Denoise Software Recommendation

[Graeme F]

Hi Folks. Considering getting some standalone de-noise software as been asked to take evening football matches at our local club and images are often quite noisy. Lightroom denoise seems ok but not always the best. Was wondering what others are using. I see there is a sale on atm for Topaz Photo AI and there is DXO3 I think? Anyway any thoughts and recommendations greatly appreciated.

Regards as ever

Graeme

 

[AlanLichty]

I have both Topaz PhotoAI (1.5.0) as well as DxO PureRAW 3 and if I had to choose one it would be DxO hands down. PhotoAI is trying to be a universal denoise and sharpening app with little knowledge of lens/camera specific while DxO has developed one of the most extensive databases of lens and camera measurements in the business and they use it for every image.

 

[JimFox]

Hey Alan, how does the Topaz Photo AI differ from Topaz DeNoise?

How long does the DXO PureRaw take to process an image?

 

[JimFox]

Graeme, I use NoiseWare, but I have used it for years, and it may be falling behind the rest.

If you have Photoshop then you can use the Noise reduction in ACR. It's comparable in quality to DXO PureRaw. But it is slow, on average about 8 mins to reduce the noise in a 42mp image.

 

[AlanLichty]

Hey Alan, how does the Topaz Photo AI differ from Topaz DeNoise?

How long does the DXO PureRaw take to process an image?

DxO applies corrections for known lens distortions based on their industry standard testing for just about every mainstream lens ever made as well as corrections for camera sensors also based on their testing data base. DxO has been one of the reference points for lens characteristics since the early 90's. The one caveat the DxO is that it won't process a RAW file unless DxO has corrections modules for your camera/lens. When I first got my Mavic 3 Pro DxO hadn't run tests yet on the lens/sensor combinations and I had to wait about a month or so until they came out with the update that included all 3 cameras. DxO will not process early RAW files from Canon - in my case .CRW files from my old Canon D60 in the early 2000's. Works fine for output from the 20D I replaced that with in 2004. It will not work on iPhone outputs.

PhotoAI is making wild stabs in the dark using their "AI" modeling but zero considerations for camera sensors and lenses. Topaz gave me PhotoAI since I had so many of their other products but I would not pay for it as a standalone piece of code at all. I honestly prefer using Topaz DenoiseAI to PhotoAI. Much better control over the process model in the standalone code. PhotoAI seems like a lazy man's approach to Topaz DenoiseAI and SharpenAI. As you might be guessing PhotoAI doesn't get used much in my work although I do update the code when Topaz bring out new releases and always try it out to see what they did next.

My own comparisons between LR noise reduction and DxO have always leaned towards DxO for cleaner and sharper results. I prefer the LR/ACR noise reduction for iPhone output over PhotoAI.

Typical processing time for a 63MB file is around 15-20 seconds on a Mac M1 Max Studio. PhotoAI and LR/ACR noise reduction both take longer but all are less than a minute on my desktop computer. The newest denoise in LR and ACR are identical since they are exactly same software. What kind of processor are you using to get 8 minute processing times?

 

[Alex Vasile]

If you’re taking bursts of photos (and have a Mac) I would recommend you check out https://burst.photo/

The basic idea is that it will stack images for you, same as astrophotography software, but it can handle significant movement within the images.I regularly use it with handheld shots.

it takes in raw files as input and will product a ding as output. It will leaves the raw demosaiced so you get better image quality and so the file size doesn’t become huge; this is a gripe I have with DxO.

In my workflow it fits in as a pre-processing step. I run images through it before doing regular denoising.

I’m part of the development team. I’ve been meaning to post about it in the software section, but haven’t gotten and article written up yet. Also, it’s free and open source.

 

[Graeme F]

Thanks very much for the feedback folks. I've downloaded DXO3 on trial to see what its like on my system (W11/32GB ram)

 

[JimFox]

If you’re taking bursts of photos (and have a Mac) I would recommend you check out https://burst.photo/

The basic idea is that it will stack images for you, same as astrophotography software, but it can handle significant movement within the images.I regularly use it with handheld shots.

it takes in raw files as input and will product a ding as output. It will leaves the raw demosaiced so you get better image quality and so the file size doesn’t become huge; this is a gripe I have with DxO.

In my workflow it fits in as a pre-processing step. I run images through it before doing regular denoising.

I’m part of the development team. I’ve been meaning to post about it in the software section, but haven’t gotten and article written up yet. Also, it’s free and open source.

Hey Alex, that would be interesting to find out more about when you have time to write it up.

I don't shoot in bursts, I have found through the years it seems like people using Canon cameras would do that the most, and that was to overcome their less then ideal dynamic range.

But some of us do at times capture 5 to 8 frames for the purpose of stacking and using Median blend in Photoshop to reduce noise. So a tool such as you described could be handy.

 

[Alex Vasile]

Hey Alex, that would be interesting to find out more about when you have time to write it up.

I don't shoot in bursts, I have found through the years it seems like people using Canon cameras would do that the most, and that was to overcome their less then ideal dynamic range.

But some of us do at times capture 5 to 8 frames for the purpose of stacking and using Median blend in Photoshop to reduce noise. So a tool such as you described could be handy.

I guess this was the motivation I needed to bump it up my TODO list. See the write up here https://www.focalworld.com/threads/noise-reduction-and-hdr-using-burst-photography.24027/