Still low on new photos, so wish me luck the next two days, when I will be in Cesky Krumlov, so I get a lot of new ones :) Bur for today, and for the next two days, I will be again only reposting some of my favorite shots.
How about a sale for today. If you want to get my video tutorial series, Master exposure blending, you can get it cheaper for the next week. From now on, until next Sunday, you can use the code THIRTYOFF to get 30% off from the price (that’s 15USD) and get the tutorials just for 34USD.
To get all the info, and sample videos on the series, please check the Master exposure blending page.
and hear you can see the introduction video, to see what it’s about
A quick edit of another shot of the Empire bridge in Vienna. I think I will have to do more photography in Vienna this year. I usually just go there during the day, and that’s just not enough. Especially when the sunset is so late in the day.
Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 5, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 28mm, Aperture: 11, Middle exposure time: 10s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.228242,16.411141
A little off photography topic today. Today’s post will be about my experiences with moving my working computer (on which I edit all my photos) over to the Windows 10 technical preview operating system. Some of you may have already noticed that the screen-shots in the blog posts started looking a little differently. This is of course because Windows 10 uses a little different theme.
But first a little background. I quite like playing with new software, and I don’t mind it being a early version. I think at one time or other I had all available versions of Windows installed on my PC (and even Linux and MacOS at one time, but those never stuck around fro long). I even had Longhorn at one time, for those who still remember that system :) So when the technical preview for Windows 10 came out, I wanted to try it right away. But since I also have to work on the PC I did so only in a virtual machine. But as luck would have it, few weeks ago, the main HDD in my PC had a hardware failure, and while replacing it, I decided to go with a new operating system.
And here I my thoughts on it. Windows 10 works wonderfully for it being only a technical preview. It’s almost on par with the stability of Windows 8. I did run into few crashes, but what I could find out, there were caused by the graphic card drivers, which are of course also beta version. And since a lot of graphic editing is quite demanding on this, this is a cause for problems.
My biggest problem was with Nik plugins, especially Color Efex Pro, which crashed almost constantly. Luckily there is a simple fix for that, it’s enough to disable GPU processing in the settings. Secondly, Photoshop froze randomly in the earlier builds, especially when I opened multiple images. But that disappeared in the latest build. From a non-working point of view, I seen few games having problems with the same beta drivers, causing crashes.
Other than that, I had no real problems. One finds stuff that is not finished yet, features that don’t work properly or just a work in progress stuff. But for a normal day to day work, nothing from this really influenced my work at all.
What I like on the Windows 10 technical preview, and why I will probably stay with it is:
– it’s really fast, especially from the SSD hard-drive.
– modern apps work the same as normal programs. There are few that I like to use (Nextgen reader, Hyper for Youtube, Mail) and it’s just easier to have them in a window.
– snapping now work also for normal programs. Again, especially on a huge screen this is a big help. And it’s even intelligent, that if you resize a snapped window, and then snap another one next to it, it will fill the remaining space.
– it now supports multiple desktops and a much nicer Alt-TAB dialog. This all helps a lot with productivity overall.
– it shows notification (I can’t wait for Win 10 for my phone, so it synchronizes them between my phone and PC :))
Than there are some other nice features, which still need work. For instance the new browser Spartan, is currently just so much faster than Chrome or Opera, it’s just still missing some basic functions, and it’s quiet a memory hog. But the moment they correct this, it will be the browser I’m using.
So overall, my few weeks with Windows 10 were great. I was expecting so many more problems after the articles I read about it, and I seen very few. So if any of you want to try Windows 10 out, I can only recommend it. It will be, once it’s finished, a nice (free) upgrade to windows 8.
For those curious on what PC I’m running the system, here are the basic specs: Intel i7 3.4ghz, 16.0 GB ram, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660, Samsung SSD 850 EVO 250GB HDD, LG 34UM95 34 inch display.
Today, I will take a look at noise reduction and Imagenomic noiseware. Imagenomic Noiseware is currently for me the best way to remove noise in my photos. I’ve been using for a long time now, and I haven’t found one that makes cleaner photos yet.
1. Decide if you really need noise reduction
Let’s start with a general thought. Noise reduction is not always needed, and sometimes it can even make you photo worse. It very often can cause a big lose of detail and make the photo look softer. So my tip is, if you can, first look at the photo in the desired size you want to show it, and only then think about if noise reduction is needed (but always use noise reduction on full size photo).
2. Use it selectively
Continuing from the previous point, use noise reduction only on parts of a photo where it’s needed. Especially in two cases, you should think about avoiding it. First is when you have an area with a lot of small detail. Using noise reduction on that can remove all the detail and make the whole area looking just blurry. Secondly, when you have a color gradient (usually the sky) a noise reduction could cause a very ugly color banding. It’s just looks better with noise than with color banding.
3. Use Gaussian blur for a very strong noise
From time to time you will get a very strong noise, especially if you brighten underexposed areas of your photo. For noise like this, no noise reduction will work, as that will create more of a jagged blobs. Easier is just duplicate the layer, blur it with Gaussian blue, and then mask it in where you need it.
4. Remove noise before filters & retouching
If you plan to use special filters on your photo, like Color Efex Pro, or Topaz Adjust, remove the noise first. This is because a lot of these filters work with detail in your photo, and can interpret the noise as additional detail. You don’t want them to make the noise even more visible.
It’s similar for when you do retouching. For instance if you use content aware fill to remove dust spots from the sky in your photo, having the sky noisy, will create a worse result. Photoshop is just not so great when it tries to replicate a noise pattern. It’s much better when replicating a smooth transition.
Only luminance noise reduction
Only color noise reduction5. Know the difference between color and luminance noise
There are two kinds of noise that you can get in your photos. You have have luminance noise and color noise. The luminance noise is what creates the variations in brightness (the small brighter/darker dots all over your photo) and the color noise creates a variation in color (especially with longer exposure)
So when reducing noise, you have to think, if only reducing a certain type of noise, will work better. If you want to protect the detail, do only color noise reduction. If you want to protect the color, do only luminance noise reduction.
In Imagenomic Noiseware (and all other noise reduction programs) you can choose the strength separately for both, so experiment, trying to see which one work better for the specific situation.
No detail protection
Detail protection used6. Use detail protection
Again, in most noise reducing programs, you can turn on detail protection. In Imagenomic Noiseware you have this option for Luminance and also Color noise. What it does, is tries to determine what is detail, and what is noise. It’s not perfect, but it does quite a nice job overall. So if you have an area, where the detail is getting lost in the noise, try this.
And that’s all for today, will show you more about noise reduction next time :)
