Introduction

Noise Reduction software is now an integral part of the photographic workflow, just as much as yellow and magenta filters were in the days of the wet B&W darkroom. They are particularly important, though, for those of us working in photojournalism, wedding photography, and similar fields that require us to shoot indoors in poorly lit venues at high ISOs. Even images from the best modern sensors benefit from proper noise reduction (NR) treatment.

One of Photoshop CS4′s few shortcomings, though, is its weak noise reduction functionality. To get the best results, it is now necessary to use 3^rd party software, either stand alone or as a Photoshop plug-in. Over the years, dozens of different NR programs have been released, but today, only a handful of them are really worthy of attention, either because of their popularity or effectiveness.

One wonderful site, MichaelAlmond.com, has already compared many of these programs, especially many of the older Photoshop actions, and I would not hesitate to recommend reading his information. I found, though, that his reviews were missing some key information and were, at the same time, not organized for quick reference. They’re also getting to be a little out of date (last updated in 2005). Consequently, I’ve decided to write some updated and augmented reviews of my own. I hope that you find them useful.

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Screenshot of Noiseware in Photoshop CS4 on WinXP x64; click to enlarge.

Noise Ninja Screenshot, as a Photoshop Plugin on WinXP x64

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