Filters of the Noise group in Photoshop. Photoshop Lesson - Getting rid of digital noise in a photo How to reduce noise in Photoshop

Often on websites dedicated to the Photoshop program, and sometimes in some books, they write that grain can be imitated by adding noise to the image. Such unfortunate advisers, it seems, never shot on black and white film and did not see the photographic grain. The noise that the program creates has a correct (“computer”) structure. Film grain, on the other hand, varies in size in the shadows, midtones, and highlights.

In Photoshop you can simulate grain in the following way. On top of all layers it is necessary to create a layer filled with 50% gray, then change the blending mode of this layer to Overlay. This can be done more conveniently by clicking in the layers palette on the icon for creating a new layer while holding down the Option (Alt) key. In this case, a dialog box will appear in which you can immediately set the blending mode.

Then you need to add noise to this layer by selecting the Filter->Noise->Add Noise command and checking the Monochrome checkbox in the window that opens.

The grain size depends on the noise intensity. However, the grain created this way is too harsh. Therefore, next you need to apply a Gaussian Blur filter with a radius of 1–3 pixels to this layer, and then add another gray layer and apply a noise filter to it with other parameters and also blur it with the Gaussian Blur filter.

The degree of blur is determined based on the size of the image and the required grain size. Then, depending on the desired effect, you need to reduce the opacity of one or two “gray” layers. Film grain tends to be larger in the midtones than in the shadows and highlights. Therefore, to reduce the size of the digital “grain” in shadows and highlights, you need to open the Layer Style window and, holding down the Optiosn (Alt) key, separate the sliders in dark and (or) light tones for the layer with “grain”.

This separation is necessary for a smooth transition from midtones to highlights and shadows.

Final photo.

Fragment of the photo with 150% magnification.

This technique of adding grain can be applied to images that simulate soft optics.

I would like to add that although this method of simulating grain is not so bad, it is still far from perfect. For better grain imitation, there are special actions and plugins.

Solarization

Over the years, photographers in the lab have used various techniques to artistically alter a photograph. These were solarization and bas-relief, isohelium and tinting, “wet” printing and others. Some techniques cannot yet be reproduced when processing in Photoshop; imitation of other techniques gives an effect similar to a laboratory one. One of the very beautiful techniques for further altering a photograph is making a black and white photogravure from it. This method is based on the phenomenon of solarization.

Strictly speaking, solarization is a phenomenon in which overexposed film acquires reversal properties. This reversal effect was called solarization because the developed, but not fixed, photographic material was exposed to the sun. (Solarize — to expose to sunlight.) There is nothing fancy about solarization. The usual approach is to expose the film or photo paper, partially develop it, overexpose it, and finally develop it. It was believed that solarization was a difficult process for a photographer. This was due to the fact that not everyone was able to achieve multiple repeatability of results. However, this was not due to the process itself, but to the lack of a clearly established procedure for conducting operations. Essentially, a solarized photo is a mixture of negative and positive. The solarization effect is much more interesting on high-contrast photographic materials, which make it possible to obtain an engraving from an ordinary photograph.

Under certain conditions of photochemical processing, thin lines, the so-called Macchi lines, appear at the boundaries of the primary and secondary images. The image turns out to be very dense, but after countertyping it turns out to be a negative for photogravure printing. If the process is repeated, thin white lines bifurcate. In an analog laboratory, the method was quite complex and required accuracy.

None of Photoshop's filters can directly achieve this effect. The Solarize filter applies correction to the image according to a “triangular” curve and has no preset options.

But there are still several ways to use the program to turn a digital photograph into an engraving. First, we convert the color image to black and white using any convenient method, for example, by mixing channels. It is better not to use direct translation to Grayscale, as you may lose important information for tonal separation. Naturally, we work with a copy of the image.

Method one. Apply the command Filter->Stylize->Solarize. The image turns out quite dense, and to lighten it and increase the contrast, we will use the Curves command. Duplicate the image and repeat the operation to split the thin lines. If you compare these two images, you will notice that some details are shown well on the first solarization and worse on the second, and some vice versa. At the same time, some areas change tone from black to white. We transfer one image to another (while holding down the Shift key - this guarantees their exact match). Next you should add a layer mask and paint over those areas on the mask through which the bottom layer should be visible. You can also apply effects to copies of the main layer by adding layer masks. If necessary, you can change the transparency and blending mode. Original and result:

Photo fragment 1:1:

The original print measures 40x90 cm.

Method two. It is a little more complex and subtler to configure. Let's use the Curves command with parameters corresponding to the data,

Plugins

Almost unchanged attribute old photograph is the grain that is present in almost every photograph printed on photographic paper with enlargement. Some old photographs have grain missing, but this does not mean that it was not there. The picture was simply taken on a large negative and then printed using contact. There are various plugins, or, as they more often say, additional plugins for Photoshop, designed for grain modeling. Most of these filters can imitate not only grain, but also black and white photography, toning and some other effects.

BWStyler

This plugin from The Plugin Site's Photo Wiz filter pack comes with a variety of customization options and templates. A novice user should start with Photography Mode and select the desired effects from the templates: film type, light sensitivity, development mode, print tone, etc.

The filter can be applied to an individual channel or a composite image. As always, it's best to create a copy of the layer and apply a filter to it. May be required additional customization adjustment layers of curves or levels. The grain that this filter creates is similar to the real thing, but, it seems to me, has a more rigid structure than the “film” one. When working with a filter, you should always observe the effect in 100% viewing mode. There are two parameters responsible for grain size. The Intensity parameter controls the amount of grain in the photo. The higher the value, the more grain. The Size parameter, as the name implies, determines the size of the grain particles. A value of 1 indicates that the grain size is 1 pixel. It was noted above that film has a larger grain size in the midtones than in the shadows and highlights. The Shadow, Midtone, and Highlight options let you increase or decrease the intensity of grain in different tonal areas. Reducing all parameters to -100 completely removes grain. At active button R appearance The grain will change with each change in the position of the slider, which is convenient for adjusting the image interactively. When the Uniform checkbox is checked, the noise spreads evenly throughout the image, making the grain appear artificial. This feature seems rather strange, since it practically duplicates the Noise filter in Photoshop.

RealGrain

Iimagenomic's RealGrain filter has a large number of patterns that simulate different grades of film and development effects.

Grain Style - Select one of two options: Film Grain or Digital Noise.
Grain Intensity - sets the level of grain and grain density in the photo.
Tonal Range - Separate grain adjustment for shadows, midtones and highlights.
Grain Balance - This option distributes the amount of dark and light grains, thereby slightly darkening or lightening the image. At values ​​other than zero, the grain becomes artificial, more like just noise.

Grain Size - When the Auto Resolution and Image Blur option is active, the RealGrain filter automatically calculates grain size based on the selected film format and the final photo size. Obviously, the larger the print size, the larger the grain. In addition, as the image is enlarged, the image begins to lose some sharpness. To achieve this effect, the RealGrain filter blurs the photo slightly based on the specified grain intensity, film format, and image dimensions. For example, let's say the image is 4992x3328 pixels (16 megapixels) and the format is 35mm film. The RealGrain filter calculates resolution as if 35mm film was scanned at 3600 dpi. Thus, based on a given film format and image size, RealGrain emulates the grain size for a specific resolution.

In addition, you can manually set the resolution between 1800 and 7200 dpi and the image blur from 0 to 40.

The RealGrain filter converts an image to black and white more flexibly than Photoshop. Each of the Color Balance options controls a specific color relative to other colors when transitioning to grayscale.

For example, positive values ​​for red colors cause the reds to become brighter at the expense of all other colors, while keeping the overall brightness of the image the same. On the contrary, the Color Response option sets the degree of sensitivity of the conversion of each specific color range. For example, positive values ​​in red areas push red to light gray without affecting the brightness of other color ranges. In addition to converting an image to black and white, the RealGrain filter allows you to tint a photo using specified patterns or manually.

Exposure

This filter from Alien Skin Software is similar in many ways to RealGrain. Eat various templates types of films, toning and special effects are supported. Only the conversion of the image to black and white occurs using the Photoshop channel mixing method. This method, unfortunately, is not suitable for every image, so before simulating grain, the image should be converted to black and white in Photoshop.

Overall Grain Strength is responsible for the amount of grain in the image. At zero value Most other grain control options are not available.

Shadow (Shadows), Midtone (Halftones) and Highlight (Lights) selectively add grain to different tonal areas of the photo. As has been noted many times, film has more grain in the midtones than in the shadows and highlights.

Roughness controls the shape of the grain edge. At low values, the grain is soft, and all grains in the image have smooth tonal transitions. Larger values ​​produce grain with sharp edges, more like squares.

Push Processing simulates the laboratory technique of redeveloping underexposed film. When overdeveloped, the grain always grows, the contrast increases, and a certain loss of detail occurs.

Size is exactly the same as the Grain Size parameter of the RealGrain filter. Here we must remember that the grain size will never be below 1.5 pixels. That is, if the photo is smaller than 3 megapixels, the grain turns into digital noise, which looks boring and ugly.

The Age tab provides options that let you reproduce the effects of old photos. This includes vignetting with varying degrees of darkening of the corners, and the effects of damaged negatives, such as scratches and dust during printing. This is perhaps the worst option of the Exposure filter. The Exposure filter automatically adds a layer to the original image, so the conversion process is more flexible.

Silver Efex Pro

This filter from Nik Software is perhaps the most interesting of all plug-ins for Photoshop. The plugin can also be used with Lightroom and Aperture. The Silver Efex Pro module not only simulates various black and white films, but also reproduces printing and toning effects.

The Tonality Controls group of parameters allows you to change the brightness, contrast and structure throughout the image. When working with control points, you can selectively adjust brightness, contrast, and structure. Increasing the Structure setting emphasizes fine detail throughout the image, while decreasing it reduces the amount of fine detail and makes the image appear smoother.

The Protect Shadows/Protect Highlights setting works similarly to the Shadows/Highlights command in Photoshop.

Color Filter - This is an option to simulate color filters that are used in black and white photography during the shooting process. The Hue parameter determines the ratio of colors in a photo when converting it to grayscale. The selected filter color lightens objects of that color in the image and darkens objects of an additional color. In turn, the Strength parameter determines the contrast between colors. The higher the Strength value, the greater the contrast between similar colors.

The Film Types section of the filter contains templates that simulate different types of black and white films with their corresponding grain and color reproduction in grayscale. Grain determines the degree of grain in the entire photo. The Grain per pixel parameter adjusts the amount of grain in the image. In the left position of the engine the grain is coarser, in the right position it is softer. And the Hard-Soft parameter sort of separates the grains from each other, making general structure more like noise.

Sensitivity is exactly the same as the Black & White command in Photoshop and is essentially the tonal profile of film processed in standard mode.

Tone Curve is exactly the same as the Curve command in Photoshop.

The Stylizing command block simulates various printing techniques and additional processing of black and white photographs.

In the Toning section, you can choose not only the tone of the photo itself, more precisely, color shades of gray in a certain color, but also change the shade of the paper. Identical to analogue photography, when the silver compounds (those gray and black colors) were replaced by other salts. It was these salts that gave certain colors on the prints instead of black. Some programs and plugins have commands that color the image in different colors. However, these commands simply color the highlights one color and the shadows another, without affecting whites and blacks. In contrast, the Silver Efex Pro filter precisely simulates the printing process with subsequent rotation. For example, let's say you took photo paper with a yellow base and printed a photo. Then they tinted it brown. In Silver Efex Pro, the paper is colored yellow and the image is colored brown. The filter contains several classic coloring options, which can be selected in the Preset list. The Strength parameter sets the overall degree of enhancement of the selected tone, while the Silver Toning and Paper Toning parameters control the shades of gray and paper, respectively. Silver Hue and Paper Hue and Paper Toning are responsible for changing the color of grayscale and paper, respectively. The Balance parameter determines the ratio of the coloring colors of the image and the paper. With negative values, the color of the tones dominates, with positive values, the color of the paper dominates.

The Vignette section is similar to the vignetting functions in other programs and filters. Amount is responsible for darkening or lightening the corners of the image, Size sets the area of ​​the image that the vignette covers. The Circle and Rectangle option changes the shape of the vignette between round and rectangular. The Place Center option marks the center of the vignette. That is, darkening can be created from a plot-important object located not in the center of the frame.

The Burn Edges section is used to adjust the edges of the photo. The term "burn", adopted among English-speaking photographers, means "firing". We say “seal”, that is, make parts of the picture darker. Each side of a photograph can be “sealed” in different ways. Four buttons are used to select the edge, and the degree of darkness is adjusted alternately. The Strength parameter determines the degree of blackening of the edges, Size - the width of the effect on the selected side, Transition - the degree of mixing between the blackening stripe and the original details of the image.

The filter contains solarization templates.

If you change the tonal curve, you can achieve different solarization effects.

But the most important thing is that the effect is applied not to the original image, but to its copy on a separate layer. Although the user can choose to apply the effect on the same layer.

At the bottom of the navigator there is a map of blackening zones (Zone System Map), intended for visual assessment of tonal transitions in various areas of the photograph. To see which parts of the image are located in a specific brightness zone, click on the number in the zone map and the zone in the image will be highlighted.

To compare the original image with the converted image, use two-window mode.

Viewing windows can be located on the left and right, which is convenient for vertical images, or at the top and bottom, which is convenient for horizontal ones.

Important Notes

If we talk about grain imitation in general, the most realistic effect is obtained when scanning film on which a uniformly illuminated gray surface was shot. Moreover, it is necessary to shoot out of focus so that there is no surface structure on the film. The resulting grain file is inserted into a digital photograph as a separate layer with a blending mode of Overlay or Soft Light. You can also just shoot on film.

Today, Photoshop is available in 32 or 64-bit versions. This is due to the bit depth operating systems. Therefore, before installing certain plugins in Photoshop, you should check not only the execution of the program, but also the plugin. They can also be produced in 32- or 64-bit versions.

Instructions

Most The best way combating noise means preventing its occurrence. Noise in photographs occurs in low light conditions, in which the camera or photographer is forced to greatly increase the ISO value. Already at ISO 400, extraneous artifacts appear in photographs, but if ISO is raised to 800 or even 1600, you cannot avoid noise in the photo. Blurred, tacky spots greatly affect the quality of the photo; they can be eliminated either with special filters or with tools originally built into the Photoshop editor.

For clarity, we will not show the entire image, but only a small section of it, in which the multi-colored noise is clearly visible. The most in a simple way To get rid of it there will be a filter specially designed for this purpose. We move through the menu items as follows: Filter – Noise – Reduce Noise. With a filter, a preview function is available, so you can set the parameters at your discretion, focusing on the resulting result. This method is the most famous and common, but there are other options.

Convert a photo from RGB space to LAB Color. This is done easily Image – Mode – Lab Color. In the layers palette, go to the Channels tab, there you will see the Lab, Lightness, a and b channels. To both last channels, apply the Gaussian Blur filter Filter – Blur – Gaussian Blur. The size of the filter parameters will depend on the size of the original image. Having blurred both channels in this way, return the photo to the original color space Image – Mode – RGB Color. The result will be something like this

If the noise is so strong that none of the above options can cope with it, then you can make a knight’s move, namely, desaturate the photo. When you bleach the photo, the noise will also be decolorized, which means it will become less noticeable. A little grain can add a stylized effect to the photo.

In general, noise is a whole, unpleasant problem. digital photos, made in the dark and now we are solving this problem. First, let's open our image with noise and evaluate the situation as a whole.

Go to the menu File/Open or use hotkeys CTRL+O. By the way, you can also open an image using the “ Open as...» ( ALT+SHIFT+CTRL+O), find and select our image with noise, then to the right of the “File name” field, select open as “Camera Raw” file type and our image immediately opens in the Camera Raw filter.

I open my image first, in the usual way, to further show how to go to the special “Camera Raw” filter, select the desired tab and carry out operations to eliminate noise. Now let's evaluate my image, which contains color and luminance noise. Here it is:

Image with color and luminance noise

There is more than enough noise in this image. You've probably already begun to doubt that we'll succeed... Of course, we won't be able to completely remove all the noise, but it's easy to make the image less noisy. Let's move from theory to practice!

Step #1

So, I opened my image in Photoshop, now I need to go to a special filter - “Camera Raw filter”. To do this I go to the top menu Filter/Camera Raw Filter, or use hotkeys ( SHIFT+CTRL+A).

Go to the Filter/Camera Raw Filter menu...

Step #2

The Adobe Camera Raw filter window opens in front of us. Place a checkmark at the top in the “Control view” item to immediately see changes in the image while working in the filter. Next, select the “Detailing” tab, I have this third icon on the left. In the lower left corner you can change the image scale, we will need this soon.

Adobe Camera Raw Filter Window

Step #3

Find the “Color” slider and slowly move it to the right until the color dots disappear. Don't try to remove luminance noise at this stage, for now we are only removing color noise (color dots). As soon as the color dots disappear, immediately stop moving the slider.

Zoomed the image up to 300%

This is what we got at this step after some simple manipulations with the “Color” slider. Notice that the colored dots (color noise) have completely disappeared from the image. Now all that remains is to remove the brightness noise.

Color noise in the form of color dots is completely removed

Step #4

Now let's move on to removing luminance noise. In order to do this, find the “Luminity” slider and slowly move it to the right side, while simultaneously observing our image. When it is enough, we determine it individually in each case, but the “Luminance” value in any case is always higher than the “Chromaticity” value. Here's what happened:

This is the picture we got, the noise has almost completely disappeared

Step #5

As a result of all our manipulations, the sharpness of the image decreased. In order to increase sharpness, you need to move the “Effect” or “Brightness Details” sliders to the right. You can move these two sliders or any one of them.

But keep in mind, you need to move the sliders very carefully, because the opposite effect occurs; the more you add sharpness, the more noise appears. At the end, do not forget to click the “Ok” button to save all changes.

Carefully add sharpness

Now let's look at the result of all our work to remove noise from the image. As a result, we received an image with virtually no noise, the result is quite decent. I think now you will no longer have a question about how to remove noise in Photoshop.

This is what happened after noise removal processing

How to remove noise from a photo so as to preserve small details and leave maximum frame sharpness? The question is quite complex and very common. That is why many tools have been developed to combat noise in different programs and plugins.

The ideal solution to the problem of noise is to prevent it from occurring during the shooting process:

• set the correct one;
• If possible, take photographs in RAW format;
• compose the frame so that it is not cropped too much during processing.

But if all conditions were met during shooting, but there is still noise...

How to remove noise from a photo:

How to remove noise in Adobe Photoshop:

Before direct noise removal, on critical images, in each channel, for more subtle removal. This allows you to retain more detail in the image and achieve better results.

Reduce Noise Filter

In order to remove noise from photos in Photoshop, there is a special filter Filter – Noise – Reduce Noise (Filter – Noise – Remove Noise).

The dialog box presents two modes of filter operation:

Basic—sets parameters to remove noise from all channels equally.

Advanced – it becomes possible to configure noise removal parameters in each channel individually (Per Channel) and a setting similar to the Basic mode – (Overall) (Fig. 1.).

The Strength parameter adjusts the amount of luminance (tone) noise reduction in all channels.

The Preserve Details option allows you to preserve some detail in the image. But the higher the parameter value, the less noise is removed. The value of the parameter is determined empirically, depending on the source image and the Strength parameter.

The Reduce Color Noise option allows you to reduce the level of chromatic noise.

The Sharpen Details option allows you to sharpen the image.

The Remove JPEG Artifact checkbox masks the square image fragments that appear during JPEG compression.

The filter can be applied several times to enhance the effect. Short command Ctrl + F.

Adobe Camera RAW plugin

Adobe Camera RAW– a plugin that allows you to process graphic files before directly opening them in Adobe Photoshop. It was designed specifically for the RAW format, in which most professional digital cameras save photos.

If original file is not a RAW format, but, for example, JPEG, then in Photoshop there is a function that will allow you to open the image in Adobe Camera RAW File – Open As (File – Open As) – select Camera RAW – select file – Open (Fig. 3).

In order to remove noise from a photo, you need to go to the Detail tab (Fig. 4). In the Noise Reduction column, you need to raise Luminance to the level where noise begins to disappear and lower Luminance Detail to a minimum, followed by raising it to reveal fine details. Same with Color , Color Detail.

The Luminance parameter adjusts the level of luminance noise reduction.

The Luminance Detail parameter adjusts the noise reduction threshold. A low value gives a cleaner result, but with noise, details are lost.

The Luminance Contrast parameter adjusts the luminance contrast between light and dark areas. Small values ​​give best result noise reduction, but at the same time lower contrast and a more blurred image.

The Color parameter adjusts the level of chromatic noise reduction.

The Color Detail parameter adjusts the chromatic noise reduction threshold.

It is also possible to remove noise in Photoshop Lightroom; it has an intuitive interface, which is built similar to the Adobe Camera RAW plugin.

As you can see from the above examples, the Adobe Camera RAW plugin does a better job of suppressing digital noise than the Reduce Noise filter. Also among the advantages of Camera RAW:

• carrying out non-destructive image processing;
• synchronization of settings among images taken under the same conditions to increase processing productivity;
• performance (Photoshop is not loaded yet);
• intuitive interface.

Noise reduction plugins

To suppress noise, in addition to Adobe Photoshop, other programs and plug-ins (most often RAW converters) are also used. They are both paid and free.

Plugins for Photoshop: Adobe Camera RAW, Topaz DeNoise, Neat Image, Grain Surgery, Noise Ninja.

RAW converters(separate programs): Adobe Lightroom, Capture One, Bibble (Corel), Apple Aperture (Mac OS X only).

Hello dear readers, today I will tell you how to remove noise in Photoshop so that your pictures taken on high rates ISO, looked as sharp as possible and did not irritate you with unpleasant graininess that immediately catches your eye.

Modern cameras often set their own sensitivity to an increased value if photography is taking place in a dark room or on evening streets. As a result, an unpleasant scattering of multi-colored pixels appears in the photo, which is called digital noise. This phenomenon is especially noticeable in dark areas of the frame. To get rid of this unpleasant phenomenon and make your picture much better and cleaner, you should use a simple trick.

Open the image in a graphics editor.

Create a copy of the photo layer by pressing CTRL + J.

After that, go to the Channels tab and select from among them the channel on which the noise is most noticeable. Usually it's red.

Drag this channel to the create a new channel icon, which is located next to the trash can icon on the Channels tab.

After that, select the menu “Filter – Stylize – Edge Enhancement”

Then you need to select “Filter – Blur – Gaussian Blur”.

In the dialog box that opens, select a radius of 2 to 3 pixels.

Press the Ctrl key on your keyboard and click on the icon with the color channel you are editing. After that, click on the RGB channel icon and go back to the “Layers” tab. Here, click on the “Add Layer Mask” button.

After this comes the final stage of getting rid of the consequences of high photosensitivity. At this stage, you need to select “Filter – Blur – Surface Blur”.

In this case, experiment with the radius indicator until you are completely satisfied with the result.

Now you know how to remove noise in Photoshop and you can do this with any of your photos, making them as clean and beautiful as possible.

home » Earn money online » Filters of the Noise group in Photoshop. Photoshop Lesson - Getting rid of digital noise in a photo How to reduce noise in Photoshop