Is this noise?

[John Mitchell]

I admit it, I'm really bad at identifying noise; so I'm hoping that you expert pixel-peepers can tell me if the greenish and purplish stuff in this 100% crop is noise or something else.

 

Noise reduction (already applied) seems to have no effect on it. Perhaps, if it isn't noise, there is some kind of colour correction I can try? Or maybe I'm just being paranoid and shouldn't worry about submitting the image as it is.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

-John

[Jill Morgan]

Without seeing the whole pic, it looks over saturated to me.  I have been battling green in pics from a dog show that seems to want to show up in all the coats of the black dogs. ISO was only 250, a sunny day, but lots of grass, so not sure if that was reflecting into the dogs coats. Same as you, could not get rid of it, even when removing green with the HSL sliders.

 

Good luck with yours.

 

Jill

[John Mitchell]

Without seeing the whole pic, it looks over saturated to me.  I have been battling green in pics from a dog show that seems to want to show up in all the coats of the black dogs. ISO was only 250, a sunny day, but lots of grass, so not sure if that was reflecting into the dogs coats. Same as you, could not get rid of it, even when removing green with the HSL sliders.

 

Good luck with yours.

 

Jill

 

Think I might have found a solution. Clicking "Auto Levels" in PS has helped a lot, so it might be a white balance and/or over-saturation problem.

[Martin P Wilson]

There is often texture in digital blue skies. I probably would have put it through but I would have checked in the actual shadows, the dark places for noise. If you are really bothered you could apply some gaussian blur on just the sky to smooth the texture. Don't ask me how - it is 10 years or more since I last did it; used to to do it with film scans if we PS'ed them because the grain left traces of the change.

 

Just a thought are you doing any sharpening, that can make that sky texture worse?

[Ed Rooney]

John, I posted about this mottled sky problem a few months. What was your ISO? My problem came about from using the midpoint ISO 400. Now when I have a lot of blue sky in an image I go down to ISO 100 or 125. I used disaturation (along with noise control in LR5 or PS). Also using layers should help.

[Ed Endicott]

Yes....a quick solution in Photoshop/Lightroom for skies is to use the blur tool and make the sky blury in areas where it's really apparent. 

[Ed Endicott]

 

Yes....a quick solution in Photoshop/Lightroom for skies is to use the blur tool and make the sky blury in areas where it's really apparent. 

 

But don't forget to add some noise after blurring or it'll look like plastic sky.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Here in Denver, Colorado, where we live a mile higher than most other folks, we don't have little particles in our sky.....a clear blue sky doesn't need noise or little particles to make it "look" real.  It's really blue and clear of all that other stuff even if others may think it looks plastic. 

[John Mitchell]

Thanks for all the helpful feedback. I feel like a bit of a dope now because, as mentioned above, all I had to do was apply "Auto Levels" -- which I did on a whim -- in Photoshop and it solved the problem. This image was shot at ISO 100 and was part of a series of five. All showed the same multicoloured sky, and all look fine now. I promise to wear my virtual dunce's cap for the rest of the day.

 

P.S. Our coastal weather changes very quickly here in Vancouver making for quite unpredictable skies. I hardly ever see the same shade of blue twice in my images. Oh, for those crystal clear, mile-high Colorado skies.

[Martin P Wilson]

Or the blue skies of Andalucia especially Seville - I have been there in October & November and the sky is bluer than I ever see at home in the height of summer! I appreciate why my daughter fell in love with it.