Recommend Photoshop plug-ins / supplemental software

[Jaell]

I shoot landscapes and other still life-type stuff. Historical buildings, etc.


Recently upgraded to PS CS4, running on a brand new computer, so I'm anxious to make the best use of all this computing power.


Once upon a time I exclusively shot Kodachrome and hi-contrast B/W, and I missed the "look" I'd get from film, so I'm drawn to HDR.


At the same time, I'm increasingly interested in more high-end manipulation of images.


So I'm looking for recommendations on some software to supplement PS. I'm a graduate student, so I can get educational discounts on software... so price is less of an issue (with those programs/plug-ins that offer discounts). What, then, do the sages here recommend?


HDR:
Photomatix seems to be the choice, but I'm not big pushing into the "surreal" effects that Photomatix seems to be good at. Plus, in the comparisons I've seen, Photomatix seems to soften images more than other packages. HDR Tools is the other choice that tempts me the most, but it seems less user-friendly (and I'm still not tremendously experienced at post-processing) and renders a lot slower than Photomatix.


De-noising:
Topaz DeNoise, Noise Ninja, or something else? Noise Ninja seems to be the gold standard (and is cheaper with my student discount), but Topaz can be packaged with Clean 2 (very appealing to me for any portraiture I'll end up doing), Simplify & Adjust (which would be $10 in addition to the other stuff). Adjust looks like HDR Lite, but overall, Noise Ninja seems to be the best choice. Are there others, or am I overlooking anything?


Oh, an edit: I have hundreds of slides I had scanned at 4000 dpi and are full of noise, so de-noising is a HUGE priority for me. The ability to do batch de-noising would be good, too.


Any others that would be good to add to my toolkit? Now that I think about it, are PS's sharpening options good enough? My digital stuff, of late, doesn't need much in the way of sharpening (except, of course, after PP), but my older stuff (pre L-series lens) & scanned slides would benefit from sharpening.

[shoukov]

Why don't you try the Noiseware Professional Plugin from Imagenomic?? I'ts just amazing, has several options and parameters and you can use batch processing. It has a standalone and a plugin for PS version. []





The link:


http://www.imagenomic.com/index.aspx

[wickerprints]

I can't decide which NR plug-in to use, either. So far, I've seen Neat Image, Noise Ninja, and Noiseware. I don't know which one works best. Opinions?

[Jaell]

[Responding to shoukov] Yeah, but Noise Ninja is at least as good as Noiseware, and I get an educational discount that makes it $20 cheaper. I like the Imagenomic RealGrain plug-in, but their Portraiture plug-in looks awful--all their example pictures are way overdone (compare to the examples at Topaz's Clean 2. I'm on the fence, really, between Topaz's DeNoise and NoiseNinja. I like the hardware profiles from NoiseNinja (as all my slides were scanned with the same machine at the same dpi), but Topaz looks like it can do a better job preserving detail while smoothing--NoiseNinja kinda looks like it de-noises but leaves a lot of graininess. Which can be a good or a bad thing.


Topaz not having a educational discount is meaningful to a poor graduate student who plows all his extra money into gear (and has to justify it to his wife), but ultimately, when it comes to de-noise software, I'm going to end up downloading trial versions and seeing how they do on the stuff I want to de-noise. But if anyone has any good advice on one or the other--or if there's anyone else who uses the Imagenomic and can sway me in that direction--please, chime in. (I'd post examples of the noise I'd like to get rid of, but I don't have the images handy, and am still reorganizing/migrating files to my newly-built computer.)


In the end, I know I'm getting dedicated de-noise software/PSCS4x64 plug-in. I haven't even tried out the built-in de-noising in PSCS4, but judging from the existence (and the results I've seen) from third-party vendors, I don't want to mess around with anything but the best.


That, and the HDR plug-in (again, I like the looks of Photomatix, but the sharpness/detail-preservation of HDRTools is really impressive) are the two things I know I'll get--it's just a matter of which vendor's product I choose.


The real question is, which (if any) other plug-ins really stand out as "must-haves"?

[Chuck Lee]

I shoot landscapes and other still life-type stuff. Historical buildings, etc.

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


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.


Bibble has Noise Ninja light built in. SilkyPix has noise removal also. It works fine for ISOs up to 800.


Personally I use Neat Image for high ISOs. In batch mode I let it auto profile the imageand remove halfthe noise. I follow up with batch USM in Photoshop or batch sharpen with Irfanview Thumbnails. I think Neat Image is very intuitive and less destructive than the other noise cleaners. The pro version has a Photoshop plugin which allows you to selectively clean the noise from an image.


Mostof these programs have a 30 day trial period. I'd download and do a heavy workout with your scanned slides to see which one works the best for you.


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.


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.


HDR Tools is fun to play around with and it will create some really life like images if used ccorrectly. Photomatix is the best for ease of use, but just like any software you need to learn how it works to get the desired result. Photomatix gives great results if you ease back on the amount of tonemappng it does. I've seen some outputs that you cannot tell are HDR images. That's the way it should be. The over-the-top gray highlighted metallic look turns me off! Like the recent Panasonic commercial. They're even tone mapping video now!!


There are some really good Photoshop tutorials online that show how to intelligently combine several images to get a high dynamic range output without the metallic/gray cast HDR look. Here are a couple of examples:


http://www.photoshopsupport.com/photoshop-cs3/hdr-high-dynamic-range/index.html


http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/high-dynamic-range.htm


The results are much more like film thanthe over-tonemappedlook of an HDR.


My2Abes,


Chuck

[Madison]

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.

[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....

[Madison]

You could always download the demos and try them and then make a choice.


Another great one is Dfine by Nik Software (the same company that makes Silver Efex Pro). They have a custom techology called u-points or something. It allows you to reduce noise overall, AND set upoints here and there to target areas that need less or more noise reduction based on color or area (it's hard to explain but it works wonders). I went with Noiseware because I liked the user friendliness after I learned how to use it properly. It does come down to personal preference. Most of the dedicated nose removal software works fine, and almost similar. Although you won't hear a software manufacturer say that because they all want to feel extra special. LOL.





Silver Efex should have a demo too. It's kind of cluttered and weird but I managed to produce some excellent results with it when I tried the demo. So download it and try it. It is good to mention that you need to work on a color original to make sure it produces a good black & white variant. Some people will have the wrong white balance setting for example so they get very blue or orange pictures, won't care and just convert it to black & white but that causes all kinds of disappointments. Just a tip. Make sure the source file is as impeccable as possible on all kinds of levels and THEN move to programs like Silver Efex.

[Madison]

PS: The examples and the engine of Portraiture, are a bit overdone. However proper customisation and use of this plugin can produce some really good results that nobody will question.





I tried it on a wedding portrait (just on the girl) and after tweaking and tweaking I managed to create a very natural look that looked way better than the original (in terms of small wrinkles and stuff) but managed to maintain her freckles and look. NOBODY knew I adjusted her skin until I told them and showed them the original. Not even the bride. So subtle adjustments is the key Unless you're doing studio work with models for unrealistic beauty shots that advertise anti wrinkle cream that makes you look plastic fantastic.

[Jaell]

I'm glad someone other than me thought that about the Portraiture examples.


Watching the videos of the u-point system made it look intriguing--can you make the area where the u-point is localized into something other than a circle? From what the videos showed, it seemed like it was just a radius-of-effect type control. I like it--the one video for the B/W effects software showed how easy it was to tone an area away from the subject, without messing up the subject--but I wonder who many "points" you end up using.