Shocked girl
The day finally came, when this girl will take a huge leap forward in image processing! My husband had acquired DeNoise AI -software by Topaz Labs for me, (many thanks for him, he surely knows how to treat her lady!) and what a difference before and after Topaz!
Unfortunately I can't add many images here as a gallery at current blog settings, so it allows only one image per blog post, so you have to believe me about the amount of noise reduction, the difference is huge, or even gargantuan! And again I forgot to breathe, because I'm so excited. The fruit of love between Lightroom and Topaz is shown here to you, my very much appreciated readers. Look how noise-free it is!
Some noise is a problem with night time photography almost always. Some of it has to be accepted as a part of night time photos. In the beginning I was a little bit skeptical about the DeNoise -software, I was afraid that noise reduction of the night sky would soften the foreground too much (some softening was apparent in my processed test image, but let's take in consideration the fact that until now I ha processed only one Milky Way photo, that was taken in hurry, which succeeded by accident, and I'm already now excited about the quality improvement that DeNoise is doing, even though I'm rarely excited this much about anything technical...) So where is this going to go, I'm just asking? I took in consideration many positive reviews, that my colleagues had given for this software, they finally started to break down my anxiety towards image processing.
In photography, I have always tried to get the best possible results out in the field, so that post-processing would be as minimal as possible (some say that this is a mindset of someone who is broke...) I want to present the landscape to the viewer as it was when I took the photo. I'm trying to optimize color balance, contrast, aperture and all the other settings already in the field. I have never liked the "you can do everything in post-processing with Lightroom, so the settings don't matter that much in the field" -mindset. It doesn't work that way, this would only stop your learning process as a photographer...or even if this method would work, quality would be bad at some time, and you can squeeze out of those raw images only so much, and after over-processing, they look lifeless and dull. But next I'm going to rant about my favorite topic, that is equipment.
It's never good enough! :D and this is a joke! (or is it...you can decide.) Because I'm a nighttime photographer, my perspective is nighttime photographer's. In nighttime photography, noisy photos are often a problem. It is especially bad, when shooting with a cheap lens. And with my current setup, images soften too much also, and there is too much vignetting, that make image corners dark. This is a huge challenge for image processing. It is so frustrating to reduce those image defects in post-processing. Luckily there is LR Classic and Topaz, they have saved my day many times! Nighttime photographer is very thankful! And because this is the equipment that I have, and money doesn't grow in trees, I have to be very pleased for what I have!
Because of all the things I ranted about above, I try to optimize my camera settings already in the field. So many factors affect the end result and getting as noise-free as possible finished photo and as little as possible gray hairs. But from where the white ones appear? From dead pixels, that LR can't always remove...?
But now I'm going for a walk, to recover from this Topaz-shock (oh my God, this can't be true!!) Later in the evening I will add some nice summer photo trip story to my blog. I have already started writing a storm-related story, or then it will be about noctilucent clouds. Let's see, which one of them requires more noise reduction :D
Oh my God, this Topaz is awesome! See you later!