And to avoid sharpening and hence exacerbating noise in the shadows, skies, or other surfaces that should be rendered silky smooth. This is by far the best way to ensure that your NR software doesn't clobber wanted detail. The single most important lesson I have learned is to always apply NR and/or sharpening selectively. Now, that is a bit of an over simplification because there are times that you wish to sharpen surface textures for example. So these two operations are applied to different parts of the image. And I apply most sharpening with an edge mask. In general, I apply NR with a surface mask. However, just to be (constructively) provocative I'll suggest that it doesn't matter, at least with my workflow. Some experts have suggested sharpening first under some circumstances, but those situations are probably best left to the experts. I have been hoping to hear about noise reduction in LR3, but those who do know and post here, have signed a non-disclosure agreement and are honoring it, it seems.Ĭonventional wisdom says that you perform the NR first. Speaking of HDR images, I find myself adding a bit of noise to them at times. (Now Andrew is going to tell me how I need to be using, and singing the praises of, Photokit Sharpener. I have both Photokit Sharpener, and Sharpener Pro 3.0, but rarely use either of them, since my present workflow seems to meet my needs. I did not state that specifically in my earlier post, but I certainly do that from time to time depending on the needs of the image. Like you I do use selections on a layer for Noise reduction, and that can also be done for sharpening as well. I work on many HDR photos and selective noise adjustment is essential! Thanks! I'll be using NoiseWare instead of ACR on a duplicate layer of the original, so via layer masking I'll be able to select which areas of the photo get noise adjustment. Noise before sharpen does make sense though! Have you seen PhotoKit Sharpener? this looks to be an awesome program that allows for both and it's non destructive, using layers to control the original. I am looking forward to LR3 which will let us see the sharpening and the noise reduction simultaneously, as metadata editing, so that we can adjust both to our taste before moving on into Photoshop. Generally it is suggested to reduce noise before sharpening an image, but this is a guideline without much discussion of what kind of sharpening, and for what purpose. I am not always consistent about noise either. I believe this is up to the artist's desire. I find many images up to ISO 1600 quite acceptable in print, but sometimes I reduce the noise in skies at ISO 100. I shoot a lot of scenes that I am adding noise into, so take my workflow with a grain of salt, if your desire is a perfectly flawless complexion. My approach to noise may not match your needs or desires. I never allow them to escape from my camera. I do not try to rescue unacceptable, out of focus images in Photoshop however. I have numerous prints from EZprints, and Bay Photo that are quite acceptable in sharpness with this workflow. If I am having large prints made by one of smumgug's vendors, I will leave output sharpening up to them. If I am printing on my Epson inkjet, in Lightroom2, I will perform moderate to strong output sharpening in the print panel of Lightroom. I will follow this step with either some local contrast enhancement or a high pass filter for sharpening as I examine the image. The rest of the image may not need any noise reduction, and, hence I do not do a lot of global noise reduction in my images. Selections can be done with the Quick Select Tool, via Quick Mask, or other selections tools. Frequently this is just the blue area of the sky in a large pano that I want to be noiseless if possible. I usually create a copy of the working layer, and run NoiseWare on the selected areas of the image that need noise reduction. I frequently do not globally reduce noise for my entire image. Adobe says the Noise Reduction coming in Lightroom 3 is "State of the Art" I certainly hope so, and will use it in LR3 if it is, in conjunction with Capture Sharpening. By the time it has reduced noise very much, it has cost too much image detail for my taste. ( The noisier they are, the less aggressive I am, for the reasons already discussed in this thread ) I rarely use the Noise Reduction in ACR, because it just isn't that good in my hands. I use LR2/Adobe Camera Raw for my Raw processing, and I do perform fairly aggressive Capture Sharpening on my RAW images. I think that depends on the image, to a certain extent. Just wanted to get opinions on workflow.do you all sharpen before or after you deal with noise issues in a photo?
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