I have just got a new copy of CS2, finally some benefit of being a student! I'm currently shooting a 30D in both raw and jpg mode.

I'm curious what other software recommendations, suggestions you might have.

Certainly I am going to look at a noise reduction software, probably neat image or noise ninja. I've played with both and both worked very well I liked neat image a little better user interface wise, but if I end up with Bibble I may go with noise ninja for the advanced feature set.

However most of my question revolves around things like the FM software.

In general Will I see better performance on 30D pictures from the 30D specific programs such as resizepro and CSpro, or is it better to go with SI pro 2 and intellisharpen II? Beyond that will the results from those programs be better than working with CS2 features like unsharp mask and image resize or those provided in Bibble?

Or would it be better instead of putting together several plugins to go with something like BIbble, or are too many sacrifices made for an all in one program? I see that to get the total feature set for noise reduction I'd have to buy the noise ninja software in addition.

I'm not making money from photography, it's a hobby, so while I don't mind spending some money on programs to improve the end product, I also don't want to be tied up for hours tweaking a few photos, so a good user interface and automated steps are important. Mostly what I'm interested in is keeping the most quality, being able to resize, sharpen, remove noise from images without spending hours doing it, not asking for much just everything :)

Thanks in advance

Todd

Buy noise Ninja...... Sharpening can be done in CS2. Look for LAB sharpening in google. Resizing can be doe in Photoshop. I actually rarely resize. You can print 19" x 13" at 180ppi without any drop in quality at normal viewing distance for that type of print. Keep your money (buy some L glass if you need to spend)!

There is a lot of nice programs. For RAW conversion, I like DxO Optics Pro. They have a free demo at www.dxo.com. It does the things that you listed in your post and saves a lot of time. If you use DxO, you probably will not need noise ninja (I own NN and DxO).

For sharpening, Photokit Sharpner is nice. Demo available. Even if you don't buy product read manual because it does a nice job of describing sharpening.

Photo Mechanic is great for viewing and organizing your photos. Demo available.

Good luck.

Fred's software is nice, but is basically a prepackaged way to do things you can learn yourself. He does it in a simple way with a nice interface. Nothing unusual behind the scenes though.

If you print your photographs yourself, I would recommend QImage by ddisoftware. It's an excellent tool for printing. You dont need to resize your photographs before printing, simply select the size you want or customize the size and it will do the rest. It also recommends not to sharpen your images prior tp printing since that is also taken care of. You may want to apply a precapture sharpen though for which Photokit sharpener is very good.

I agree QImage is great ... also allow you to print at higher resolutions on your printer giving you more detailed prints.

I'll be the 3rd to say qimage for printing at home. CS2 noise reduction works perfectly and smart sharpening does the trick.

Between Bridge, CS2 and Qimage you can do alot without anything else.

For blending bracketed files to create extended dynamic range images with virtually no noise, you won't find anything better than Timothy Farrar's Digital Darkroom actions and scripts.

http://www.farrarfocus.com/ffdd/

The software package also include noise reduction, sharpening, and image enlargement scripts. I've just started using the scripts in the latest release, and I am absolutely STUNNED at the sharpening. My new prints are *incomparably* sharp, with nary a halo or fringe in sight. Check out the comparison between FFDD's sharpening and Photoshop's Unsharp Mask:

http://www.farrarfocus.com/ffdd/sharp.htm

Kathryn Farrar wrote:
For blending bracketed files to create extended dynamic range images with virtually no noise, you won't find anything better than Timothy Farrar's Digital Darkroom actions and scripts ... I am absolutely STUNNED at the sharpening. My new prints are *incomparably* sharp, with nary a halo or fringe in sight. Check out the comparison between FFDD's sharpening and Photoshop's Unsharp Mask:

So look at the action steps and tell us - what's he doing that's so special?
Inquiring minds wanna know - but not necessarily for $90...

As far as my must have list - I'll repeat Noise Ninja and PhotoKit Sharpening.
regards,
Jon

Noise Ninja? Is it really better than CS2 noise reduction?
Photokit sharpening? Is is really better than CS2 smart sharpening?

Can you tell the difference on a 8x10 if one product was used over the other?

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On another note for the original poster, have you learned curves, channels and such yet?

BubbaJon wrote:
So look at the action steps and tell us - what's he doing that's so special?
Inquiring minds wanna know - but not necessarily for $90...


Well if you really want to know,

Perhaps you are under the assumption that an Action cannot possibly perform as well as a third party plugin because after all "it could only use the built in filters provided by Photoshop".

The trick with digital filtering is that Photoshop actually has many of the primary operators (including minimum, maximum, highpass, custom filter, median, apply image...) that can be used as the building blocks to produce a truely remarkable digital filter. The difference is a 3rd party plugin is a program written in say C or C++, and an Action is written in the "language" of operations that can be done in Photoshop.

The end result depends purely on the ability of the algorithm to perform, not what language an algorithm is written in. Building a complex algorithm as an Action is not a problem either, my denoise Action has over 180 steps.

As for the FFDD sharpening algorithm it is similar in nature to the other highest quality methods in that it adapts the level of sharping to local area conditions around each pixel. So it stops areas from oversharping while enabling micro-sharpening of lower contrast details. This in combination with FFDD denoise, which removes noise only in the direction aligned with the edges (to keep edges sharp), and FFDD double, which as enlarging, thins and thickens details (to try and restore image quality) and micro sharpens around edges, becomes a powerfull workflow to produce crisp images from low noise developed photographs.

If you want to see what it does take a look at this image (full image on top, non-sharpened 100% crop on bottom),

And the full non-cropped enlargement, which I tried to post as a link because it is big, but just ended up showing up as an image,