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Home >> Photography >> Digital Picture
Code's Noise Ninja Everybody loves the convenience of digital with the instant ability to adjust the gain of a digital capture device when going from a bright shooting environment to a low light environment. While extraordinarily convenient, the results with some cameras is less than extraordinary for the quality of images captured. Some digital SLR cameras can go into high ISO levels with a quality that can exceed what one would obtain using high ISO film (800, 1600, 3200) whereas digicams that can reach to the high ISO range (usually maxing out at 800) usually suffer from too much noise. Much of the noise issue at high ISOs has to do with the size of the digital capture chip, the smaller the chip, the more noise is generated due to the photo sites being more compressed and lacking in the ability to allow in as much light as the larger chips in D-SLRs. Even so, D-SLR quality from high ISO photos can look pretty atrocious when viewing on the monitor; however, it has been my experience that when printing to an inkjet, the noise is much reduced on paper and what can be seen has a grain-like quality that is easy on the eyes. BUT, as serious photographers, we do not like to see ANY grain or noise in our images. So, what to do when faced with low ambient light levels and flash is not an appropriate option? Also consider that using flash with low ISO to reduce noise creates the less than classic deer-in-the-headlights type of photos, with a brightly lit subject in the middle of a black background, ugh! Using higher ISOs allows for a better mix of flash and ambient light to be more equal, or, as the case may be, only ambient light. To counter the effects of noise created by the increase in gain of higher ISOs, we must look to software-based solutions. While there are plenty of noise reduction programs, the one that has become recognized as the best of the lot is Neat Image Pro, now in version 300 and available as a Photoshop plug-in. Having seen the results of Neat Image Pro, I can certainly vouch for its excellent effects on a noisy image, both digitally based and film based from scanning. However, Neat Image is not exactly the easiest program to use and I’m a bit of a lazy dunce when it comes to learning new software. I never took to Neat Image the way others have and continued in my suffering with noisy images or trying to fiddle around with Applied Science Fiction’s (now Kodak) GEM program with less than satisfying results. In recent times though, another application has come forward with results that are the equal of Neat Image and, lucky for me, with an interface that is simple enough for me to use. I’m talking about Noise Ninja. I am not going to discuss how to use Noise Ninja because honestly, I’ve not had to bother with learning how to create custom profiles. Noise Ninja comes with a number of custom profiles for many popular D-SLRs and digicams and I was able to start using it immediately to reduce noise from my Nikon D100 image files. I just had to call up the D100 profiles from the Noise Ninja’s Profiles folder and then click on the Filter tab and then another button to begin the noise reduction process. Three mouse clicks and I was able to reduce noise very effectively. The other major advantage Noise Ninja has over Neat Image Pro is the speed advantage. On my less than entry-level Pentium 4 1.7 GHz with 1 GB RAM, the Neat Image process for a single image has to be counted in minutes, even with the faster Version 300, whereas the Noise Ninja process is counted in seconds. At this time Noise Ninja is a standalone application that resides outside of Photoshop (hint, hint, a Photoshop plug-in option would be nice), but given the ease and speed with which it handles my digital files, even the 16 bit ones, I have no workflow problems. I do my initial work in Photoshop then save the image and then do the Noise Ninja reduction and then carry on in Photoshop afterwards. Is it a miracle worker? With some images and for some people, it will be, but I’m less inclined to cry out that an ISO 1600 image can be cleaned up to look like an ISO 200 file (the D100’s default ISO for highest quality), but I would say that it can come very close. During my first day working with Noise Ninja, I had a few dozen photos taken at my office Christmas lunch to work with, all taken at ISO 800 due to the low light and while I used flash for all the shots, near the end, the batteries in the flash gave up the ghost. I was shooting on Manual mode with a 1/20 shutter-speed and f2.8 on my 70-200 lens set to 200mm (love that VR). This resulted in a bit of underexposure with the flash output being next to nothing on the last set of photos taken and required some Levels and Curves adjustment on top of bumping up the exposure compensation during the RAW conversion process. While digital is lauded for having the ability to record details in shadow areas that you never thought would be available (non-existent with film), trying to eke out the shadow details, or even just trying to bring the whole image back up to normal brightness levels will increase noise. Thus, for some of my ISO 800 files, the noise generated was more equivalent to what a native ISO 1600 or even an ISO 3200 file would look like. And selecting those high ISO profiles in Noise Ninja was appropriate despite the original ISO 800 setting. Again, a very simple and fast process for me to use thanks to having those D100 profiles come as part of the package. For users without a canned profile included, you’ll have to go through the manual and learn how to create a custom profile for your camera. However, while the process may be easier or harder than Neat Image (I don’t know since I don’t need to know), I think the time savings Noise Ninja offers still makes it a winner and worth the CAN $90 I paid for it. It really can make a difference for those occasions that you must use a high ISO and want the image to be as clean as possible and some users are even saying that Noise Ninja is superior (if just) than Neat Image. Sample images below from my son's kindergarten Christmas Concert:
What do I see? Although I set a plus 1.5 compensation in the RAW conversion, I think plus 2 would have been more appropriate, which explains why Noise Ninja's ISO 3200 profile is the best (look at the red shirt to the right of my son's face).
Link to PictureCode to download demo Noise Ninja |
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