Today Topaz released a new version of their noise removal plug-in Topaz DeNoise 6, and since I already had the ability to try it out, here are my thoughts on it, together with some example photos, so you can see before/after on how it works.

Even if I almost always shoot at ISO 100, there is noise in my photos. Either I had to use a long exposure, which creates noise, or I had to overexpose a part of an image, and that introduced more noise. And this is where a noise reduction plug-in comes in handy.

Interface

The Topaz DeNoise interface is really simple. On one side you have a list of presets, either the generic ones, or the ones specific for a camera and ISO combination. On the other side you can tweak the specific settings manually.

You can choose how you want to view the photo, either full color, luminosity view or by specific channel, and you can even have the preview be automatically brighten, so you can see the noise better.

It all easy and straightforward, and the only thing I could not find is a side by side view of the image, before and after noise reduction.

Noise removal

The results look really good. I found the default settings a bit on the strong side, where they soften the detail too much, but that can be corrected.

Topaz DeNoise 6 has three categories of settings. Noise reduction, detail recovery and Debanding. I like that they offer separate noise reduction based on the brightness (highlights and shadows are separated). Also being able to separately adjust noise in the blue and red channels is nice addition. I ended up turning down the Correct black levels, as it tended to result in overall contrast bump, and so causes the results to be much colorful. The Reduce blur in the Detail recovery really helps to remove the softness I mentioned earlier.
(the images will load bigger that usually, as I did not resize them down, so you can see the noise at 100%)

The debanding is something new for me. The purpose here is to remove noise lines that are created by very high ISO. I tried to create it by using 25600 ISO on my Canon 5D mark II, but I don’t think it was created. So for a view of that, check out the official site.

Conclusion

As you can see from the before/after shots, DeNoise creates quite nice results. One has to play with it a little, as the defaults are on the stronger side, but one can get good results. I compared it also to the plugin I use right now, the Imagenomic Noiseware, and the results are very similar. Better said, there were areas where I liked the DeNoise more and there were some where I liked Noiseware more. And since one can get a trial version for free, it’s easy to try out both, so you can have a look and decide for yourself what you like better :)

You can get a trial version for Topaz Denoise here, and for the next month, you can also use the code NOISEFREE to get 30usd off from teh standard price.

Taking a little rest today, so no new photo, but two new wallpapers for you. And since the 21:9 seem to be most popular, here are two new for you, both in 3440×1440 resolution. As always, you can download them from the wallpapers page.

First of all, sorry for the late announcement, but it’s always a challenge to synchronize the schedules of busy photographers :)

But before I get to the winners, let me first thank you our sponsor Aurora HDR from Macphun & Trey Ratcliff, for providing the great prizes, our judges Conor MacNeil from TheFella.com
Jonathan Danker from Jonathan Danker Photography, Anthony Gelot from A.G. photographe,  and of course to all of you who joined the contest or voted for your favorites.

Don’t forget to try out Aurora HDR. You can get the free trial version right now form Aurora HDR website.

Jury selection

It was quite hard to choose the winner this time, with all judges choosing different favorites at first, but in the end, as the one winner they choose the entry number 70 from Renant Hong Cheng, with the judges praising the clean “real-life” processing he used.  As the jury selection winner Renant will receive an Everyday messenger bag by Peak design.

I would also like to mention entries 74 Marklin Ang, 111 Nguyen Thai Thach, 114 ET Choong and 124 Sebastien Gaborit who all were not far from being the winner.

Peoples choice

Same as by the jury selection, the voting in the facebook album was really close this time, with multiple photos being very close in the number of likes and only in the end one broke away from the pack. And the winner here with 411 votes, was the entry number 107 from Richie Goh. As a winner of the peoples choice selection, Richie will be recievein a  Parrot Jumping Sumo Drone by Parrot.

I will be contacting both winners in the next few hours, so if you are one of them, check you FB messages, and if you don’s see one from me, contact me there or via my email miroslav.petrasko@hdrshooter.com.

Again thank you very much to everyone and I hope to be able to make another round for you again :)

Today I will show you how I edited this photo of the new Old bridge in Bratislava. So let’s get started :)

As you can see from the comparison of the final and starting photos, my main goal here was to brighten the shadow areas, to get at least some detail in them, and to darken the middle part around the horizon.

I started with correcting the chromatic aerations in Lightroom and not much else there. I exported all the files and loaded them into Oloneo Photoengine. The result I got here, was really close to what I wanted, but there were still few more tweaks needed. All I did in Photoengine was to move the strength slider until I got an even lit image.

From there I loaded all the files into PHotoshop, and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. Photoengine result
2. -2EV exposure, to darken few light in the distance.
3+4. -1EV and 0EV exposures, from which I painted in few parts of the water. HDR usually removes makes the water very soft when combining the images, and I wanted a bit of detail there.
5. On a merged layer, I removed any dust spots and also removed the white outlines from the bridge (check out this tutorial for more about this)
6. To add more detail and contrast into the water, I used Color Efex Pro Tonal Contrast, and painted in using a mask just into the water.
7. Added a little saturation into the sunset colors around the horizon.
8. To brighten the rocks in front, and few parts of the bridge, I went back to Lightroom, and exported a version of the +1EV exposure, which I exposed by a stop. Then I loaded it as a new layer, and used luminance masking to apply it to few spots.
9. At the end, I found a few ghosted cars far in the distance, which I corrected from the -1Ev exposure.

 
And that’s all I did with to get the final photo :)

A busier day today as I hoped and while I hoped to take some new shots, I ended up with none. So today just a quick repost of one of my videos, on how to take multiple brackets on the Sony a7R (and similar cameras).