How many use noise reduction software to reduce grain?

[Ronald_H]

To my 'digitally schooled' eyes, film grain quickly looks intrusive.

My workflow is hybrid, that is to say I scan my negatives and work from there.

In my concert shooting days I learned to use noise reduction tools to get better results from my 1600ISO Nikon D70 shots (digital of course). But these tools also work on grainy scans. How many of you are in the habit of tweaking your scans to get grain that looks acceptable on a monitor?

 

[Jim-st]

I use NoiseWare from Imagenomic (Photoshop plugin) - digital noise has none of the charm of film grain as far as I'm concerned, and I'm actually willing to forego the charms of grain in order to live without scanner-generated noise.
So for me the future is an all-digital one - my darkroom is digital, my printer is digital, and when the M8 gets here in a few days time I'll be packing the Bessa away for good. The film RF's lured me away from my DSLR's for a while, but I'd rather spend on cameras and lenses than on film, processing and a scanner that noises my pictures up!

You can, of course, buy canned film-grain plugins, but I don't think I'll bother

 

[Jason Sprenger]

I also think that film grain is intrusive. So yes, I routinely use noise reduction on my film scans. I consider it essential.

I appreciate that film grain is its own aesthetic, but it's one that doesn't often appeal to me. It's also a primary reason I still have cameras that shoot medium and large format film.

 

[not_in_good_order]

I typically only use software to remove chroma noise which is often present after scanning c-41 film. Grain reduction via my scanner or luminance noise reduction via a program like lightroom removes too much fine detail for my taste. I'd rather have a slight texture visible in an image than smear away detail.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Lately, I've been using Lightroom 3 to add it!

 

[andydg]

no changes

no changes

Grain is part of the character of film I like, so why remove it?

If I want smoother images I just put on my HD sunglasses.🙂 Then they just pop out at me.

 

[Vilk]

Grain is part of the character of film I like, so why remove it?

Because representing a film image using eight hundred squares in a line is not part of the character of film? 😎

I routinely remove grain from scans to make them look more like my wet prints. The pixel mess on the computer screen may be cute sometimes, I agree, but it's never what I see on paper and rarely what I'm after.

 

[Steve M.]

Grain in B&W is often beautiful, and it belongs there. In color it sucks, so I have on occasion used a free program called Noiseware Community Edition. It works great. Very simple, intuitive software.

 

[Bob Michaels]

<snip> How many of you are in the habit of tweaking your scans to get grain that looks acceptable on a monitor?

Personally, I don't care what my work looks like on a monitor, it is only the prints that count.

But the times I have tried to tamper with b&w film grain, it just did not look right to me.

 

[Gradskater]

I use it for maybe 75% of iso400 color pictures, but hardly ever if I shoot ektar 100 or something with a fine grain. I used it here in this photo set to see if I could simulate a digital image with a film scan. It worked ok, not the best attempt, but you get the idea.

 

[Bruin]

I use Noisware with the Film Grain Effect preset dialed down a bit. Does an nice job on chroma noise and leaves some high and medium frequency noise so details don't get blurred. Nikon Coolscans tend to accentuate the grain more than Minoltas and flatbed scanners.

 

[Ronald_H]

I use Noisware with the Film Grain Effect preset dialed down a bit. Does an nice job on chroma noise and leaves some high and medium frequency noise so details don't get blurred. Nikon Coolscans tend to accentuate the grain more than Minoltas and flatbed scanners.

Hmmm. I own a Minolta Scan Dual II, A Nikon Coolscan V and an Epson V500. I don't think the Nikon makes negs look grainier, just that it has the highest resolution. The old Minolta is still pretty good, but has a lot more noise than the Nikon. The Epson (a flatbed) is actually pretty close to the Nikon in quality. So good in fact that if the Nikon would die on me I'd stick with the Epson.

Anyway, I was not talking about removing grain, just reducing it for viewing scans on a monitor. Especially the 'dye clump effect', basically chroma noise on film can be dealt with effectively while maintaining good luminance detail.

 

[thegman]

I've used noise reduction to clean up an awful scan, it turned an unusable shot into a pretty nice photo. Maybe with a quality scan it would not have been required, but it was...

 

[MartinL]

IMO, anything 640 and above is a candidate for noise reduction. Remember PS has that wonderful fade slider. I run some likely candidates through Noise Ninja and then slide from 0 to 100. This is one of those adjustments that you (OK, "I") can't predict until you A-B it. So even though the first pass through NJ makes the photo looks creamy, like it was run through a Waring Blender, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 to 60% can reform the digi pixelation into a lifelike (if not film-like) texture.

 

[biggambi]

I have tried a few different noise reduction tools, and I settled on Nik Dfine 2.0. I hardly ever use it. But, when I do need it, I am glad I have it. Typically, the aesthetics of it are not to my liking. When I do use it, it seems it is always sparingly.

I do concur with Bob Michaels, it is the print that matters to me. But, images on the internet are often what sells the print. This in-and-of-itself can be a conundrum. How well does the image on the screen represent the printed image?

As for the general aspect of grain, it just does not bother me. Unless it begins to obscure the picture. I can not stand banding or chroma noise, but who can? This is a rather interesting topic. Have people found that digital imagery has changed their preference and/or tolerance for grain? I actually use a B&W converter by Nik software that introduces grain as I see fit. Peculiar it is, that some of us are either drawn to introducing it or try to avert it.

Would anyone be willing to post some examples of what you have altered, before and after? I am curious as to what people find bothersome. I may not have an eye for it, and it could be educational.

Kindest Regards.

 

[katgut@earthlink.net]

I don't use specific noise-reduction software, but have a method that works:
I simply make a duplicate layer in PS, add gaussian blur, then mix the two layers.

 

[MCTuomey]

Noise ninja when needed. PSP "film grain" when needed. All depends on the look I think I want.

 

[f6andBthere]

Scanned fim grain can look downright ugly on a monitor a lot of the time depending on the film. Even printing with a high quality printer like the 2400 on decent paper makes it look totally different though.

In the gallery here the most common visual glitches I see are images that have been over sharpened or had way too much noise reduction!

 

[Ronald M]

Noise reduction and sharpening are polar opposits.

Best results are if you mask edges and do NR and then mask areas of solid smooth color and do sharpening. If you mask properly, you can be very agressive with NR.

"Real World Sharpening" by Frazer and Schewe will expain it all. $35 at Amazon.

In the end, even my D200 Nikon at iso 100 is better than any 35 mm film. I would equal it to a Hasselblad film print. And the D700 compares to 8x10 contact prints. Both with no NR.

http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/articles.htm

See his series on NR and Sharpening as a preview to the book.

I am not anti film. I just bought a nice Nikon F2S and have a bunch of Leicas. Understand the technology is fading fast.