The
Mission
- Fix grainy noise in
high-ISO images
with Affinity Photo
Time
- 10 minutes
Skill level
- Beginner
Kit needed
- Affinity Photo
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James Paterson gets his hands dirty with Affinity Photo’s
Denoise tool to clean up unsightly high-noise images
When shooting in low light it’s
often necessary to increase
your ISO to get an acceptable
exposure. But this is to the
detriment of image quality,
resulting in nasty grainy noise.
Luckily, modern Nikons are
performing better and better in
low light. Imaging software is
improving too, as recent tweaks
to Affinity Photo’s demosaicing
and noise algorithms
demonstrates. With simple
controls and good results,
Affinity’s Denoise command can
improve even terribly noisyphotos, like this low-light portrait,
which was shot at ISO22,800.
However, the inevitable
problem with noise reduction is
a loss of detail. The command
works by blurring out the grainy
noise in the image, but by nature
this has an effect on the fine
details in the subject. It’s
especially apparent with high ISO
images like this, and even more
obvious when the backdrop
beyond the subject is blurred
out, as it is here. It’s a
conundrum: we want to apply
stronger noise reduction in theblurry areas where a loss of detail
doesn’t matter, but we want to
retain detail in the subject.
The solution is to apply two
different Denoise settings to two
separate versions of the image- one for the backdrop, the other
for the subject. This way we can
match the amount of correction
to the varying level of detail
across the image.
We achieve this by using a layer
mask to control what is visible or
hidden on one of our two Denoise
layers, allowing the other layer to
show through underneath.
AFFINITY PHOTO
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