Noise Reduction

[PolynesianMedic]

Ok, I shot a friends wedding in addition to the photographers that she had hired, at her request, and because it was outside in a fairly shady area, I had to shoot at 1600 for my shutter speed. At least I think I did. Anyway, I have a bunch of RAW files that I need to process and was wondering how to get rid of as much noise from these shots as possible. I have Photoshop Elements 6, FastStone Image Viewer and MaxView, GIMP 2 and PixelPerfect at my disposal, as well as the obligatory Canon and HP software that is of no help. Can anyone point me in the right direction. I know Noise Ninja exists but I wasn't sure if it will plug into Elements 6, or if there is something better in the new Elements 7. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Jeff Fillmore]

Not sure if the plug in works for PSE but I know Noise Ninja sells a stand alone version for the same price.

 

[JoePenniston]

Noise Ninja stand alone is the way to go IMO. I use it religiously.

 

[goofy101]

I use noise ninja as a plug in with elements 6 no problems

 

[PolynesianMedic]

Thanks guys! I appreciate it.

 

[Zeagle]

I use Dfine 2.0 by NIK Software. It has plugins for Adobe CS,CS4, Elements and Aperture. Noise Ninja is an excellent program too. I would download both trials and see which one you like best.

 

[Tim]

i have both dfine 2.0 and imagenomic noiseware. love them both.

 

[Paul]

I have no noise reduction software, but use Lightroom's which works well. Since I tend to need to go to a higher ISO at times, I am thinking about getting something like Noise Ninja. How do you guys decide when to use a noise reduction package, is it based on the ISO you use (e.g. anything higher then ISO 800 gets processed) or just the look of the photo you have captured? And do you tend to batch process if you have taken a bunch of high ISO shots during a night shoot for example?

 

[Tim]

i batch process, based on defaults which works great 95% of the time.
noiseware also has an "auto-profile" feature which reads your camera and ISO vs. a database of noise values. i am sure the other ones do as well but i really try not to over-complicate things.

 

[Roger]

I use it when I think it needs it.

Now with the modern cameras, the noise isn't as much of a problem when you have a non-underexposed image as it used to. I remember how bad ISO 800 was on my D30! Almost unusable. But now the noise of the old ISO800 films is worse than my 6400.