Digital Home Thoughts: Noise Ninja Photoshop Plugin (Beta 4b)

Conclusions
Using the Noise Ninja plugin can be extremely quick and simple. It is recommended to run the filter early in the workflow process because it is easier to remove noise right out of the camera than it is after applying other effects and filters. The documentation contains a quick start guide which is useful for getting the gist of using the product. Ultimately it is as easy as clicking the Profile Image button and applying the filter. All of the other settings are used to get a better profile or fine tune. I found the results to be a good mix of eliminating the noise without affecting the overall sharpness of the image. At the time of this writing, the plugin is still available for free as a public beta. I am looking forward to the final release of this plugin as it will have a place in my workflow process.

The release version of Noise Ninja can be purchased from the PictureCode Website. The professional version includes 16 bit image support, batch processing and multiprocessor support. The home version only allows 8 bit image editing and no multi processor or batch functionality. The license will work with both the plugin and stand alone version of the product.

Below are some examples of the images before and after the filter. For each example, I used the auto profiler with default settings. The original image size is 3504x2336 pixels. The reduced image is 400x267, although shrinking the picture helps reduce the noise so I will also include a 200x400 pixel subsection of the original image. The yellow box on the larger image show which subsection is highlighted.

The image on the left is before the filter and the one on the right shows the effect of the filter. All images were taken with a Canon 20D at either ISO 1600 or 3200.