PS AI Denoise improves HDR, therefore…

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

am using it ISO 1250 & up;
it, IMO, vastly adds detail to shadows
without requiring multiple exposure blending
that HDR requires, IIUC…?
so then why wouldn’t one use AI Denoise on
ALL one’s photos to add natural-looking detail
to one’s low ISO images, too, e.g.,
sunny day “old town” al fresco dining under
umbrellas = bright buildings + deeply shadowed
people eating…?  Haven’t tested yet, others tried it?
I now use time-consuming manual selections & raise Levels…

[geogphotos]

I batch process all images in DXO Pure Raw 2 as the first stage of my image processing.

 

It does an amazing job on noise reduction. 

 

And no decisions to make about sliders or manual settings.

 

It just runs through all images and does its thing. Very well.

Edited September 22 by geogphotos

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

am using it ISO 1250 & up;
it, IMO, vastly adds detail to shadows
without requiring multiple exposure blending
that HDR requires, IIUC…?
so then why wouldn’t one use AI Denoise on
ALL one’s photos to add natural-looking detail
to one’s low ISO images, too, e.g.,
sunny day “old town” al fresco dining under
umbrellas = bright buildings + deeply shadowed
people eating…?  Haven’t tested yet, others tried it?
I now use time-consuming manual selections & raise Levels…

 

The main reason not to use it on low ISO images is that there is no benefit in terms of image quality below a certain ISO (camera-dependent)and it adds to workflow time (although it can be just left to run while you do something else). I tend to use it at default settings from ISO 400-500 up on my full frame 45 MP Nikons as it does remove noise that I can see when viewing at 100%. That said, I could easily get away with higher ISO values and manual NR at higher ISOs if I wanted but Denoise does such an excellent job on removing noise with judicious sharpening of the main subject that it is often worth the extra time taken. Bear in mind that different cameras have different basic noise profiles so there is no one size fits all ISO value and it also depends on the exposure - any underexposure will increase noise.

 

I don't see it as a subsitute for HDR merging though as that is a very specific technique to maximise dynamic range, normally with a tripod and at the lowest native ISO on the camera to obtain maximum image quality. Dynamic range is directly related to ISO and decreases as ISO increases so any benefit gained by using a higher ISO with Denoise would be lost due to the decrease in dynamic range. 

 

 

Edited September 22 by MDM

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

Just tested PShop AI Denoise on sunny al fresco dining scene ISO 100,
buildings in bright sunlight, diners under umbrellas in deep shade;

sadly, no lifting of shadows as happened with many high ISO images...

[M.Chapman]

25 minutes ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

Just tested PShop AI Denoise on sunny al fresco dining scene ISO 100,
buildings in bright sunlight, diners under umbrellas in deep shade;

sadly, no lifting of shadows as happened with many high ISO images...

After denoise, try clicking the Auto tone button in ACR.

 

Mark

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

2 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

After denoise, try clicking the Auto tone button in ACR.

thanks for suggestion mate;

Auto, to the right of "Edit" ?
makes shadows even darker first click & second click;

perhaps I already had shadows as light as possible with Light>Shadow +100 setting...

I had to dodge shadows, image can be seen as soon as me next batch goes live...

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

Auto, to the right of "Edit" ?

Yes.

 

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

perhaps I already had shadows as light as possible with Light>Shadow +100 setting...

OIC. So the first click will use the “Auto” computed setting which will be less shadow lightening than 100.

2nd click will reset sliders to “0”, which will (typically) lighten shadows even less. 

 

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

I had to dodge shadows, image can be seen as soon as me next batch goes live...

Example image ref?

 

Mark

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

On 23/09/2024 at 15:09, M.Chapman said:

Example image ref?

closest diners on left left too saturated,

closest diners on right left too contrasty

furthest diners left too dark despite Light > Shadow +100 slider...
still, could license, but...

 

[geogphotos]

Jeff, I see some discolouration on the back of the clothing of the man sitting extreme left and also on the nose of the man facing us in black shirt on the table behind - also perhaps the legs of the woman sitting on the extreme right, on the face of the man with the blue cap and grey bearding middle table, and face of woman in blue on right middle table facing us.

 

Can't see enough detail in the blacks to tell if there is noise or not

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

Thanks for observation.

Yes, manual dodging does those kind of unwanted things;

Lifting shadows via AI Denoise better, but it don’t happen at ISO 100;**

Selecting entire group of shadowed people & raising Levels also better,

But very time-consuming to properly select…

IMO, image could still license tomorrow as is…

** AI Denoise significantly lifted architectural choir shadows in this high ISO image:

 

Edited September 25 by Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg

[MDM]

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

Thanks for observation.

Yes, manual dodging does those kind of unwanted things;

Lifting shadows via AI Denoise better, but it don’t happen at ISO 100;**

Selecting entire group of shadowed people & raising Levels also better,

But very time-consuming to properly select…

IMO, image could still license tomorrow as is…

** AI Denoise significantly lifted architectural choir shadows in this high ISO image:

 

 

I've never seen Denoise actually lifting shadows in itself.  If you are saying you see this with your images, the only way to demonstrate this would be to post the original raw and the Denoised DNG with no other adjustments. Using submitted JPEGs as examples doesn't really show anything.

 

What Denoise allows you to do is to lift the shadows manually as it gets rid of shadow noise very effectively. Lifiting or opening up shadows is best done using the shadow slider in ACR/LR on the raw file - this can be done on the entire image universally or can be done locally using a local adjustment. It's not clear if you are still using the dodge tool in Photoshop. If so, it is not difficult to learn how to use local adjustments in ACR.

Edited September 25 by MDM

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

21 hours ago, MDM said:

I've never seen Denoise actually lifting shadows...

Look  just above at image of architectural choir;

Its high ISO 4000;

Pre-AI Denoise lower left corner DNG
filled with neon green fairy dust aka noise;

Let’s say noise “covered-blanketed” darkest areas;

No details seen because of it;

When I slid Shadow slider to +100, it worsened…?

Post AI Denoise neon green fairy dust gone
allowing wood to be seen, even darkest…?
that’s what I meant by “shadows being lifted”
but lets cut to the chase

Light > Shadow slider has +100 limit in ACR;

Can one hack-override limit & get +120, +150 or whatever…?

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

Can one hack-override limit & get +120, +150 or whatever…?

In Photoshop there are shadow and highlight adjustment sliders that allow larger adjustments and they can be applied in addition to those in ACR.

 

Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights...

 

Mark

[MDM]

20 hours ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

 

Light > Shadow slider has +100 limit in ACR;

Can one hack-override limit & get +120, +150 or whatever…?

 

As Mark says, yes.  You could, for example, use the ACR filter in Photoshop and increase the shadow slider value there which is identical to that in ACR.

 

EDIT: A better way to further raise shadows is to use local adjustments in ACR. If you have never used local adjusments in ACR, then now is the time to add them to your toolbox. They are really easy to use. You can use brushes or gradients among other things. They are really worth learning for a lot of different purposes, not just raising shadows. 

 

However, there is a serious limit to how much you can open up shadows and it would probably be a waste of time doing that as you will soon reach the limit of what's possible. The reason is the dynamic range (essentially the range over which you can capture highlight and shadow detail) is limited by the camera sensor, each sensor being different. The higher the ISO, the lower the dynamic range which closely correlates negatively with the noise levels (increase ISO, lower dynamic range, higher noise). 

 

Below is a link to an excellent website (Photons to Photos) which allows you to graph dynamic range (and noise) against ISO for a lot of different cameras. I'm not sure what you are using. I think it's either a Sony RX10 or RX1. The link shows a graph of both plus a couple of full frame Nikons for comparison. If you are using the RX10, you are down to about 4 stops of dynamic range at ISO4000. That is pretty limiting in terms of what you can recover even with Adobe Denoise. If it's an RX1, you have quite a bit more leeway for shadow recovery. 

 

Photons to Photos dynamic range graphs

Edited September 27 by MDM

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

Thanks for Photoshop > Image > Shadow slider advice !

This could  be the ticket !

Early on trying overall on “shaded people” images:
Amount +20 any more looks phony, IMO
Tone +40
Radius (no clue, kept at +30)
leaves people saturated, have to wipe Desaturate tool locally;

Results: seems to lower time per photo, a priority,

Learning & using Layers defeats that…?

[MDM]

51 minutes ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

Thanks for Photoshop > Image > Shadow slider advice !

This could  be the ticket !

 

The ticket to nowhere.
 

Much better to take my advice and use local adjustments in ACR. This has nothing to do with layers, not that using layers is difficult but not relevant here. This is about working in ACR on the raw image, not on converted image in Photoshop. However, you are limited by the data captured whatever way you do it, more limited if not working on the raw. 

[M.Chapman]

14 hours ago, MDM said:

The ticket to nowhere.

I disagree. So long as I'm working in 16 bit mode I find the Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights sliders useful, and often use them in addition to the limited adjustment range provided in ACR. But yes, it's easy to go too far. ACR's shadow slider adjustment range tends to keep things looking more natural so I tend to use the PS shadows slider with local selection to avoid "buggering up" the rest of the image.

 

Mark 

[MDM]

26 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

I disagree. So long as I'm working in 16 bit mode I find the Image>Adjustments>Shadows/Highlights sliders useful, and often use them in addition to the limited adjustment range provided in ACR. But yes, it's easy to go too far. ACR's shadow slider adjustment range tends to keep things looking more natural so I tend to use the PS shadows slider with local selection to avoid "buggering up" the rest of the image.

 

Mark 

I think the ticket to nowhere is trying to open up shadows by such large numbers in the first place. But why open into Photoshop at all when it can all be done with local adjustments in LR/ACR?  It is cleaner to do everything on the raw image, it is completely non-destructive and the workflow is simpler. You can do all the edits first and apply Denoise at the end. In my experience it makes no difference with basic local adjustments and editing when you apply Denoise. So you can always go back easily. You can’t do that if you’ve baked your edit into a Tiff or similar. 

Edited September 28 by MDM

[M.Chapman]

1 hour ago, MDM said:

In my experience it makes no difference with basic local adjustments and editing when you apply Denoise. So you can always go back easily.

Yes, it's interesting. I suspect what happens is that, when Denoise is applied, LR/ACR goes back to the RAW data, applies denoise to create the DNG, then applies all the same adjustments that were made on the pre-denoise file.

1 hour ago, MDM said:

But why open into Photoshop at all when it can all be done with local adjustments in LR/ACR?

In my case (on an older Intel iMac) it's because I find adjustments in PS are more interactive/real-time, especially cloning and healing brushes which I use quite a bit. So at the moment every image I process gets finishing touches in PS. When I finally get an M3 Mac that may change, in the meantime I find PS's undo history and adjustment layers really useful to allow "going back" before creating the final TIFF or JPG.

 

Mark

[MDM]

13 minutes ago, M.Chapman said:

Yes, it's interesting. I suspect what happens is that, when Denoise is applied, LR/ACR goes back to the RAW data, applies denoise to create the DNG, then applies all the same adjustments that were made on the pre-denoise file.

In my case (on an older Intel iMac) it's because I find adjustments in PS are more interactive/real-time, especially cloning and healing brushes which I use quite a bit. So at the moment every image I process gets finishing touches in PS. When I finally get an M3 Mac that may change, in the meantime I find PS's undo history and adjustment layers really useful to allow "going back" before creating the final TIFF or JPG.

 

Mark

 

Sure - I also open into Photoshop if I'm doing any spotting or cloning (not tried the new AI tools for that as yet) but I would still do all the main adjustments in LR/ACR on the raw file. I am using Photoshop less and less as the years go by. 

[Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg]

23 hours ago, MDM said:

The ticket to nowhere.

 

That will ONLY be decided by those who choose whether or not
to license me images slightly “improved” with new (for me) tool…
My destination is not Perfection Village.
It is Bac City (best acceptable compromise)...

[MDM]

4 hours ago, Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg said:

 

That will ONLY be decided by those who choose whether or not
to license me images slightly “improved” with new (for me) tool…
My destination is not Perfection Village.
It is Bac City (best acceptable compromise)...

 

As I said before you can only push shadows so far as there will be no detail to recover. Reaching the max in ACR and then opening into Photoshop will probably get you nowhere (what I meant). But by all means have a go 😎.