Posted by Phillip Noll on August 27, 2008 at 11:34 AM
I just stumbled upon a fascinating thread over at the Luminous Landscape forums where an enterprising young man is developing a method to remove nearly all noise from digital images with no change to color, contrast, etc. This is not HDR and gives much better looking files than any HDR software (IMO). The routine is performed on raw files before being developed. It requires two shots, one exposed normally and one at +4EV. The results are simply amazing. The thread is here:
The developer plans to develop a GUI for the software and have it spit out a noise-less DNG file that you can then develop in the raw converter of your choice. The developer is looking for help with the DNG coding aspects so if you are a programmer maybe you can help.
Sorry if this has been posted before but I thought that many of you would be interested in this. The thread is a bit long but very interesting reading.
Posted by David Bostedo on August 27, 2008 at 1:22 PM
A few notes on this :
-- The software already exists, and I've used it several times. It's really nice, although you need to follow the instructions from the website carefully. The website is on the forum above (not sure which page of listings). It's in Spanish, but I threw it into a free online translator and was able to make out what to do. You also have to have dcraw on your computer. If anyone needs help with this, I could give some more instruction.
-- The technique has been around for a while, and really has nothing to do with HDR. Basically, you're overexposing the darkest parts of the scene, then pulling the exposure back down in the RAW converter to what it should have been in the first place. This gives you pretty much noise free darker areas (or at least no noisier than the bright areas).
-- The software is great, because it actually does this to the RAW images directly, where most people have done this in PS before (with not quite as nice results). And it's in GUI form, so it's fairly straight forward.
Posted by Steve Foss on August 27, 2008 at 1:48 PM
Well, I'm using CS2 on an older Mac with OS 10.3.9. Any hope for me with this method, David?
Posted by Phillip Noll on August 27, 2008 at 2:51 PM
Steve,
I understand that the software is only available for Windows. But, you could run a virtual machine on your Mac using Parallels or VMware Fusion and run it that way---I think.
Posted by David Bostedo on August 27, 2008 at 9:04 PM
Steve - There is a version of dcraw available for MAC. Take a look at this page. I think that's where I got the Windows dcraw from. I don't know if dcraw does you much good for this technique without some modifications to the code and/or the GUI though.
As for the GUI interface, I don't think there's a MAC version, but you can replicate the same thing with two JPGs in PS, as long as you develop the RAW files correctly. Take a look at the English version of the article that Guillermo Luijk wrote. (He originated the thread on LL, and wrote the GUI software for dcraw.) In the section "How to Achieve the Blending of Two Images", there's a link to a Photoshop tutorial for the same effect.
You may also try asking Guillermo if a MAC version is pending. Someone did ask on the forum, but he didn't respond.
Posted by Steve Foss on August 28, 2008 at 9:08 AM
Thanks, David. I saw the asked and unanswered Mac question on that thread. I'll take a look at the PS technique you mentioned.
Discussion
6 replieshttp://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=17775
The developer plans to develop a GUI for the software and have it spit out a noise-less DNG file that you can then develop in the raw converter of your choice. The developer is looking for help with the DNG coding aspects so if you are a programmer maybe you can help.
Sorry if this has been posted before but I thought that many of you would be interested in this. The thread is a bit long but very interesting reading.
Troup
-- The software already exists, and I've used it several times. It's really nice, although you need to follow the instructions from the website carefully. The website is on the forum above (not sure which page of listings). It's in Spanish, but I threw it into a free online translator and was able to make out what to do. You also have to have dcraw on your computer. If anyone needs help with this, I could give some more instruction.
-- The technique has been around for a while, and really has nothing to do with HDR. Basically, you're overexposing the darkest parts of the scene, then pulling the exposure back down in the RAW converter to what it should have been in the first place. This gives you pretty much noise free darker areas (or at least no noisier than the bright areas).
-- The software is great, because it actually does this to the RAW images directly, where most people have done this in PS before (with not quite as nice results). And it's in GUI form, so it's fairly straight forward.
I understand that the software is only available for Windows. But, you could run a virtual machine on your Mac using Parallels or VMware Fusion and run it that way---I think.
As for the GUI interface, I don't think there's a MAC version, but you can replicate the same thing with two JPGs in PS, as long as you develop the RAW files correctly. Take a look at the English version of the article that Guillermo Luijk wrote. (He originated the thread on LL, and wrote the GUI software for dcraw.) In the section "How to Achieve the Blending of Two Images", there's a link to a Photoshop tutorial for the same effect.
You may also try asking Guillermo if a MAC version is pending. Someone did ask on the forum, but he didn't respond.