (Feb 11, 2013)

Might look at DFine and Nik Software's pack too. I am getting some decent results with it. I really like their B&W conversion plugin Silver Efex. Only has a 14 day trial though.


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## Northstar (Feb 11, 2013)

Brand B said:


> Might look at DFine and Nik Software's pack too. I am getting some decent results with it. I really like their B&W conversion plugin Silver Efex. Only has a 14 day trial though.



I agree on Nik software and Dfine....works well.


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## K-amps (Feb 11, 2013)

I have both... use both for different kinds of noise.

To Take the edge off.... I use Dfine.

To eliminate, I use Topaz

For Portraits where fine detail is not such an issue, I do some of it in LR also.... I never use the CS noise filter... it makes things worse sometimes.


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## K3nt (Feb 11, 2013)

Topaz, Nik software... they're both good. Can't really go wrong. Each one does things a little differently than the other, strengths and weaknesses... 

You might want to take a look at PictureCode's Photo Ninja... their old Noise Ninja was awesome... Haven't yet upgraded to Photo Ninja but looks interesting.


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## Rienzphotoz (Feb 11, 2013)

About a year ago I had seen a Lightroom tutorial on Kelbytraining and recollect Matt Kloskowski & Scott Kelby saying that LR4 has the best noise reduction than any other noise reducing software. Don't know if that is correct or not as I very rarely use noise cleaning software and the only one I ever used was Noise Ninja and that was two years ago when I had made a lot of high ISO images with 7D.


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## Scarpz13 (Feb 11, 2013)

I have been using light room 4 for a awhile now and find it works quite well, and has a simple interface for noise reduction. I happened to try a trial of Topaz DeNoise last week as I had heard good things, and had recently taken some photos at 20,000 ISO with my Mark iii that I wanted to clean up.

Long story short, maybe I didn't spend enough time learning the program but I found lightroom better & easier to use. If Topaz did do a better job it wasn't noticeable, at least not to me. If you are working off Elements, Topaz might be useful to you, but since I already have lightroom I saw no reason for me to spend the extra money for an additional noise reduction program.


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## rpt (Feb 11, 2013)

People, thanks for the inputs. I have Downloaded Topaz DeNoise. I will try that out first before trying the others suggested.


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## rpt (Feb 19, 2013)

OK, so I have been playing with the DeNoise plugin and also have been doing a comparison with the NR in LR4. I had taken snaps when we were sitting around a campfire and my shots were taken between ISO 12800 and 25600. So as you can imagine there was a lot of noise. No banding though! I could get LR4 to give me images like DeNoise did. Now I am not an expert. but I followed the tutorial and I think it came out quite well.

The part that annoyed me like it did some others is that it makes a copy and edits it. OK, I could live with that. BUT, if I go back to the edited Tiff, all the sliders are back to Zero! So that plus it being a copy and that I can get almost the same NR in LR4, I do not like...

BTW, I tried NoiseNinja and just plain did not like it.

I think I will stick with LR4 for now. If you people think I should look at some specific DeNoise tutorial that shows how to make the resultant image significantly better than LR4's image, do let me know.


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## elhajj33 (Feb 19, 2013)

I did a webinar for topaz denoise and play with quite a bit. The way I look at is: LR is a good tool for NR, but Topaz is more robust and allows you to do things like remove blue channel/red channel noise or to adjust black levels.

If your image doesn't fine tune NR controls, then just use LR. But if you do need it, topaz will be the way to go. 

Yes, Denoise makes a copy and that does annoy some. Usually when I'm jumping into Topaz, I'm doing some fine detail work in photshop and the copy is just another layer.

If you're curious/need another tutorial I can send you the link to the webinar I did


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## rpt (Feb 19, 2013)

elhajj33 said:


> I did a webinar for topaz denoise and play with quite a bit. The way I look at is: LR is a good tool for NR, but Topaz is more robust and allows you to do things like remove blue channel/red channel noise or to adjust black levels.
> 
> If your image doesn't fine tune NR controls, then just use LR. But if you do need it, topaz will be the way to go.
> 
> ...


That is interesting. I would like to have the link please.


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## elhajj33 (Feb 19, 2013)

here you go
 Keep in mind you need to zero out all your sliders in LR before jumping into Denoise. That includes NR, shadows, highlights and so on.

Also, I took a maximalist approach for HDR NR in the video. What I mean is I was going for: absolutely minimize noise by denoising each image individually. You could take what I did and just apply it to a single image after tonemapping or if you're not doing HDR at all, just to your one single image.


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## rpt (Feb 19, 2013)

elhajj33 said:


> Keep in mind you need to zero out all your sliders in LR before jumping into Denoise. That includes NR, shadows, highlights and so on.


Thanks. I'll take a look. Now when you say all sliders to zero in the Noise Reduction section Color is at 25 and Detail at 50 by default. Do these have to be brought down to zero too?


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## elhajj33 (Feb 19, 2013)

> Thanks. I'll take a look. Now when you say all sliders to zero in the Noise Reduction section Color is at 25 and Detail at 50 by default. Do these have to be brought down to zero too?



yah, otherwise you'll be doing NR twice- once in LR and again in Topaz. You want to run NR through only one engine and let Denoise determine what is noise and what is detail.

hope it helps


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## rpt (Feb 19, 2013)

elhajj33 said:


> > Thanks. I'll take a look. Now when you say all sliders to zero in the Noise Reduction section Color is at 25 and Detail at 50 by default. Do these have to be brought down to zero too?
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Cool! Thanks. I'll watch your video now.


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## elhajj33 (Feb 19, 2013)

> Cool! Thanks. I'll watch your video now.



let me know what you need


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