Friday, May 08, 2009

Reducing Noise in Photos


When shooting in low light situations like school gyms, a photographer often has to increase the ISO to shoot usable photos, however the result is often grainy photos. In "digital speak" they have excessive noise. There is software available that reduces the noise and magically smooths the photos. You will not believe the results. I use a stand alone product called Noiseware Community Edition on the PC and love it. You can download a free version at http://noiseware-community-edition.en.softonic.com/ On the Mac I use Imagenomic Noiseware and while it is not free, it works with Photoshop so you can do all your corrections at once from within Photoshop. You can down load this software for as little as $50 at http://www.imagenomic.com/ they have both PC and Mac versions.


Click on the photos to see the before (at top) and after (above) to see the difference. After using this software a while, you'll find, like I have, that virtually every photo is improved by it's use. Even photos shot at low ISOs often have noise in the shadows and by reducing the noise, the photo is better.
Using Noiseware software can make a dramatic difference in the quality of your photos. Next I'll show you an action for taking color photos to the next level with my color enhancement action.




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