A little bit of history

[Guest Jaybee]

Most PS tutorials will tell you to add sharpening at the very last stage of photo tweaking and in general this is true.

However this can often lead to noise being added noticeably to the background so I sometimes add it before noise removal. At the noise removal stage I add a slight variation.

I also use this technique if the background is just a bit fussier than I want and I cant be bothered to do any pathing out or selective sharpening etc.

In the first shot I've added noise in PS just to exaggerate the sharpening effect.

Best keep an eye on the History palette on the right of the images so you can see where we are at each step.

 

One - The image after sharpening - often even slight sharpening can increase noise in quite a plain background especially a background made up mostly of one colour as wel las adding noise back into the main subject.

 

2 - I now perform noise removal BUT quite aggressively - quite a bit more than is needed.

 

3 - PS has a great little feature that people are often unaware of but rarely do I not use it.

Its under Edit/Fade and is available for virtually everything you do to an image in PS - filters, levels, contrast etc BUT it is only available immediately after you have performed that step - i.e after you alter levels and click OK then Fade is available. What Fade does is "thin down" the effect you have just applied.

So immediately after the aggressive noise removal I go straight to Edit/Fade (in the menu it will say Fade + the name of the filter or whatever you applied - in this case - Fade Noise Removal)

I take slider down to a point I am happy with - here reducing the noise removal to 44% - doing it this way gives you a lot more control than messing around with the sliders in the noise removal filter.

 

4 - In the History palette you will see Fade Noise Removal is highlighted - you need to leave it like that because that is where we are up to in the tweaking of the image BUT you need to click in the box next to the stage before any noise removal was performed - i.e. back to where sharpness was added.

Now select the History Brush Tool from the tools palette on the left and set the brush size to a reasonable size to work with and set opacity to about 50%

 

5 - Now use the History tool brush to "paint" lightly over your main subject - effectively you are removing the noise removal filter from the subject - continue until you are happy with the result but dont overdo it..

Edited August 31, 2006 by Jaybee

[rabster]

Thanks for that Jaybee, I've never tried using Noise removal, so will definitely be giving this a try - Cheers.