How to get rid of noise/artifacts?

[Dena_Cordell]

I have moderate skills when it comes to editing photos on Photoshop and I'm always learning new things. However, I have had plenty of photos get rejected due to an Artifacts Issue even after using Filter > Noise or other means of noise reducing filters. If there is something that works really good for you, please let me know. Here are some photos that were rejected for artifacts.

[Moved from Stock Contributor Critique​ - moderator]

[D Fosse]

photos that were rejected for artifacts

And rightly so. Here's a 100% crop:

This is massively oversharpened to begin with, and then doubly killed with equally massive noise reduction on top.

The way it looks to me, you've just maxed out all the sliders all the way. You really need to dial down both sharpening and NR.

View at 100% to judge the effect!

[D Fosse]

These aren't by any chance shot with a phone, are they? I've seen phone images like this. It immediately looks good on the phone screen, but rapidly falls apart on closer look.

[davescm]

Hi
They both look like they have had an overdose of noise reduction.

The second has some quite nasty sharpening artifacts on top.

It would be good to see the original RAW files to see if we can help with better processing and improve them.

Dave

Edit : Ha ha D.Fosse got there first - he types much faster than me

[Per Berntsen · Accepted solution]

The two images suffer from way too much noise reduction, and the bottom one seems to be oversharpened as well.

For images shot in daylight you shouldn't need to use any noise reduction at all if you use ISO 100 or 200.

My guess is that these are jpgs shot at an unnecessarily high ISO, which will lead to noise.

You should always apply sharpening and noise reduction at 100% view.
If you shoot raw files at the lowest possible ISO, you should get much better results.

[Benjamin Root]

On top of what D Fosse, Dave and Per suggest, I'll add that I find Camera Raw's noise reduction to be better, in most cases, than Photoshop's. Additionally, Camera Raw's sharpening has a masking feature built into the effect, which is quicker and easier than manually masking the sharpening yourself in Photoshop. (Of course there are limitations - the faster way is not always better than a detailed, manual job.)

[Per Berntsen]

Benjamin Root wrote:

I find Camera Raw's noise reduction to be better, in most cases, than Photoshop's.

I find the opposite ... I don't use Camera Raw, but Lightroom's noise reduction should be exactly the same.

In my experience, Photoshop's Reduce noise filter does a much better job than Lightroom in reducing noise and preserving detail at the same time. I usually have Preserve detail set to 70 - 100%.

But I completely agree that Camera Raw's/LR's sharpening is very good, I usually have masking set to around 80.

[Benjamin Root]

Per Berntsen wrote:

I find the opposite ... I don't use Camera Raw, but Lightroom's noise reduction should be exactly the same.

In my experience, Photoshop's Reduce noise filter does a much better job than Lightroom in reducing noise and preserving detail at the same time. I usually have Preserve detail set to 70 - 100%.

You may be right, Per. Testing again now, I recall my previous findings. Indeed, Photoshop's noise reduction does do a better job of reducing noise, while preserving details. Additionally, applying the filter in several passes can smooth the noise as much as, and more than, ACR/LR.. However, Photoshop's noise reduction can result in more artifacts.

But here is the interesting part.. When you combine ACR/LR sharpening with the ACR/LR noise reduction, the results become very similar. Which means, if you do not have any other purpose to enter Photoshop, the winner would be ACR/LR - no need to store an extra file.

[Per Berntsen]

Benjamin Root wrote:

When you combine ACR/LR sharpening with the ACR/LR noise reduction, the results become very similar. Which means, if you do not have any other purpose to enter Photoshop, the winner would be ACR/LR - no need to store an extra file.

That's interesting. I have to admit that I rarely use noise reduction for images from digital cameras, but nearly always for scanned tiffs.

I never sharpen these tiffs in Photoshop, I always use Lightroom for capture sharpening. And I always do noise reduction in Photoshop before importing to Lightroom. The PS Reduce noise seems to do some masking behind the scenes - I guess LR attempts to do it with the Detail slider, but the results are far inferior to what you get in Photoshop.

I'll investigate this more closely when I get the time. And let's hope that the next version of LR/ACR comes with a masking slider for noise reduction ...

[Benjamin Root]

Agreed. I'd say at least 95% of my images do not receive any NR treatment. If noise can be prevented in the first place, you are miles ahead. Even so, sometimes one can find themselves in need of a bit of NR.

...let's hope that the next version of LR/ACR comes with a masking slider for noise reduction ...

Goodness, wouldn't that be nice! I've wish it were there many a time. Hmm, I may just head over to the feedback site to see if it has been requested recently.

[Trevor.Dennis]

You have pushed the shadow areas _way_ beyond what then RAW file had to offer leaving you with a muddy mess, so to answer your question specifically, there is no noise reduction tool that can help this, because noise is not the issue.  On that day, and at that time, there was no photograph there, even if you'd made a better job of controlling the exposure, and there was absolutely no picture worthy to submit for publication.  I'm sure you know about the 'Golden Hours', so make use of them, and control your exposures better.  Look after your highlights, and if that means the shadows will be blocked out, give it a go anyway, or come back another time or find a better angle.