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Technique NOISE REDUCTION SOFTWARE
Nik Collection 3 by DxO
l £125
Nik Collection 3 by DxO is a set of eight plug-in software
packages for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and DxO PhotoLab.
Amongst the more well-known plug-ins such as Silver Efex Pro
and Analog Efex Pro is Dfine 2, which is specifically designed
for noise reduction.
Although it was developed by DxO, Dfine doesn’t use
DeepPRIME but it’s still very powerful. After opening an image in
Photoshop and activating the plug-in, Dfine automatically adds a
couple of measurement squares to the preview. You can move
these sample points and add others if you wish. Dfine then
analyses the sections and applies some noise reduction which
you can save as a reusable Profile that’s specific to the camera and
sensitivity (ISO) setting.
Clicking on the Reduce button allows you to tweak the
denoising using the Contrast Noise and Colour Noise sliders. The
noise reduction can also be targeted to specific areas by adding
Control Points or by selecting specific colour ranges.
Once you’re happy with the result you can either click on ‘OK’
to apply the denoising as you see it in the preview or you can
click on ‘Brush’ to switch to back to Photoshop, automatically
creating a mask in the process. Then you can paint in the noise
reduction where you want it, even adjusting the opacity in areas
where you want a more subtle treatment.
Adobe Lightroom Classic
l £9.98/month as part of the Adobe Photography Plan
The six sliding controls that make up Lightroom Classic’s
noise-reduction tools are located along with the Sharpening
controls in the Detail section of the Develop control panel. These
are the same tools as are in Adobe Camera Raw, the raw-
processing companion to Photoshop.
It’s best to use the Color control first to remove the chroma
noise. By default, this is set to 25 and if you drag it left to 0, you’ll
see more noise appear. Then, gradually move the Color control to
the right to conceal the noise but keep an eye on the detail level
and don’t overdo it. The main image preview shows the impact
of these settings, but there’s also a small preview window just
above the controls that shows a section of the image at 100%.
You can also use the Detail and Smoothness controls to refine the
colour noise reduction.
Next, use the Luminance slider taking care not to push it too
far to the right as detail is lost. You may be able to bring back a
little detail using the Detail slider and restore lost contrast with
Contrast control.
Finding the right settings is a bit of a juggling act but aim to set
the Color noise reduction to a point just after the coloured
speckling disappears and be even more conservative with the
Luminance control because generally, a little texture is more
acceptable than a smooth image.DxO PhotoLab
4 Elite Edition
l £169
DxO has a background in analysing
lenses and cameras to enable it to
correct their flaws. This information
feeds into DxO PhotoLab 4’s correction
modules and PhotoLab 4 is compatible
with raw files from more than 400 digital
cameras with modules for over 60,000
camera and lens combinations – but
check yours are listed before purchasing.
DeepPRIME is the latest version of