Nik Software's new Dfine 2.0 noise reduction package is both powerful and easy to use. It has a clean user interface Screen Shot that hides a surprisingly large amount of power. Most of the features found in Dfine 2.0 are standard to most noise reduction packages on the market. But, it does have a couple of features that are rather unique and it is these unique features that make Dfine 2.0 my top choice in noise reduction.
Noise reduction programs are called noise reduction because they reduce the noise. Do not attempt to remove 100% of the noise or grain in your images. You will only destroy details and you will make your images look fake and plastic looking. I recommend that you remove no more than 50 to 75% of the noise in your image. A little noise makes your images look more photographic, we have become so use to the way film looks that when we see a photo without at least some small amount of noise our minds tell us its fake. In the world of digital cameras noise is like grain from the film world and can be treated the same. While noise and grain come from two different technologies and are caused by two totally different things they for all intense and purposes look and act the same and programs like Dfine 2.0 can handle both equally well.
I like Nik Software's Dfine 2.0 because it offers several different ways of handling the noise reduction two of which are rather unique and quite powerful. Dfine 2.0 offers five ways to handle the noise reduction task, these are:
- Fully Automatic Noise Reduction
- Semi-Automatic Noise Reduction
The Power Options
- Reduce: Whole Image Noise Reduction
- Reduce: Color Range Noise Reduction
- Reduce: U-Point Control Point Noise Reduction
Fully Automatic Noise Reduction
This is the easiest and fastest method of noise reduction. It works and it works pretty well for most images. Once you are in Dfine 2.0 you simply click on the Measure Noise button Dfine 2.0 will pick spots of your image, usually areas with little or no detail and use these spots to measure the amount of noise in the image. Using this information it will then select the appropriate amounts for the reduction of the noise. You have the least amount of control with this option, but it is easy and quick and works pretty well. You will need to perform this step or the semi-automatic noise reduction (see below) before you can go in to the Reduce noise reduction modification options below.
Semi-automatic Noise Reduction
In this mode you choose the areas on the image that Dfine 2.0 will use to measure the noise. You do this by dragging out one or more sample rectangles on your image (you want to choose areas with little or no detail in them) once you are done you click on the Measure Noise button, Dfine then analyzes the noise in those areas and uses that information to reduce the noise in the image. This is like the fully automatic method above but with a smidgen more control. This can work well or it can work badly, what controls the outcome here is where you draw the sample rectangles. If you draw them in areas with detail you will get an effect that you probably won't like as Dfine will mistake small details as noise and try to remove it, this is not unique to Dfine all noise reduction programs would do this. Just be careful where you place the sample rectangles. Personally, I don't use this mode; I would just use the fully automatic option instead. It is very unlikely that you would choose sample areas that would do better than Dfine choosing them in the fully automatic mode; also you will need to perform this step or the fully automatic noise reduction (see above) before you can go in to the noise reduction modification options below.
The Power Options
Before we talk about the three options for noise reduction modification in Dfine 2.0 it is important to note that the three options below require that you run the fully automatic noise reduction or semi-automatic noise reduction method mentioned above. If you don't and you go in to one of these options you will not be able to adjust the sliders. The options below are basically modification methods for the fully automatic or semi-automatic noise reduction methods.
Personally, I find this a bit confusing and wish that Nik Software had fixed it so that if either the fully automatic or semi-automatic methods above haven't been applied that it would just do a fully automatic noise reduction and then allowed you to edit using the methods below. Instead if you don't you can spend a lot of time trying to figure out why the sliders don't work, at the very least a warning dialog would have been in order here.
Reduce: Whole Image Noise Reduction
Once you click on the reduce button in Dfine 2.0 you have three noise reduction modification options for adjusting your noise reduction. The Reduce: Whole Image Noise Reduction option reduces the noise across the entire image. You have two controls to work with; you have the Contrast Noise slider and the Color Noise slider. The Contrast Noise slider reduces the grittiness of the noise; this actually starts to remove noise from the image. The Color Noise slider removes the color from the noise pixels blending them in to the color around them.
The Color Noise slider is the less destructive of the two as it only affects the random color-ness of the noise pixels. It doesn't remove those pixels only blends their color in so that it better matches the color of the surrounding areas.
The Contrast Noise slider if you apply too much will not only remove the noise it will also remove fine detail in the image. That is not a good thing.
I recommend that whenever you are adjusting the Color Noise and Contrast Noise sliders that you adjust the Color Noise slider first to remove the color from the noise, this will then make it much easier to see what the Contrast Noise slider is doing. Because the Contrast Noise slider is so destructive working with it in this order ensures that you will not do any more damage than is needed.
Reduce: Color Range Noise Reduction
This is one of the more unique forms of noise reduction modification that Dfine 2.0 offers. Here you can choose colors either from a color palette or from your image using an eye dropper Screen Shot. For each color you have the Contrast Noise and the Color Noise sliders to control the noise reduction. What is so sweet about this option is you can have an unlimited number of colors and control the noise reduction for each. This allows you to for example target the dark areas (the shadows) of an image leaving the light areas (the highlights) alone. This is true selective noise reduction. You can add colors and remove colors by clicking on the "+" or "-" buttons.
An interesting example for the use of this method is for portrait work. Say you have a portrait of a lovely young woman, with a nice soft out of focus background. Using this form of noise reduction modification you could reduce the noise on the skin, leaving everything else including the background alone. This type of noise reduction modification is very useful with many practical applications.
Reduce: U-Point Control Point Noise Reduction
This method of noise reduction modification is the most powerful form that Dfine 2.0 offers. You place U-Point Control Points Screen Shot on the areas of your image where you want to reduce noise. You then can control the spread of the U-Point (how large an area the U-Point will effect) as well as adjust the Contrast Noise and Color Noise. If you switch the preview mode from the default RGB to Contrast Noise Mask you can see visually the area that the U-Points will affect. You can also see visually how much the Contrast Noise will affect the area. It does this by moving the image in to grayscale mode (for display only) with what looks like a light source that grows and expands as you adjust the size of the U-Point and when you adjust the Contrast Noise slider the grayscale area becomes lighter or darker showing how much effect the slider will have on the area. It is a very visual way of working. Like the Color Range reduction option you can use as many U-Points as you want. Another nice tool is you can select various U-Points and adjust them all at once in batch fashion.
Other Features of Interest
In the five noise reduction modification modes mentioned above Fully Automatic Noise Reduction, Semi-automatic Noise Reduction, Reduce: Whole Image Noise Reduction,
Reduce: Color Range Noise Reduction and Reduce: U-Point Control Point Noise Reduction there is a "more" option below the controls for that method. If you click on it you will be given two more control options. Edge Preservation which is a slider and JPEG Artifact Reduction which is just an on/off check box.
Edge Preservation
You can use this slider to preserve fine details in your image. Simply slide the slider and watch its effect in the preview. This slider can really make a difference for images that have small fine details that you don't want Dfine 2.0 to remove thinking that they are noise. This slider however will not be able to compensate for poor placement of the sample boxes when using the semi-automatic noise reduction option.
JPEG Artifact Reduction
This option does exactly what it says it reduces the JPEG compression artifacts you might find in a JPEG image that has been compressed too much. This is an on/off control only and it should only be used on JPEG images. Personally, I would like to see a slider added to this so that you can control the intensity of the effect. There are times when you might just want to reduce the effect and not try and clear the effect away 100%.
Loading and Saving Profiles
When you are using the Fully automatic noise reduction or semi-automatic noise reduction methods you can load and save profiles. Profiles are specific to camera and ISO so if you wanted to create a set of profiles for your camera you would need to shoot a picture at each of your cameras ISO settings. You would then one by one have Dfine profile the noise in those images and then once that is done you save each of the profiles for later use. You would need to do this for each of your cameras. The advantage to this is you can then reduce noise on any image you take even those that have lots of detail throughout. Remember that Dfine 2.0 and all other noise reduction programs need to have smooth detail less areas in your image from which to sample the noise from. If there are none in an image you can get poor noise reduction results or it may not be able to reduce noise at all. Having profiles for each ISO and camera means that if Dfine 2.0 can't profile the image itself you can always load a profile and you're all set. Just make sure you load the profile for the problem images camera and ISO.
Brush on Noise Reduction
Nik Software is very fond of allowing you to brush on the effects of their plug-ins. Dfine 2.0 is no different. If you load Dfine 2.0 do an automatic or semi-automatic noise profiling and then click on the "Brush" button at the bottom of the screen the noise reduction will be applied to your image as a separate layer with a layer mask, the main Dfine 2.0 window will close and you will get a small palette Screen Shot with options for revealing or hiding the noise reduction. Basically, this is like painting on the noise reduction or erasing the noise reduction. When painting or erasing you can use any Photoshop brush you want including any of the controls in the brushes palette. You can also fill the image which would apply the noise reduction to the entire image or you can clear the image which would remove the noise reduction from the image.
Because all of this is done on a separate copy of your image on a separate layer and using a layer mask this is totally non-destructive and completely editable at anytime in the future. You would simply load the image click on the layer mask and use black, white or gray to reveal, hide or show a percentage of the noise reduction. I prefer to use black and white color and adjust the brushes opacity to control the percentage revealed instead of trying to pick shades of gray.
I have a couple of complaints about this set up.
- You can not go back in and change the way the noise reduction was applied or the amount of noise reduction that Dfine 2.0 applied to the copy of the image. For example say you did the automatic noise reduction. Later you want to go in and use some U-Points, you would have to trash the copy of the image that Dfine created and basically start all over. I would like see Dfine smart enough to use Photoshop CS3's SmartObject technology so that all of the noise reduction is editable. Since Photoshop CS3 allows for it and other third party plug-ins (the third party plug-ins must support it) to be editable using Smart Object technology Dfine 2.0 needs to be updated to do this as well. Then not only could you adjust the application of the noise reduction using the brush tools and the layer mask you can go back in and change noise reduction methods and amounts in Dfine 2.0 itself.
- I don't like the Dfine floating brush palette. For one thing it can and does easily get hidden behind the Photoshop application window. I wish they would do it so that it looked and worked exactly like one of Photoshop's own palettes so that you can dock it, etc. This would be very nice, however I don't know if the Photoshop plug-in engine will allow for this or not. If it will Nik Software should do it, this would give a much more integrated and seamless feel to the whole thing.
- Right now this can get a little messy if you're not careful. Dfine 2.0 is not smart enough to recognize that you have already applied Dfine 2.0 and have used the "Brush" button to paint on or remove the noise reduction. If you need to edit the work you did in "Brush" mode you either have to delete the Dfine 2.0 layer and layer mask and start over or you can go in to the layer mask and paint on it with black, white or gray (or a percentage of black or white) this is done outside of Dfine 2.0 which I think is a bit confusing. Dfine 2.0 should be smart enough to know that the "Dfine 2.0" layer and layer mask in the layers palette was its own and then bring up the brush palette to let you further tweak the layer mask. If you plan to edit the work done in the brush mode then read up on layer masks in Photoshop.
In the end the Brush option is really more trouble and confusing than it is worth. Becuase of this I recommend that you read up on Photoshop's layer masks and simply use that yourself instead of the brush option, you are basically doing the same thing but without the mess and confusion.
This covers the vast majority of Dfine 2.0. While it isn't perfect as its noise reduction technology is very good and the color range and U-Point options are just incredible. If you want top quality noise reduction that can be used fully automatic, fully manual or with lots of control or something in the middle Nik Software's Dfine 2.0 is the package for you.
Needs
- Windows 2000 Professional, Windows XP, or Windows Vista (32-bit)
- Pentium III 1GHz or better
- 256 MB RAM
- Adobe Photoshop 7 through CS3, Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 through 5.0, or Adobe Photoshop Plug-in Compatible Application
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