Free noise reduction software

[Dunc78]

Hello

Is there any decent free to download or cheap to purchase noise reduction software especially that will plug into Photoshop CS6 (is the version I have) 

Any recommendations welcome.

Thank You. 

[carastro]

I use Photoshop and have been using it for 13 years.  I have never found a satisfactory software that doesn’t also spoil the detail that you don’t want smoothed.  
l have devised and learned a number of processes that will help within Photoshop.  If you would like to know what these are send me a pm as too long to put in this thread.  

But there is nothing to beat lots of data to suppress noise. 

carole

 

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by carastro

[WolfieGlos]

I don't use Photoshop, but Topaz does a pretty good job - although you have to pay for it.

Another option is AstroDeNoisePY, which is free and standalone. Nothing wrong with it, but I tend to use Topaz now as I generally get a slightly better result.

Both are easy to overdo, and can introduce fake detail. AstroDeNoisePY also tends to make your image look "plasticy", so would recommend using them on lower settings if additional data isn't an option.

[Vash]

I have been using the free version of 'neat image' for a few months and have been quite happy with it. 

There are a lot of perameters to play with and I have always managed to find a nice balance between noise reduction and preserving detail. 

 

[Elp]

GIMP you can download the G'mic plugins and there's various denoise methods under the repair parameter but you have to be very subtle with it otherwise the noise can turn into small tadpoles and the larger areas become blotchy. After trialling Topaz it was a no brainer, it's that much better if used very lightly, there's a reason it's one of the top photo denoise tools.

[JonCarleton]

Siril now has a pretty good Noise Reduction function in the Image Processing section.  Along with "Remove Green Noise," that is just the SCNR algorythm in disguise, it does a respectable job.  The whole suite of Image Processing in Siril is worth looking at again if you haven't seen it lately.  Even the Background Gradient Removal function is at least as good as PixInsight's DBE routine.  Although, the new GraXpert AI background extraction tops them all at the moment (and is now available as a PI plugin).

Another advantage of Siril is its platform independence.  I even have it running under Linux on an OrangePi5 Plus, though I had to compile from source.  There are distributed download-and-go versions for Linux, Mac and Windows.  The other advantage of Siril is that it is a very fast and capable stacker.

That said, GIMP is also an excellent choice for similar reasons.

 

[Rallemikken]

On 31/10/2023 at 10:50, Elp said:

G'mic plugins

Go to "Repair" tab. Search for "Iain Noise Reduction 2019". Try these settings as a start:

Gamma   2  (right)          Shadows  1  (right)             Light   -1    (left)     Fine 0.5       Mid 0.15    Large 0

I'm shooting with a DSLR, and noise handling is a must. I havn't seen anything else that beats this plugin, once you know what settings to use. I do my noise reduction halfway through the stretch, that is after the "levels" but before the "curves". Do it as soon as possible, but you will need something to look at. Be careful not to make your image a plastic toy!!  Recently I've started to use the newly implemented Starnet++  in Siril.  When recomposing the image (putting the stars back) it seems to add a certain blur to the base image that even out some of the glossiness caused by noise reduction.

[WolfieGlos]

13 hours ago, JonCarleton said:

Siril now has a pretty good Noise Reduction function in the Image Processing section.  Along with "Remove Green Noise," that is just the SCNR algorythm in disguise, it does a respectable job.  The whole suite of Image Processing in Siril is worth looking at again if you haven't seen it lately.  Even the Background Gradient Removal function is at least as good as PixInsight's DBE routine.  Although, the new GraXpert AI background extraction tops them all at the moment (and is now available as a PI plugin).

Another advantage of Siril is its platform independence.  I even have it running under Linux on an OrangePi5 Plus, though I had to compile from source.  There are distributed download-and-go versions for Linux, Mac and Windows.  The other advantage of Siril is that it is a very fast and capable stacker.

That said, GIMP is also an excellent choice for similar reasons.

 

I image in OSC and I've never had a good result with Sirils NR, and their own info / help files suggest that it works best on mono images so I assume this is why.

[PeterC65]

I've been using Topaz DeNoise up until recently and it's given me good results. But it failed to remove the background sky noise from a nice image of the Flame Nebula that I'd taken so I trialled NoisXTerminator and have now switched to this. It does a much better job than DeNoise of removing background sky noise and the noise in nebulae detail. There are two controls, Denoise which I leave set at 100%, and Detail which I set somewhere between 10 and 100. The Detail setting seems mainly to affect how the stars look, 10 leaves them as they were in the original image and as you increase to 100 they get more and more punchy.

 

[JonCarleton]

On 18/12/2023 at 04:26, WolfieGlos said:

I image in OSC and I've never had a good result with Sirils NR, and their own info / help files suggest that it works best on mono images so I assume this is why.

I also use OSC cameras rather than MONO.  I do run all Linux, however, so perhaps the library files Siril uses for image processing in Linux make a difference.  I know that even in PixInsight, I can see slight differences between Windows render and Linux render, especially when writing tiff and fits files.