Topaz denoise

[Superstriker#8]

Is topaz denoise as good as the website says it is? It's on sale half off with a coupon code. Opinions please. And to denoise owners, maybe you could post a before and after picture.

 

[edmsnap]

I don't have any high-ISO before/afters handy, but Topaz is my go-to denoiser. DXO Optics Pro may give marginally better performance for high contrast/high ISO super-difficult images, but is a dog to figure out how to use. Topaz preserves a lot of detail and handles noise great. For the money, I'd say it's well worth buying. If you want to link to a RAW file that you'd be interested in seeing it perform on, I can denoise it for you to see the results.

 

[Superstriker#8]

What camera do you use, and what is the highest ISO you are comfortable using with and without the noise reduction? Thanks!

 

[pake]

I used Neat Image for noise reduction before but ever since I tried Topaz Denoise last Autumn I've switched to that. Soooo much better. And sorry, I don't have before/after-pics available at the moment...

 

[pdk42]

Can you let us know the coupon code? Would like a copy myself!

 

[MajorMagee]

It's my default tool for removing noise without losing detail.

 

[wjiang]

Can you let us know the coupon code? Would like a copy myself!

I think it's MARDENOISE, it's on their website anyway.
It looks impressive, pity I have such an ancient version of Photoshop...

 

[edmsnap]

What camera do you use, and what is the highest ISO you are comfortable using with and without the noise reduction? Thanks!

I use an E-M5 and an E-PM1 for µ4/3. I'll shoot at any ISO needed to get the shot; it's all a matter of trade-offs. I of course will prefer to use a tripod and a brighter lens, but there's no reason to be afraid of ISO 3200-6400.

Here's a quick illustration from an image here on mu-43 (that I'm stealing... but acknowledging that I'm stealing which I'm hoping doesn't offend any of the board-gods!):

Moon-shot by mu-43 member rfortson:

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This is a small, ISO 1600 JPEG with a ton of noise. It is in a lot of ways a worst-case scenario because Topaz will work way better on a larger RAW image; thus, running it through Denoise 5.1 (and a tiny brightness adjustment), you get a "this is the worst result the software can give" example:

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This example shows the denoising better than it does the detail preservation, but a quick scan of the board didn't give me a high-ISO/complex-detail example to "borrow." :tongue:

 

[Glenn S]

You can try it for free for 30 days, why not download it and see if you like it?

 

[wjiang]

This example shows the denoising better than it does the detail preservation, but a quick scan of the board didn't give me a high-ISO/complex-detail example to "borrow." :tongue:

It really killed the detail in that one... I think I prefer the noise TBH.

 

[Reflector]

Watch out: Quick and Lazy NR ahead at ISO 25600 from my E-M5 for demonstration purposes.

Click the link to hurt your vision at ISO 25600: (I recommend doing this for all of the photos to see them at 100%)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70176717/Photos/OMD50216_PNRN.jpg

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This is what you can do with Adobe ACR in Photoshop with two layers with different NR and masking off another layer with more aggressive NR for the shadows:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70176717/Photos/OMD50216_1ACRN.jpg

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This is what I got using Topaz Denoise to try to pull down noise in the non shadow regions:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70176717/Photos/OMD50216_1TPON.jpg

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And by selectively (really quickly and lazily) combining both of them to let ACR handle the shadow regions I get something like this:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70176717/Photos/OMD50216_1CMBN.jpg

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Topaz will preserve the details better but it won't be able to clean up the shadows as nicely. You can crank it all the way up for the shadow regions and it will still misbehave with artifact. Realistically this will work much better between ISO1600-12800. You will be able to retain as much detail as you want as long as you are willing to spend 15-30 minutes on an image. You can compare that to that DxO's thing where it chews on your image for a hour or so.

 

[mattia]

Um, DxO's PRIME is nowhere near that slow - I processed several moderate ISO images (say 800-1600) using PRIME for laughs, and it completed 20 in about 2 hours. Still horribly slow for general use, but it works a treat. This is on a 4 year old Nehalem Mac Pro.

 

[coffeecat]

Interesting. I downloaded the Topaz trial and had a play, comparing it to LR4, and also DFine2

I was generally impressed, apart from one shot taken at ISO6400 inside a ride at Disney (ie. really dark) where I couldn't really get much useful out of Topaz, which perhaps ties in with the comment above about shadows.

Nevertheless I was impressed enough to buy it anyway! (with the discount).

Rob

 

[Reflector]

Um, DxO's PRIME is nowhere near that slow - I processed several moderate ISO images (say 800-1600) using PRIME for laughs, and it completed 20 in about 2 hours. Still horribly slow for general use, but it works a treat. This is on a 4 year old Nehalem Mac Pro.

Huh, I must of been watching someone running on a lower spec system at the very highest settings then... But then again, they put in some ISO12800 shots from a D800 so maybe that might be it.

 

[jomerads]

Might I suggest Reflector that you use a TIFF when using Topaz DeNoise rather than JPEGs so that you maybe able to pull out more detail from the shadows. The other thing when using JPEG's would be to use the Topaz DeJpeg program first to provide more structure in the image and then use the DeNoise program. This is if you really have no other choice but to use a JPEG.

Just my 2 cents.

John S.

 

[Reflector]

Might I suggest Reflector that you use a TIFF when using Topaz DeNoise rather than JPEGs so that you maybe able to pull out more detail from the shadows. The other thing when using JPEG's would be to use the Topaz DeJpeg program first to provide more structure in the image and then use the DeNoise program. This is if you really have no other choice but to use a JPEG.

Just my 2 cents.

John S.

Those come from RAWs, I only shoot in RAW+jpeg (Quick previews). Those images were processed in Photoshop through ACR, the Topaz example having ACR's NR set to zero and with everything else identical. That image was pushed extremely hard to show the DR and detail retention to a friend, but not in these NR examples. The NR examples I did last night as a quick demo since this topic was about Topaz Denoise.

 

[m4/3boy]

FWIW, Noiseware, is the most effective NR software around that I've used. A trial version is available for download.

 

[GBarrington]

I own it, and I like it very much. I find it very good for photos with problem noise. However, since I rarely shoot at iso > 800, I just don't HAVE much of a noise problem.