Rubbish Horsehead Data: A real test for Neat Image PS Plugin

[Xiga]

I was playing around with Neat Image (a NR plugin for Photoshop) and wanted to put it to the test, so I thought I would throw the absolute worst data I could at it.

One night last winter, when i had finished shooting the Rosette in Ha, I decided to point the scope to the Horsehead nebula and fire off a few subs before packing my gear away. The conditions were truly awful, there was a nearly full moon only about 15 degrees away. it was also quite low on the horizon, and there was exhaust fumes billowing up through the FoV from our boiler! I captured just 5 subs, 4 x 1200s and 1 x 900s, so 95 mins in total, with the usual gear: D5300, SW 80ED, HEQ5-Pro.

At the time the best I could manage was the one below. The noise was just too much to handle, and even if I tried upping it severely I just couldn't manage anything that looked in any way even half-decent.

So when I ran it through Neat Image I was pretty amazed at how good a job it did (see below). Of course, I know it's still rubbish, Lol, but at least I can look at it now without it offending my eyes! ?

Decided to create a Mono Red Cropped version too, just for kicks, until I finally get to shoot this one for real this winter.

[Allinthehead]

Wow what a difference. How much is the plugin?

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Allinthehead said:

Wow what a difference. How much is the plugin?

https://ni.neatvideo.com/purchase

peanuts!

[tooth_dr]

Hi Ciaran

Ive had neat image on photoshop for several years now! It’s a demo version so only does 8 bit image and even then only part of it. 

Im struggling to find an acceptable noise reduction level. It very quickly starts to looks not so good!

Do you use autoprofile? 

You image looks pretty good! It’s very natural looking. 

[newbie alert]

Looks like horizontal bands in the first image

[Xiga]

11 hours ago, Sland said:

https://ni.neatvideo.com/purchase

peanuts!

Yeah the price is right that's for sure. I'm actually too much of a skinflint to buy Gradient Xterminator ? ($50 for a single plugin, when you can buy whole action sets for half of that) So $40 is pretty darn cheap for a really powerful NR package.

[Xiga]

11 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Hi Ciaran

Ive had neat image on photoshop for several years now! It’s a demo version so only does 8 bit image and even then only part of it. 

Im struggling to find an acceptable noise reduction level. It very quickly starts to looks not so good!

Do you use autoprofile? 

You image looks pretty good! It’s very natural looking. 

Yep the Auto-Profile seems to work great. You draw a box over an area of plain background (not easy in our game where it can often be hard to find an area with no stars!) but once you do find a suitable area, the algorithm seems to do a very good job at determining just the right amount of noise to remove. And if you don't agree with it, you can always just reduce the settings a bit.

I think this will be my go-to NR solution from now on.

[Xiga]

27 minutes ago, newbie alert said:

Looks like horizontal bands in the first image

I did run both the Horizontal & Vertical banding reduction actions on it (I run them on all my images). I think I did try to sharpen the image a bit though, which didn't help things!

[tooth_dr]

Did you buy the $40 or the $80 package.  The former only seems to work with 8bit images, I always process in 16bit. Does this matter? @Xiga

[Xiga]

Woops! In my haste i'd forgotten i'd paid $80 an not $40! ? ? Sorry for the confusion Adam!

But it's well worth it if you ask me. Another major plus point i'd forgot to mention is that it supports 32 bit data. So you can now import a 32 bit image into PS from APP (after applying DDP), run the NR and then convert it to 16 bit in PS. This should produce a better result than running it on 16 bit data. Heck, you could even run it on the linear data first if you wanted. I think the Pixinsight guys do something similar, so it might even be beneficial to do this too (i.e import the data from APP with no DDP stretch into PS), run the NR, then bring it back into APP for DDP stretching, before finally saving as a 16 bit tiff for further processing in PS.

[Allinthehead]

6 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Did you buy the $40 or the $80 package.  The former only seems to work with 8bit images, I always process in 16bit. Does this matter? @Xiga

I just came here to ask the same questions.

[wornish]

Thanks for sharing this.

When you view your images up close the difference is amazing.  

I've tried lots of different noise reduction apps but this one seems very good.

[Allinthehead]

On another topic. @tooth_drand @Xiga

Recognise anything?

 

[ollypenrice]

I'm going to disagree.

I don't believe any one NR 'product' is significantly different from any other. They all blur, which means they use pixel to pixel communication. For many kinds of noise this cannot be avoided, so far as I'm aware. However, what matters is how the imager uses the NR algorithm. How it is applied and, more importantly, where it is applied. So, Xiga, I think your pre NR image is much better in places and your post NR is somewhat better in others. If I had to choose it would be the pre-NR image because the effects of NR are, applied globally, highly artificial and intrusive. The solution is incredibly simple in a layers-based graphics programme such as Photoshop. You make a copy layer, noise reduce the bottom layer, then select on the top layer the zones of the image which benefit from the NR and erase them, letting the NR layer through where it's wanted. The best of both worlds.

Photoshop (and doubtless its less expensive competitors) has highly adjustable NR filters but, more importantly, has the layers/eraser option to let you choose where to apply them.

There are also ways of performing custom noise reduction without pixel to pixel communication but that's for another thread.

Olly

[gorann]

22 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

I'm going to disagree.

I don't believe any one NR 'product' is significantly different from any other. They all blur, which means they use pixel to pixel communication. For many kinds of noise this cannot be avoided, so far as I'm aware. However, what matters is how the imager uses the NR algorithm. How it is applied and, more importantly, where it is applied. So, Xiga, I think your pre NR image is much better in places and your post NR is somewhat better in others. If I had to choose it would be the pre-NR image because the effects of NR are, applied globally, highly artificial and intrusive. The solution is incredibly simple in a layers-based graphics programme such as Photoshop. You make a copy layer, noise reduce the bottom layer, then select on the top layer the zones of the image which benefit from the NR and erase them, letting the NR layer through where it's wanted. The best of both worlds.

Photoshop (and doubtless its less expensive competitors) has highly adjustable NR filters but, more importantly, has the layers/eraser option to let you choose where to apply them.

There are also ways of performing custom noise reduction without pixel to pixel communication but that's for another thread.

Olly

I agree with Olly. I almost never apply NR on the whole image but use it only where it is needed (usually in the darker areas) using layers in PS. I also have Neat Image and sometimes it may produce slightly better results than the four other NR options I have in PS (the PS native one, Noels two actions, Annies actions), but far from always. I have noticed that you can get some odd artefacts with Neat Image.

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, gorann said:

I agree with Olly. I almost never apply NR on the whole image but use it only where it is needed (usually in the darker areas) using layers in PS. I also have Neat Image and sometimes it may produce slightly better results than the four other NR options I have in PS (the PS native one, Noels two actions, Annies actions), but far from always. I have noticed that you can get some odd artefacts with Neat Image.

And the same, of course, applies to sharpening. It would be absurd to blur an image and then sharpen it...

Olly

[gorann]

1 minute ago, ollypenrice said:

And the same, of course, applies to sharpening. It would be absurd to blur an image and then sharpen it...

Olly

Olly, I assume you mean that applying such procedures globally on an image does generally make little sense. I have in cases used NR on noisy dark areas while I have sharpened brighter less noisy areas - utilizing the great advantage of layers in PS to do this selectively. I assume you have done the same Olly.

[wornish]

Why can't you have the best of both worlds ?

Use the neat image noise reduction as one layer in PS and the original image  in another and the mask out the bits you don't  like ?  

 

[gorann]

1 minute ago, wornish said:

Why can't you have the best of both worlds ?

Use the neat image noise reduction as one layer in PS and the original image  in another and the mask out the bits you don't  like ?  

 

I think that is exactly what we said. NR used selectively can be very powerful to improve an image (at least for the pixel peepers - which many of us cannot stop doing). But since I bought Neat Image about two years ago I have in many cases found that it is not the magic bullet. Sometimes it may be slightly better than other NR routines and sometimes it is not and even introduces artefacts. There are many ways of doing NR in PS, and then even more ways in other packages like PI.

[tooth_dr]

2 hours ago, Allinthehead said:

On another topic. @tooth_drand @Xiga

Recognise anything?

 

Hi Richard. Did you go to this? I cant totally read that writing but I only submitted 2 images and 1 was the Iris Nebula. Looks like that might be mine. 

[Xiga]

2 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

I'm going to disagree.

I don't believe any one NR 'product' is significantly different from any other. They all blur, which means they use pixel to pixel communication. For many kinds of noise this cannot be avoided, so far as I'm aware. However, what matters is how the imager uses the NR algorithm. How it is applied and, more importantly, where it is applied. So, Xiga, I think your pre NR image is much better in places and your post NR is somewhat better in others. If I had to choose it would be the pre-NR image because the effects of NR are, applied globally, highly artificial and intrusive. The solution is incredibly simple in a layers-based graphics programme such as Photoshop. You make a copy layer, noise reduce the bottom layer, then select on the top layer the zones of the image which benefit from the NR and erase them, letting the NR layer through where it's wanted. The best of both worlds.

Photoshop (and doubtless its less expensive competitors) has highly adjustable NR filters but, more importantly, has the layers/eraser option to let you choose where to apply them.

There are also ways of performing custom noise reduction without pixel to pixel communication but that's for another thread.

Olly

I agree totally Olly. I do usually apply routines like NR & sharpening locally (using a carefully constructed mask) rather than globally. I didn't do this in the example above (as tbh i wasn't even trying to produce an image out of it), so i probably should have chosen a better example or just explained myself a bit better. I wasn't posting the image with the intention of saying that i thought it was better in every aspect. I guess i was just initially impressed with it's NR capabilities, as up to now i hadn't come across anything else that could even adequately blur the extreme noise in the darker areas of the image. In my haste i was probably a bit too quick to extol it's virtues, and no doubt in time i too will find, just as Gorann did, that it only seems to work better on some images than others. 

[Xiga]

3 hours ago, Allinthehead said:

On another topic. @tooth_drand @Xiga

Recognise anything?

 

Thanks Richard! To echo Adam's post, i take it you went to the exhibition then? I only found out yesterday that i had some on display, i literally had no idea, LOL. That does look like my M45 on the top left ?

My brother works in Dublin, so he is going on Saturday and will take a few snaps for me. 

Do you have any on display yourself? (you're bound to, your stuff is unreal). 

Adam that does look like your Iris picture bottom right. Congrats! 

[Miguel1983]

On 26/11/2018 at 14:21, Xiga said:

I was playing around with Neat Image (a NR plugin for Photoshop) and wanted to put it to the test, so I thought I would throw the absolute worst data I could at it.

One night last winter, when i had finished shooting the Rosette in Ha, I decided to point the scope to the Horsehead nebula and fire off a few subs before packing my gear away. The conditions were truly awful, there was a nearly full moon only about 15 degrees away. it was also quite low on the horizon, and there was exhaust fumes billowing up through the FoV from our boiler! I captured just 5 subs, 4 x 1200s and 1 x 900s, so 95 mins in total, with the usual gear: D5300, SW 80ED, HEQ5-Pro.

At the time the best I could manage was the one below. The noise was just too much to handle, and even if I tried upping it severely I just couldn't manage anything that looked in any way even half-decent.

 

 

1200 seconds ?

Do yo remember what the sensor temperature was ?

[Xiga]

I've even gone as far as 1500s with it ?

Sorry but I've no idea what the sensor temp is on the D5300. Thankfully though, the D5300 has very low thermal noise (for a DSLR) so long exposures aren’t a problem (unlike with some older Canons). I’ve also seen no amp glow at these long exposures either. The sensor in the D5300 is really very good indeed (especially given how cheaply one can be picked up for, even more so if bought used). In fact, it is the exact same sensor that is in the QHY 247 and that retails for around £2k. That’s a lot extra to pay for a TEC cooler ?

[Allinthehead]

14 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Hi Richard. Did you go to this? I cant totally read that writing but I only submitted 2 images and 1 was the Iris Nebula. Looks like that might be mine. 

Yes i went up last Saturday. Brought a friend and stayed in a hotel in Wicklow. Went for a hike in Glendalough on Sunday to rid myself of a dodgy head after one whiskey too many?

That was your Iris if you have a surname that starts with a J.

12 hours ago, Xiga said:

Thanks Richard! To echo Adam's post, i take it you went to the exhibition then? I only found out yesterday that i had some on display, i literally had no idea, LOL. That does look like my M45 on the top left ?

My brother works in Dublin, so he is going on Saturday and will take a few snaps for me. 

Do you have any on display yourself? (you're bound to, your stuff is unreal). 

Adam that does look like your Iris picture bottom right. Congrats! 

I had 3 images. I think you had at least that many. Your lovely M45 above, a wonderful Rosette and a very psychedelic looking California Nebula. 

It was well worth the visit. Some great images. Tom and @ollypenricehad the fabulous Orion area mosaic on display. Although sans credit to Mr Penrice? ?