Recommend Photoshop plug-ins / supplemental software

[Jaell]

With what? It helps to know what camera your using. Also, are you shooting in RAW and processing your own Tiffs/jpegs.

It matters what kind of camera I use? Isn't noise, noise? I have a Canon XT being converted to IR, and a new T1i (someday I'll get a 5D Mk II... but for now, I blow my money on lenses). Of course I shoot RAW. Convert to TIFF in DPP. Though I probably will start doing it in PS.

Have you considereda RAW editor other than ACR. I'd suggest SilkyPix. I like ACR but I can batch process easier with a stand alone like SilkyPix or Bibble. Plus, I like the way SilkyPix renders.

I don't know what advantage (if any) there is in using a different RAW editor/converter instead of DPP or PS. Batch processing is fine, but I don't shoot so much that I need a program that is faster at batches. Irfanview? Really? Windows seems to do fine with thumbnails, and proof sheets went the way of the dodo, didn't they?


I hadn't heard of Neat Image before. Dunno... looks OK, but Noise Ninja and Topaz seem to be "bigger" names. They both have PS plug-ins, too. I think a lot of it probably comes down to ease-of-use/personal preference, and the results from testing it out. I'm sure some packages are better than others at different operations. I rarely shoot at high ISOs, so most of the noise I deal with is sensor artifacts (blown highlights, dark shadows, etc.) instead of high-gain.

It's funny, Madison pointed meto John Ascough, one of the best wedding photographers in the world and he adds noise to his digital images. He sells PS actions to add film grain. Here we are talking about taking it out.

Well, I don't consider grain = noise. Grain is grain. Noise is unwanted. There's nothing inherently wrong with a grainy image, but when the graininess is different colors than the surrounding image, then it's noise. I've shot plenty of B/W where the grain was a desired part of the image. And given how smoothing/de-noising can posterize digital images, putting 'grain' back into the shot is a good thing. That's one thing that I'm looking for in de-noising software: the ability to de-noise without mucking up the image so much that I have to buy another plug-in to get rid of posterizing.

I don't think HDR software is going to re-create the dynamic range of film as much as learning to use curves during raw processing.

You mean tooling with the histogram? There's only so much you can do with a single image. All HDR software does is automate the process of masking & layering multiple images taken at different exposures. Blown highlights or dead shadows in a single exposure are irretrievable, no matter how much you tool with the histogram curves. What I like about HDR is having the ability to capture the best parts of different exposures and put them together. Yeah, I'm not one for the "HDR look"--I mean, that has its uses, but tonemapping for me is about getting a sky that's not blown out when I'm trying to capture details in shadows. I'm on the fence between Photomatix & HDRTools because Photomatix lends itself to easily getting that "HDR look," but I don't want to fall into that trap. On the other hand, HDRTools has less control over tonemapping and the interface is a bit obtuse.


I'd stick with PS for HDR, but every comparison I've seen between PS's native HDR and any other third-party HDR software/plug-in makes PS look like garbage. Weird color artifacts, blown highlights, blur, softness, washed-out colors... the PS HDR image looks better than the E0V, but the third-party images all look better than the PS HDR. Particularly for anything blue--like sky or water, which is what I'd be using HDR for about 90% of the time.





I hope I didn't come off as dismissive of your suggestions. I appreciate you sharing your thoughts, but I guess I'm trying to solicit opinions about three things: 1) HDRTools or Photomatix? 2) Noise Ninja or DeNoise? 3) any other third-party/plug-ins that I shouldn't overlook? Adjust by Topaz does HDR, and I thought they had something in Adjust or Simplify that could add film grain--or maybe I'm thinking of another package. In any case, I'm stumped to think of anything outside of de-noising, HDR, and/or some other effect (like Clean 2) that would be terribly beneficial for someone like me who does primarily outdoors/landscape/nature photography... and as soon as I get my next lens, macro!

Try SilverEfex Pro from Nik Software (I could have spelled it wrong)
if you need traditional Black & White effects that are really good.


As for noise reduction: the user interface and learning ability of
Noiseware alone make it a better program for me than Noise Ninja which
is very user unfriendly as soon as you want to step in and make some
adjustments. Somehow (for me personally) when that happens, Noise Ninja
never does what I want it to.

That SilverEfex looks good. I miss shooting B/W film, and that could really open up a lot of possibilities--particularly with the different film emulation profiles. Though trying to find how to puchase with an academic discount ended me up looking at German retailers [:O] .


And after reading what you said about Noiseware, I took another look--I really like how it seems to save all the details of a shot while removing the noise. But the pricing was intimidating... until I figured out where they were hiding their academic pricing!!! I'm not a huge fan of their Portraiture examples (ahh, and here was the Real Grain I had seen before!), but getting the full suite for $90 is a great deal.


Now maybe it's 1) Noiseware vs. Topaz DeNoise....