What’s Your Preference?

Candomagic4u · #1 (**permalink**) 11-19-2011, 08:04 PM

So I took this picture of my cat with s700; learning the manual options to get
the best I can without using the flash. I like the results but due to the high iSO
setting the picture is grainy. Now I used gimp to apply a gausian blur, which
tends to fix some images, but I feel in this case it now blury look (lol). Can
you help to provide suggestions (besides buying a better camera) in how I
can fix this type of image with gimp?

before

after

Let me know, and yes I am new to this....

katia · #2 (**permalink**) 11-19-2011, 08:21 PM

it looks incredibly blurry now.

does GIMP have a noise reduction filter?

Candomagic4u · #3 (**permalink**) 11-19-2011, 08:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by katia

it looks incredibly blurry now.
does GIMP have a noise reduction filter?

I agree that it is totally blurry now...should I have left well enough alone?
Should I attempt different settings? Is the pic good enough?

Gimp does have noise filter but not sure if it what you looking for.
Under the noise filter it has several options: Hurl, Pick, Scatter HSV,
Scatter RGB, Slur, and Spread. Any thoughts?

flytyer57 · #4 (**permalink**) 11-19-2011, 09:57 PM

I'm not all that familiar with Gimp myself, (I mostly use Photoshop Elements 9) but you might want to go ahead and try each one of those noise controls, and if there are sliders, try using them to see what works. That glausian blurr is just way too much.

Cute cat by the way.

Candomagic4u · #5 (**permalink**) 11-20-2011, 01:21 AM

Thanks, he's been with us for while and has become part of the family...

I accidentally deleted the original modified image above so the link might be
broken now....

So I attempted again with little less bluing...

I'm almost thinking that the original image is ok and not too bad???

CarlyRocksPhotos · #6 (**permalink**) 11-20-2011, 03:01 AM

I'm not sure I see anything wrong with the first photo, un-gimped. The noise isn't very evident...and what's wrong with a lil noise?

Thing is: Think about what noise is: Pixels misbehaving, and not falling into their correct little spots b/c the sensor is making up what it thinks should be the pixel value for that area... so anything you do to "remove" noise is going to try to blur the pixels together to cover up the problem. . .

I have heard that NikSoftware has a good noise-reducing software?

But. How about just use the noise to your advantage?

Here's what I did- Hope you don't mind!
LightRoom:
-Lowered the contrast: Often helps quell some noise issues.
-Went Black and White- often the reason noise is banished in photography is that the digital sensors guess wrong- and the colors get muddy, murky or strange. Black and white tricks our eyes into seeing less noise b/c there are less colors for our brain to classify as correct/incorrect
-Used the Color/Luminance sliders in LR's noise reduction, bumped them a TINY bit. (Just because you asked how to rid the noise. I wouldn't have acutally used these for my personal photography as I didn't see much noise to turn me off, but then again- I use a lot of noise in my photography.)

He's a lil cutie pants.

Hope it helps!

ccting · #7 (**permalink**) 11-20-2011, 04:11 AM

noise ninja , image neat

CarlyRocksPhotos · #8 (**permalink**) 11-20-2011, 04:25 AM

I see I did not add the photo! Distracted by Pizza!

CarlyRocksPhotos · #9 (**permalink**) 11-20-2011, 04:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ccting

noise ninja , image neat

That's totally the program I was talking about- not Nik! Thanks!

Candomagic4u · #10 (**permalink**) 11-20-2011, 03:36 PM

I visited your sight and I like your work BTW and thank you for your insight...

Quote:

Originally Posted by CarlyRocksPhotos

I'm not sure I see anything wrong with the first photo, un-gimped. The noise isn't very evident...and what's wrong with a lil noise?

I was thinking the same thing initially and I like the pic as it is, but figure I start
playing with these "post-processing" ideas to see what I can do....to enhance
what I thought was good...

Quote:

Originally Posted by CarlyRocksPhotos

Thing is: Think about what noise is: Pixels misbehaving, and not falling into their correct little spots b/c the sensor is making up what it thinks should be the pixel value for that area... so anything you do to "remove" noise is going to try to blur the pixels together to cover up the problem. . .

This is great as now; to me, it makes sense why one would "blur" the image a
bit. So this is why you want a bigger sensor?

Quote:

Originally Posted by CarlyRocksPhotos

But. How about just use the noise to your advantage?

Here's what I did- Hope you don't mind!
LightRoom:
-Lowered the contrast: Often helps quell some noise issues.
-Went Black and White- often the reason noise is banished in photography is that the digital sensors guess wrong- and the colors get muddy, murky or strange. Black and white tricks our eyes into seeing less noise b/c there are less colors for our brain to classify as correct/incorrect
-Used the Color/Luminance sliders in LR's noise reduction, bumped them a TINY bit. (Just because you asked how to rid the noise. I wouldn't have acutally used these for my personal photography as I didn't see much noise to turn me off, but then again- I use a lot of noise in my photography.)

Thanks for the tips here and you have a good point. I liked what you did and I do not
mind especially if its showing me different things to consider to improve my own work.
Nice work BTW, but I didn't see any "noise" in your work

What do you mean by "Lightroom". Is this the software you use or your designating
that this is the post processing work you did?

Quote:

He's a lil cutie pants.

Hope it helps!

Thanks, it definitely does help, thanks everyone so far for the input.