6 Replies Latest reply: Jul 22, 2012 2:11 PM by Robert Eckerlin RSS

    Is this "Noise" or is it "Grain"

    Robert Eckerlin Community Member

      In the attached screenshot of the result of a scan of a 15-year old slide, the face of the Woman in the red jacket has a lot of ugly spottiness.

       

      I was believing that this spottiness is "Noise", But somebody else tells me, that this is not Noise but is instead Grain.

       

      So what is it: Noise or Grain?

       

      Thank You a lot in advance for your answerIs it Grain or Noise.jpg

        • 1. Re: Is this "Noise" or is it "Grain"
          99jon Community Member

           

          It looks like noise. You can correct it in camera raw using the luminance and color sliders under the detail tab.

           

          From the Editor click File à Open As

          Then choose Camera Raw from the dropdown menu.

           

          grainimage_jpeg.png

           

          • 2. Re: Is this "Noise" or is it "Grain"
            photodrawken Community Member

            It's film grain, all right.  You can see that it's consistently present across the entire image, whether in the shadows or highlights.

             

            There are a couple of ways to eliminate or reduce it, but they all involve slightly blurring the image and losing some detail.  99jon's suggestion of using the ACR editor works best for this image; there's also the "Reduce Noise" and "Despeckle" options under Filter...Noise.

             

            Ken

            • 3. Re: Is this "Noise" or is it "Grain"
              Robert Eckerlin Community Member

              Hello photodrawken and 99jon

               

              A lot of thanks for your answers.
              Can I please add the following question: Is it normal, that a good slide scanner (it was a Nikon D9000 Coolscan) produce similar results in the unedited photo file?

               

              Until now, I have seen similar problems in shadow areas, if trying to massively lighten the shadow areas of a scanned Kodachrome slide. But up to now, I have never seen something similar problems in the unedited result of the 2000+ scans done by a  Nikon D9000 Coolscan,

               

              I therefore wonder if the scan has really been done at the Scan shop with a Nikon D9000 Coolscan; or whether the scan has been done with a cheaper scanner and the file metadata has been doctored, to pretend that it has been done with a Nikon D9000 Coolscan. Are you aware of methods to verify that the scan has really been done with a Nikon D9000 Coolscan?

               

              Thanks a lot in advance for your answers. 

              • 4. Re: Is this "Noise" or is it "Grain"
                Robert Eckerlin Community Member

                99jon: I had overseen (shame on me!) the excellent result that you attached to your Post. I will try to achieve similar results with the method thswt both of yxou suggested.

                 

                Thanks again

                • 5. Re: Is this "Noise" or is it "Grain"
                  photodrawken Community Member

                  I can't answer your questions about the Nikon scanner, but the only way to tell if the "speckles" in your image are grain or noise is to examine the original under high magnification.  If the original is a Kodachrome, it's highly unlikely that you will see grain, so the speckles are digital noise.  In that case, you'll need to examine the scanning workflow to see where the noise is being generated.

                   

                  As a practical matter for the scanned image, it doesn't matter whether the speckles are noise or grain -- to reduce the effect you'll need to do a balancing act between blurring and keeping the sharpness....

                   

                  Ken

                  • 6. Re: Is this "Noise" or is it "Grain"
                    Robert Eckerlin Community Member

                    Ken

                     

                    Thank You very much for your additional information that has been useful for me..