I was chatting with a forum member about Noise Reduction (nr) today and I got the idea to put a really easy tutorial that covers the very basics of nr using Photoshop. I figured there are lots of new members who may not know certain techniques. The screen shots here are from CS 6 but I have been using the same techniques since CS 3.
Feel free to ask questions
Tim
First open the image and crop if needed. Then select the subject using whatever method you are comfortable with. Then hit shift-ctrl-i to invert the selection. Or go to the Select menu and choose Invert. This make everything selected EXCEPT the subject.
That should blur the noise to a smooth background. If it needs more, hit it again with the same noise filter. Better yet create an action that does this step and assign a hot key, that way you select, invert, hit the key as many times as needed.
That removes the noise from the background. Now if you need the noise removed on the subject, invert the selection again. shift-ctrl-i. Then run a plugin such as Noise Ninja or Topaz Denoise or some other plugin that allows fine tuning and remove just as much noise as needed without loosing too much sharpness.
For this image the subject looks fine without any NR applied. Here is the final product.
That will be helpful Tim for many since it does not require a Plug-in program to do.
I am curious here, did you in the finished image do just the BG and leave the bird and the flower alone? I was going to add that you could select items that you want to not run this on, then re-select items again to do with a varied setting perhaps, so in this case, hit the BG hard with NR, none on the bird and maybe a bit to soften the flower?
And it also gives a sense of a sharper subject and more depth in the image
I figured there are lots of new members who may not know certain techniques.
Thanks for putting this up. I'm one of those new members learning these techniques. While I don't use photoshop, it's the principle of not doing NR where detail is important that is the concept.
This is basically the technique I use, just want to add that for anyone here using Photoshop Elements (rather than full blown photoshop) this method works fine their too.
