Free online service for photo editing and creating funny effects. How to remove noise from a photo using special programs A program for removing noise from photos

AKVIS Noise Buster is a program for suppressing digital noise in images.

Eliminating noise is one of the required preprocessing steps for most photos. It is better to follow this procedure from the beginning than to get sudden color spots during the image editing process.

Unfortunately, even using the latest innovations in digital photography does not guarantee getting rid of this problem. Sensor noise can occur for a number of reasons, for example, when using digital zoom, due to high sensitivity (ISO), in low light, during prolonged shooting, when pixels overheat, due to "dead" pixels, when using the JPEG format when photographing.

Even if noise is not visible on the computer screen, it can unexpectedly appear during printing and spoil the photo.

AKVIS Noise Buster suppresses the noise of the digital camera matrix and the noise that appears when scanning a photograph, reduces graininess and eliminates uneven color spots in the image, while preserving details and sharpness of edges.

The program cleans up as luminous noise and color (chromatic). The first appears in the form of distorting elements that differ in brightness (for example, irregularities on the skin), the second - in the form of small spots that have a difference in color (red or blue spots). Noise Buster copes with its task in both cases.

Your photos look much better after being processed with AKVIS Noise Buster!

The program supports batch image processing, which is used to correct a series of photographs taken under the same conditions with the same camera settings. IN batch In this mode, the noise reduction algorithm is applied to all images in the folder at once.

Unfortunately, it is not easy to predict the effect of noise reduction on photo quality. There is always a danger that the picture will lose detail after filtering. This is why you have to find a trade-off between reducing digital noise and preserving image detail. But there are quite a few tools that help you professionally deal with noise, without making significant efforts.

The best "shumodav"

We chose Neat Image (neatimage.com, from 2400 rubles) from numerous programs for noise suppression. It gives good results, and the trial version can also be used for personal purposes for free. The limitations are minimal: in particular, the free Neat Image only works with 8-bit images (16.8 million colors).

This program can be used both as a separate filter for Photoshop and as a desktop version. The filtering quality of Neat Image is quite high, since the application takes into account the characteristics of the devices used to obtain the photo. This makes the filtration more accurate and softer. The utility is easy to use, but at the same time it allows the user to customize it to fit their settings, as well as directly for their camera.

With your snapshot open in the program, go to the Device Noise Profile tab and click Auto Profiles. Then switch to Noise Filter Settings and select preview here. In the settings menu on the right side, you can set the filter type and assign the strength of its application. If you are satisfied with the result, you just have to save it. Otherwise, you can use a finer adjustment of the noise canceling filter parameters. In addition, noise profiles for a wide variety of camera models from 20 manufacturers are available on the developer's official website, which can be used instead of auto-profiling.

Grain or digital noise in your photo is interference with your photo. Basically, they appear due to the desire to obtain more information in the image by increasing the sensitivity of the matrix. Naturally, the higher the sensitivity, the more noise we get.

In addition, interference can occur when shooting at night or in a poorly lit room.

The most effective way to combat graininess is to try to prevent it from appearing. If, with all the efforts, the noise still appears, then they will have to be removed using processing in Photoshop.

There are two effective noise reduction techniques: Camera raw and work with channels.

Method 1: Camera Raw

If you have never used this built-in module, then without certain manipulations open a JPEG photo in Camera raw will not work.

We open the picture in the editor in any convenient way, and it will be automatically loaded into Camera raw.

In the plugin settings, go to the tab "Detailing".

All adjustments are made at an image scale of 200%
This tab contains settings for noise reduction and sharpening. The first step is to increase the luminance and color index. Then sliders "Brightness Information", Color Information and "Brightness contrast" adjust the degree of impact. Here you need to pay special attention to the small details of the image - they should not suffer, it is better to leave a little noise in the picture.
Since after the previous steps we have lost detail and sharpness, we will correct these parameters using the sliders in the upper block. The screenshot shows the settings for the tutorial image, yours may differ. Try not to set too high values, since the task of this step is to return the picture to its original appearance as much as possible, but without noise.
After finishing the settings, you need to open our snapshot directly in the editor by clicking the button "Open Image".
We continue processing. Because, after editing in Camera raw, there are some grains left in the photo, then they must be carefully wiped. Let's make it a filter "Reduce noise".
When adjusting the filter, you must adhere to the same principle as in Camera rawthat is, avoid losing small parts.
After all our manipulations, a kind of haze or fog will inevitably appear in the photo. It is removed by the filter "Colour contrast".
First, copy the background layer with the combination CTRL + Jand then call the filter. We select the radius in such a way that the outlines of large parts remain visible. Too low a value will return noise, and too high can cause unwanted halo.
After finishing the setup "Color contrast" you need to desaturate the copy with hotkeys CTRL + SHIFT + U.
Next, you need to change the blending mode for the desaturated layer to "Soft light".

It's time to look at the difference between the original shot and the result of our work.

As you can see, we managed to achieve good results: there was almost no noise left, and the detail in the photo was preserved.

Method 2: Channels

The point of this method is to edit Red channel, which, most often, contains the maximum amount of noise.

Open the photo, go to the channels tab in the layers panel, and activate it with a simple click. Red.
Create a copy of this channel layer by dragging it onto the blank sheet icon at the bottom of the panel.
Now we need a filter Edge selection... Remaining on the channel panel, open the menu "Filter - Stylize" and in this block we are looking for the required plugin.

The filter works automatically, without the need for adjustment.
Next, we will slightly blur the copy of the red channel by Gaussian. Go to the menu again "Filter", go to block "Blur" and select the plugin with the appropriate name.
The value of the blur radius is set approximately 2 - 3 pixels.
Create a selection by clicking on the dotted circle icon at the bottom of the channels palette.
Click on the channel RGB, turning on the visibility of all colors, and turning off the copy.
Go to the layers palette and make a copy of the background. Please note that a copy must be created by dragging the layer onto the corresponding icon, otherwise, using the keys CTRL + J, we'll just copy the selection to a new layer.
On the copy, create a white mask. This is done by single clicking on the icon at the bottom of the palette.
Here we need to be more careful: we need to go from the mask to the main layer.
Opening a familiar menu "Filter" and go to the block "Blur"... We need a filter named Surface Blur.
The conditions are the same: when adjusting the filter, we try to preserve as many small details as possible, while reducing the amount of noise. Value "Isogelia", ideally, should be 3 times the value "Radius".
You've probably already noticed that in this case, we have a fog. Let's get rid of it. Hot blend all layers CTRL + ALT + SHIFT + Eand then apply the filter "Colour contrast" with the same settings. After changing the blend for the top layer to "Soft light", we get the following result:

When removing noise, do not strive to achieve their complete absence, as this approach can smooth out many small fragments, which will inevitably lead to an unnatural image.

You can decide for yourself which method to use, they are about equal in efficiency of removing grain from photos. In some cases it will help Camera raw, but somewhere you can not do without editing channels.

The overwhelming majority of owners of inexpensive digital point-and-shoot cameras are accustomed to taking pictures in automatic mode. In this case, the quality of the resulting image completely depends on how correctly the camera sensors determine the appropriate parameters. An unsuccessful result will result in various image defects, including unpleasant graininess.

Relatively speaking, all the "garbage" found in the images can be divided into several types. The first group of unwanted artifacts is digital noise. It appears as grainy blotches and looks like random colored dots randomly located throughout the image. The cause of digital noise is usually associated with the design features of the camera, namely, with insufficient light sensitivity of the matrix. Digital noise is clearly visible when shooting at high ISO settings.

Another group of noises is imaging defects. Scratches, cracks, bruises, accidental debris on the scanner glass, and so on. These artifacts do not have a homogeneous structure, the determination of their shape and location is generally not amenable to mathematical analysis, therefore, the fight against defects of this kind is possible only with the help of manual image processing.

Eliminating luminance and color noise means "guessing" the correct values \u200b\u200bat specific points in an image.

⇡ Get rid of noise using standard Adobe Photoshop tools

The main tool for the digital photography enthusiast is Adobe Photoshop. It is versatile and self-sufficient. Its comprehensive suite of photo editing tools helps you tackle any type of noise.

The sensor of a digital camera captures two components of light - color and intensity of light. These indicators have their own margin of error, determined mainly by the analog part of the device. Each time, when shooting the same photo, the photosensor will produce different values \u200b\u200bof these parameters, generating two types of noise - brightness and color. The perception of the image by the human eye is more influenced by the intensity of the glow. When a person looks at a photograph, first of all he pays attention to the contours of objects and only then to the color. Thanks to this feature of vision, a very popular way to combat color artifacts was born. If you blur the picture, the noise will disappear, but along with the graininess, the clarity of the image will also disappear. To prevent this from happening, you need to work with the Lab Color color model. This system allows you to decompose the image into components - brightness and color, represented by two channels: green-red and blue-yellow. Blurring only color channels will not affect image clarity and will eliminate random color fluctuations.

A photograph taken with a digital camera is most often recorded in JPG format with RGB color space. To convert to another color model in Photoshop, use the Image → Mode → Lab Color command. There is also some color loss when converting to the Lab Color model, but it is so negligible that it can be neglected.

This method will only get rid of color noise, but it will not solve the problem of luminance grainy noise. There are many alternative solutions using a more advanced photo processing algorithm. With the help of such tools, you can quickly and correctly eliminate many defects.

Noiseware Professional 4.2

Developer: Imagenomic
Distribution: shareware
Russian interface: no
Compatibility: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements

Noiseware Professional is an add-on module for Photoshop. It contains many more parameters than a standard noise reduction tool.

When you first get to know Noiseware Professional, it may seem easy to get confused in the plugin settings. However, upon a detailed study of them, it becomes clear that all controls are quite logically sorted into groups. Each of these groups controls the process of removing noise at a particular stage of image processing. For example, the detail settings (Detail tab) make it possible to find a balance between aggressive image processing and preserving image detail. The ordering of the parameters of this module makes it easy to find the desired settings.

Noiseware Professional processes large images much faster than Adobe Photoshop does with the Reduce Noise tool. This module supports multiprocessing and allows you to use the manual fine tuning mode - in this case, the user himself can "prompt" the program to the location of the noise for more accurate cleaning of the image.

The module contains a large library of presets, with which you can easily select parameters for processing "genre photography". If you need to remove noise from, say, a night shot, just select the Night Scene option from the list, and the program will pay increased attention to color noise, since this type of artifacts is typical for pictures taken in low light.

Noiseware Professional offers two preview options - fast and accurate. To be honest, we didn't see a difference when switching between these modes. The fast view method is probably effective when processing very large images or when using a weak computer. Also, the module allows you to conveniently place the original and final image side by side, which makes the image processing process very visual.

Selecting the necessary module settings can take quite a long time, and the photographer is not always able to remember the optimal set of parameters. Therefore, Noiseware Professional takes advantage of the interesting possibility of creating a large number of "frozen" images. As soon as you experimenting with the engine parameters, you have achieved an acceptable result, you can create a new preview tab and continue researching further, without worrying that the found selection of settings will disappear. Returning to the original tab, you can also quickly evaluate the new result by comparing it to the previous one.

AKVIS Noise Buster 7.5

Developer: "AKVIS"
Distribution: shareware
Russian interface: yes
Compatibility: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Standalone Application

One of the advantages of this engine for removing noise from photos is that AKVIS Noise Buster is available not only as an add-on to the main Adobe Photoshop tools, but also as a standalone application.

To speed up the preview, the program shows the result of noise removal only in relation to the selected area. The size of the preview area can be controlled in the AKVIS Noise Buster settings. The image processing algorithm is rather slow, but compared to the standard Photoshop tool, the result looks a little more optimistic. This module has more flexible settings that make it possible to divide the image processing process into compensation for brightness and color artifacts. There is no library of presets in the program, however, the user can independently create sets of successful combinations of engine parameters. In addition, AKVIS Noise Buster displays a histogram of noise, which gives an idea of \u200b\u200bthe need to use certain parameters.

Noise Buster supports batch processing of images. The standalone version of AKVIS Noise Buster supports the processing of graphic files in JPEG, TIFF, BMP, PNG formats.

Noise Ninja 2.3.6

Developer: PictureCode
Distribution: shareware
Russian interface: no
Compatibility: Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Apple Aperture, standalone application

A distinctive feature of this module is that it can be used to create settings policies that will automatically use settings profiles, according to the custom rules created earlier.

Most photographs taken with digital cameras contain EXIF \u200b\u200btechnical information, which stores information about the camera used, shutter speed, ISO values, and other shooting settings. Noise Ninja can target this data. For example, the profile allows Noise Ninja to “remember” that when using the ISO setting equal to 1600, the noise is concentrated mainly in the shaded areas of the image, while it is much less in the well-lightened areas. The generated noise profiles can be saved as NZP files. From the application website, you can download profiles that take into account the characteristics of different cameras and scanners.

Another highlight of Noise Ninja is the ability to use masks. With a custom brush profile, you can define the areas of the image to be processed. Thus, the filter will not be applied to the entire photo, but selectively, which, possibly, will preserve the detail of the image. Noise Ninja can process images in separate channels of different color schemes.

⇡ Conclusion

Despite the fact that the tools considered in the review in most cases allow you to improve noisy images, it is still better to try to avoid noise. Getting a photo with a minimum of such artifacts is not so difficult, just switch to manual shooting mode and select the correct camera settings. Typically, graininess occurs when the ISO is set too high. If you see that the photo is spoiled by digital noise, set a lower ISO value, in addition, increase the shutter speed. The disadvantage of this "struggle" is that this method works only for shooting stationary objects. Selecting a slower shutter speed increases the likelihood of blurry and blurry pictures.

Ever confused by digital noise in your photo? It would seem like a great shot with good light. But, if you just make a little mistake with the settings or get into difficult conditions, where you cannot do without a high ISO, a problem immediately arises.

What is the problem?

Landscape photographs are often shot in difficult lighting conditions. For example, at dawn or dusk when shooting towards the sun, the scene is very contrasting with a large difference in brightness between shadows and highlights. When shooting at twilight, the contrast decreases, however, the amount of light is also significantly reduced, so you have to shoot at long exposures, while the thicker the twilight becomes, the less detail remains in the shadow areas. With the subsequent “development” of photographs in the RAW converter, there is a need to get some of the details from the shadows, and at this moment noise appears in the picture.

A number of examples can be continued. For example, noise is bound to appear in night photos taken at a high ISO. They will also be there if you, suddenly, make a gross mistake in the exposure by 1-2 stops and then compensate for the error during processing. In general, noise in landscape photography is not such a rare occurrence, and the ability to deal with it is an important skill of the photographer.

What to do?

The noise removal function is now in many programs and plug-ins for "Photoshop". More flexible settings usually have specialized plug-ins for noise reduction. One of them I use in my work, and it is called Noise Ninja (not included in "Photoshop", you need to install it additionally). Before starting the analysis of the example, I will make a reservation that the method described below is universal and can be used with any other plug-in to remove noise.

The photograph we will be working with was hand-held at ISO400 with significant underexposure, so after adjusting the exposure to normal, the picture turned out to be noticeably noisy. Quickly examining the frame, I identified two types of noise, which will need to get rid of in different ways.

The first is noise in the sky. This type of noise can be removed very easily, since there are no objects in the clouds with sharp edges, small details, and even with strong noise reduction, the clouds will look natural and natural.

The second is noise in the water and in the shady areas of snow. There are a lot of small details in these areas and it will be a little more difficult to achieve a natural look after noise reduction.

Let's start with a simple task and get rid of the noise in the sky area. To do this, open the photo in Photoshop, create a copy of the original layer and name it “nonoise-sky”.

The convenience of working on a separate layer is obvious, because after applying noise reduction to the entire image, we can use masks to reduce the effect of the effect on certain parts of the photo, or reduce the effect in general by adjusting the transparency (“Opacity”) of the layer. The next step is to launch the Noise Ninja plugin. It's under Filters -\u003e PictureCode -\u003e Noise Ninja. When launched, the plugin automatically builds a photo profile:

Noise Ninja's interface is very simple. There is a large area with the original image, on the right in a small window you can see a piece of the photo enlarged to 100%, and below it are the main settings.

Let's look at the settings panel:

Everything is very simple here. There are only two main sliders: Strength and Smoothness. The first sets the strength of noise reduction: the higher the value, the less noise will remain in our photo. The second affects the degree of smoothing: the higher the Smoothness value, the less detail will remain in the final image. It is with these two settings that we will achieve a natural looking picture. On the one hand - without noise, on the other hand - while maintaining the maximum possible amount of detail. The Contrast slider adjusts the contrast of the final image, but its work is not very predictable, so I always leave it at the default - 10.

Also on the panel there is a group of two settings with the word USM. They can sharpen a photo after applying noise reduction. Including these sliders here makes sense, since reducing noise always results in blurry images and loss of detail. Sharpening in this case can slightly compensate for this effect, but, in turn, can again show noise or add another problem to the image - visible artifacts. Therefore, I do not always use the USM group, only in simple cases, where global sharpening for the entire image does not lead to other difficulties.

Another group of sliders called Colors allows you to separately work with color noise, but in my practice there has never been a single case where I would like to use them. All three sliders are always in the middle position - 10. But on the contrary, I always turn on the Turbo and Coarse Noise checkboxes. Turbo - speeds up the work of the plug-in without visible quality problems, and Coarse Noise effectively removes low-frequency noise in the form of many small dots grouped into spots.

The main problem with noise reduction is to find a balance where the amount of noise is reduced to a normal level and the photo becomes clear, while we must lose a minimum amount of detail and achieve a natural appearance of the photo. If you just mindlessly turn the sliders to the maximum, the result will be a "plastic" image: yes, no noise, but also no detail. Let's analyze this process using our example.

The first thing I do is turn off sharpening (USM amount \u003d 0). Then, I find in the image where the noise is at its maximum. Usually this is the darkest area, often at the point where it transitions to a lighter zone. Now we are working only with the sky, and such an area is located near the horizon on the left side of the photo. The first step is to increase the Strength value to the maximum (20) and the Smoothness to the minimum (0). After that, gradually moving the Smoothness slider to the right, you need to stop at the moment when the visible noise points do not completely disappear at 100% crop. For our example, this happened with Smoothness \u003d 8.

At this stage, we have found the boundary position of the smoothing parameter, that is, in fact, we have figured out the threshold for the size of the part, after which it is considered noise. Now we need to reduce the effect of noise reduction so that the image does not look plastic. At the same time, a small grain will still appear, but it will look natural and natural.

To suppress noise in the sky, the Strength value remained quite high (14), but this is normal for clouds without fine details. With noise suppression in more detailed parts of the photo, the effect is usually much lower. Note also that the Turbo and Coarse Noise checkboxes are on. Apply the settings with the OK button.

Now, if we look at the photo at 100% magnification, we can see that the sky now looks much cleaner, but the details on the ice and snow are hopelessly blurred. Let's fix this by limiting the effect of noise reduction to only the sky area. To do this, add a mask to the 'nonoise-sky' layer and draw a linear gradient from white to black over it, making the bottom part of the layer transparent.

Look at the photo again at 100% magnification:

Now everything is all right. The sky is noiseless, and details from the original image have returned to the snow and ice.

Now let's tackle the noise in the detailed part of the photo. Here, the approach will be different, since we cannot lose a lot of details and it will not work to raise the Strength value too much. It turns out that the force of impact should be minimal by definition, but in this case it will not be possible to get rid of all the noise. The good news is that image noise is not evenly distributed. There is less noise in light areas, and more in dark areas. Therefore, the main idea of \u200b\u200bdealing with noise in areas with high detail is to "soften" the image a little, make it less sharp and micro-contrast, and then limit the effect of noise reduction only on dark areas. Let's try to implement this in Noise Ninja.

Create another copy of the original layer and name it “nonoise-water”.

Open the Noise Ninja, set the Smoothness value to the maximum (20), and then select the desired softening degree of details in the water and snow area with the Strength slider. This will make the image a little less detailed, but still with enough detail so as not to lose its natural appearance.

Apply the settings with the OK button. Then add a black mask to the “nonoise-water” layer, take a soft white brush with a transparency of about 20% and carefully draw problem areas on the mask. As a result, the mask may look like this:

Why all this?

The main goal of dealing with noise is not to completely suppress them, but to reduce their influence on the image to an acceptable level, while preserving the natural look of the final photo. Some amount of noise is fine. And this very degree of tolerance is dictated by the purposes for which you are preparing the image. For example, in stock photography, noise is very intolerant, and microstocks are especially sensitive to it. Therefore, if you are preparing a photo for stock, you would rather lose in detail, but get rid of noise almost completely. If we are talking about preparing a photo for printing, then here, on the contrary, it is better not to get carried away with noise reduction, while retaining a greater amount of detail. For publishing on the Internet, the fight against noise is practically meaningless, since when the image is reduced to 900-1200 pixels, all small details, including noise, will be lost by themselves. Therefore, even very noisy photos taken at ISO1600 and higher will look very decent and high-quality on a blog or website page.

I hope now you will have complete order with noisy photos. Tell your friends about my method on social networks. May they be fine too. 🙂