[Gary]

Hello,

I am looking for recommendations on noise reducing software. Can be a Photoshop plug-in or stand alone. Needs to run on a mac. Will be using it for Maxwell renders, not images from a digital camera.

-Neat Image looks popular
-Topaz Denoise demo images look really good
-Noise Ninja had some good reviews as well

Thanks!

Gary

[richardyot]

In my testing, of all the commercial solutions Noiseware was the best.

However I've found that Photoshop by itself can do a pretty decent job, just as good as the commercial plugins, by using the Surface Blur filter in LAB mode.

I've made an action set you can test out for yourself, download it here:

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/noiser ... uction.atn

There's 3 actions there, the first one is more suited to photography, the second one (noise reduction CG) is the one to use for renders, and the third one (despeckle) is good for getting rid of hot pixels or fireflies.

The action is non-destructive, it creates a new layer with the processed image, which means you can mask out and reprocess if you need to.

Here's a quick sample:

render from Maxwell at SL 15:



One pass of my action:



With any Nr you have to strike a balance between the amount of noise and the amount of processing - this example is processed a little too heavily in the foreground, so I would knock this back with a layer mask, and then do another NR pass on the background to get rid of the final little bit of noise, this yields a really good image:



You can also download the Photoshop file to see what I've done, it's nothing complicated:

http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/noiser ... 20test.psd

[AndreD]

What about hardware noise-reduction?
http://www.intel.com/cd/products/servic ... 405905.htm

[glassbathroom]

Hey richardyot,

Many thanks for sharing your Photoshop actions. They are really good. I used to use Neat Image, but can't get it to work at the moment. I think your CG action may just do the job instead.

Thanks,

glassbathroom

[JTB]

http://www.adptools.com/

There is a freeware version working OK... and check the GPU version too.

[Gary]

Thanks for the tips!

Gary