HDR shadow noise

ade_mcfade

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7 Apr 2012 - 11:39 AM

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NIK DeFine is pretty good at zapping those areas -= go to Manual mode and select the noisy bits, that tells it what to work on.

then you can either use control points (which I never do) or mask the de-noised layer so just the bits that needed noise reduction get zapped.... can end up with a painterly effect otherwise

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User_Removed

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7 Apr 2012 - 2:18 PM

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If you are getting excessive noise in the deep ahadow areas of an HDR image, it does suggest that you needed another one or two images at the "overexposed" end of your HDR sequence.

Basically, that type of noise creeps in when you try to pull detail out of underexposed parts of the image.

When deciding how many - and at what EV increment - exposures to make for your HDR sequence, pay particular attention to the histogram. Make sure that the "darks" in your most overexposed variant are at least one-third of the way up from the left side of the histogram and that the "lights" of your most underexposed variant don't go beyond one-third of the way back from the right side.

With HDREfexPro you don't normally need to have your increments less than 2EV and I find that, for most subjects, a 5-exposure sequence at 2EV increments gives me enough spread.

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User_Removed

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7 Apr 2012 - 2:21 PM

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...by the way Ian, do you know that, in LR4, you can apply noise reduction to selected parts of the image. You might get away with that if there is not too much detail in the noisy deep shadows that you want to exploit.

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