Opinion: NeatImage effectively reduces noise in images taken with Canon 1Ds, but this photographer uses it sparingly to save texture.I use an "old" Canon 1Ds camera—almost 2 years old and only 11 megapixels—and a "new" 1DsII, which is the current model. Surely, you'd think, the latest and greatest must be best. But it just ain't so. The 11-megapixel 1Ds model has some weaknesses, but I kind of like it more.
I've taken good care of the old beast, or rather Canon has. It's had various repairs and adjustments including a new sensor and a new shutter. Now, after a year's running-in period, it definitely meets or exceeds its published specs.
In fact, the old workhorse has just one real fault, namely noise. At over 320 ISO, mostly anything in the lower ranges of the histogram is riddled with specks. Still, because of the filmlike "look" I can get with the 1Ds, I am sticking with it for serious work. (My public thanks to the Canon engineers of the original 1Ds. You did a great job!)
Yes, the newer 16-megapixel model offers a much smoother high-ISO rendition, at least in theory. Greater dynamic range means fewer blown highlights. It also has inexhaustible battery life of more than a thousand captures; a clearer preview LCD that zooms and zooms; an SD card slot; and unflappable white balance detection (although my friend Andreas disagrees about this item, I think the white balance is really greatly improved). However, although the images are decently sharp, I find they somehow lack "bite".
Click here to read Edmund Ronald's column on Adobe Camera Raw 3.0.
Of course, it's probably just that I don't know how to post-process the files from the 1DsII yet: That too is a learning process that takes more than six months.
At the moment, I'd say that the 1Ds gives images that are more like slide film, while the 1DsII has a lot more dynamic range and looks more like negative film. Yes, there are also raw processing issues here, but we won't talk about that stuff today.
Yet in the end it's all about aesthetics. I choose to use the older camera that shoots sweeter. (Also the 1DsII sometimes corrupts captured frames, and there's nothing more dreadful than coming home from a job and finding that a shot is missing. So, while waiting for the promised firmware fixes from Canon, I've coined a pet name for my young camera, which is all wagging tail and timid bark. You guessed right, I call it "backup.")
This isn't of necessity a dishonor; it's a job, too. I take "backup" with me on my walks in Paris. I shoot a lot of candids and some portraits with it. Those that can be reshot. The 1DsII may yet shake out and become my primary camera.
Now, Canon isn't to be blamed overly for the noise in the 1Ds. High ISO noise is a fact of life in electronic cameras. My first Nikon D1x had horrid noise. The original Nikon D2H is an excellent camera, but it was also noisy at high ISO. Note that one of the reasons we pros use these ridiculously large SLRs is that our huge sensors have much, much better noise behavior than the consumer compacts. But every camera is still noisy in low light.
Next Page: Giving NeatImage a try.
Well, other photographers told me about these wonderful noise-reduction plug-ins they employ, effectively "pushing" the usable ISO range of their older cameras to that of the current gear. Everybody told me to try NeatImage. When I heard that the latest release also works on the Mac, I contacted the authors.
In practice, the NeatImage 3.0 for Mac that I downloaded refused to work with my Photoshop CS2 beta on a Tiger beta, but then ran fine with PS CS on the same setup. NeatImage support responded but did not have an immediate answer. I did not have time to investigate compatibility issues further, so I went with what worked, running it on the old, but stable, Photoshop CS.
Click here to read more about workflow problems encountered with Tiger.
Click here for screen shots of NeatImage in action. One screen shows the control screen of the NeatImage plug-in. The portrait of Evi was made at the Cloth Gallery shop of Finnish designer Leena Ikonen in Helsinki a few weeks ago. I took the picture in available light, with the model sitting on the floor of the shop. I had a 135 mounted on the camera, and had I moved it to the 1DsII, the picture would have been less noisy. But it wouldn't have been as pretty, I think.
The original file has a lot of noise, even though it can't be seen at Web size. Leena somehow liked the image and is using it for her commercial Web site, so you can see that noise is not necessarily a turnoff for the client, especially if it looks like film grain.
The detail shot shows the before/after action of NeatImage on the original file (not the retouched picture).
The way NeatImage works is that you need a noise profile. I just sampled a flat dark area from the upper left of the current image for that; you can also download some noise profiles that users have made. However, if you were serious about noise reduction, I guess you would make a profile more carefully by printing out a test chart and shooting it to get a noise sample.
Click here to read Edmund Ronald's column on Photoshop CS2's sharpening filters.
Once you have the profile, you set the sharpening parameters and tell the plug-in to process your image by clicking the Apply button. A 1Ds 11-megapixel image takes about a minute or so to process on my dual G5. As you can see, the noise has been magically removed while a lot of detail remains. It's amazing to see this take place automatically.
At first glance NeatImage certainly delivers a remarkable degree of noise suppression. On the downside, although it does not lose details, it does seem to affect texture.
The result I got from my quick test did not quite convince me that NeatImage should be let loose on faces for important portrait and fashion shoots, but it did wonders on the background. As I pride myself on capturing texture, and in particular skin texture, I guess I'll still have to keep using my old painful methods to get the right mix of smoothness and texture on cheeks, eyelids, etc.
The smoothing I use means I overlay Gaussian blur on skin, and by painting in degrees of blur I can deal with the noise issue at the same time as I remove the pimples and smooth the pores. This is a basic retouching method that is sometimes called Selective Blur. However, this technique requires painstaking brushwork: It's not something you can do quickly for large numbers of images.
And retouching is not necessarily fun for most shooters. Also, what is feasible for fashion is not economically viable for wedding shoots, I guess. And sometimes—e.g., in news—there are time constraints that mean that detailed retouching is impossible.
I have tried some of the other noise reduction products in the past and was never really impressed enough to give them a second chance. They seemed similar in effect to Photoshop's built-in median filter.
Therefore, for now, I shall be glad to add NeatImage to my tool bag for non-portrait shots that need to be cleaned up in a hurry. Or anything that is noisy and where speed is of the essence.
NeatImage certainly is interesting enough that I'll spend some quality time learning to tweak it. Maybe my results will improve, and I'll eventually find the settings I need for faces, etc. After all, a quick look such as this doesn't really do justice to any product.
If the results correspond to what you need, i.e., if you can live with a slight reduction of texture detail, NeatImage is a very desirable piece of magic. And it's much cheaper than a new-model pro camera with one stop more and new-model bugs of its own.
And yes, high-ISO shots are an exception for most of us. So something like NeatImage is, in effect, a safety net, helping you save images you would rather have taken differently. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just needs to save a shot when you really need it. (Note to self: Find better light!)
Of course, if Canon came out with a camera that did clean 6400 ISO tomorrow, I'd buy it straight off, or would I? Let's not go back there—it's time to apply noise reduction to this old-model journalist!
P.S. I would love to get feedback about NeatImage, in particular with regard to consumer camera images. Click on my name below and tell me your experiences!
Edmund Ronald has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, but he is currently on a sabbatical as a photographer in Paris.
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