Getting rid of the noise
Friday, December 19th, 2008
Nope, this doesn’t involve screaming kids! (If any of you have a solution to that I’m all ears!!) 
I’m talking about those annoying tiny specks of random color that show up in an image. It’s basically the digital equivalent of film grain. Have you ever uploaded your pictures from your camera and opened them up thinking they look awesome only to zoom in and find they don’t look so awesome anymore? This has happened to me more times than I’d like to admit! Here’s a picture I took of my daughter this past summer.
It looks okay until you zoom in (or print!)
Eeeeeek! Well there are a few solutions. First of all, try to avoid it in the first place.
“Shoot at the lowest possible ISO – Your ISO setting controls how sensitive your CCD or CMOS sensor is to light (digital film speed). The higher the number, the more sensitive it is and the less light you need to get a photo. However, the higher you set your ISO, the more noise you pick up. So, always shoot with the lowest setting possible. If your camera has an “auto ISO” feature, use it – this will keep the ISO as low as possible. As the light gets brighter or darker, it adjusts your ISO automatically.
Shoot at higher shutter speeds – If you stick your camera on a tripod and try some long exposures, you’ll probably notice a nasty increase in noise – especially if you’re shooting at a higher ISO. If you need to take long exposures, you should probably experiment with different ISO / shutter speed combinations to see what you can get away with. You don’t want the noise to get out of control and get all wild on ya.
Digital Zoom – Here’s yet another reason why not to use your digital zoom – it can add extra “noise” to your photos. Since a digital zoom is forced to create pixels where none exist, it can’t help but add to the noise problem.”
(I found this all these suggestions here.)
What if, despite doing everything you can, you still end up with some noise in the photo? Well, Photoshop and PSE have “de-noising” filters that are supposed to help, but to be honest they are pretty pitiful in my opinion. I could hardly see any difference at all even at the highest settings! So I did a little online research and found NeatImage. I have been using this plug-in for Photoshop for a little over a year and I am so impressed! Check out some of my results:
Sooooo much better! Now if you don’t have Photoshop or PSE that’s okay, because NeatImage is also available as stand-alone software, which means anyone can use it. Unfortunately it’s not a free program but there are free demos available. Click here for a Windows Demo and here for a Mac Demo. I hope this helps reduce the noise in your life, well the digital kind anyway! Have a great day! Jeni Hopewell.
