Photoshop Plug-Ins

I'm new to NPN and have also just started working with Photoshop CS4. (teaching myself with books & DVDs) In the past few day I read about Plug-Ins to Photoshop that will reduce noise, sharpen, improve color, etc. It appears from viewing some of the tutorials on the web, that this might be an easier and better option for me to consider. My first and only post could have used some noise reduction, but I don't seem to be getting the results that I need in Photoshop alone. I would appreciate any comments, suggestions, and/or experiences that anyone has had with these plug-ins.

Noise reduction might be the most common plug-in that most people have Dottie. (Especially since I'm assuming that you don't work with RAW files yet?) In any case, there are several common good ones out there, and probably others I haven't heard of. Take a look around the web (search for noise reduction software) - you can download demos of most of them. I own the Neat Image plug-ins, and really like them, but here's a list of the most common ones by my estimation :

Neat Image
Imagenomic NoiseWare
Nik Dfine
Noise Ninja


These are for sale, but there may be some free versions available.

Other plug-ins, I wouldn't actually recommend, except maybe for sharpening - but the sharpening in CS4 is already very good and not lacking as much as noise reduction. Some people love plug-ins, but I like working more directly with Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop.

I'm a fan of
Topaz De-noise 4 - just out, free upgrade from earlier versions, and also on sale until May 31:
http://www.topazlabs.com/denoise/?utm_source=mailinglist&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=denoise4

There is also free full-version trials of all the excellent Topaz products:

http://www.topazlabs.com/downloads/index.php?d=denoise

Sandy r

Rumor has it that Photoshop CS5 has much better noise reduction than previous versions. I haven't had time to test it myself yet, but you might want to try it our if you are planning to get this upgrade.

It seems to me from my experiance in using any noise reduction software, that the sharpness is always affected. Is this correct? Maybe I'm not using the software or processing the photograph correctly.

That's correct Jackie - all of the algorithms that reduce noise also, unfortunately, affect sharpness. Some are better than others, but it almost always take some careful combination of sharpening and noise reduction (and very often masking - although some programs can automate this) to get the best results.

I am enjoying the noise reduction in Lightroom 3 beta2, which is very good, and probably the same as Camera Raw. I use Noise Ninja as a plugin also in CS5. I don't seem to need any changes in sharpness yet as long as I use due diligence in LR. When I use NN in CS5, it is usually on the background and very selectively on any obviously noisy areas of the subject. I usually do this either with layer masking or the history brush.

I'm using Nik DFine & it's great. It helps to select the areas that need noise reduction most, and you have significant control over those. The trick to not losing sharpness in the photo is to reduce the noise only in those large open expanses of your photo that represent an area with little detail - these are the areas most likely to have noise. I rarely if ever do noise reduction on the entire image.

The trick to not losing sharpness in the photo is to reduce the noise only in those large open expanses of your photo that represent an area with little detail - these are the areas most likely to have noise. I rarely if ever do noise reduction on the entire image.

Exactly! Global noise reduction (and sharpening) is almost never needed.
Pretty much all of the noise reduction apps named (Noise Ninja, Neat Image, Imagenomics, DeNoise) available do a good job. No need to spend vast amounts of money on any particular program.