Adobe Lightroom 3 Noise Reduction

One of the features in the new Lightroom 3 is a much-improved noise reduction algorithm. Lightroom 2’s version, to be blunt, sucked. It helped, to be sure, if you had nothing, and for minor adjustments it was okay. But when you started throwing ISO 3200 images at it, things degraded quickly, and you were pretty much assured of needing to use a third-party noise-reduction plugin (many of which are very good).

So when I upgraded to Lr3, I had to try the new noise-reduction, and frankly, was blown away. There are situations where the third-party plugins are better, but Lr3 is more than up to the task, as you’ll see in this post.

Note: Because Lightroom is non-destructive, and because noise-reduction algorithms tend to take some time to process, I find that Lr3 gets really, really fussy when you’ve turned the NR on beyond a few percent. Best to disable it if you’re doing other things, or you’re going to start tapping fingers on the desk really quickly. A few other features easily induce this behaviour as well (like distortion correction), so it’s not limited only to NR, but something I thought I’d pass on.

The Subject, and the Detail

So, a few weeks ago, I was out just doing a photowalk, and ran across this cute chipmunk on the root of a tree surrounded with some plants. The day was nice and bright, but the camera needed ISO 3200 at f/5.6, 1/250s at a 200mm focal length (400mm equivalent). I was using my Olympus Pen E-P1 which, while far better than a point-and-shoot, doesn’t fare quite as well as a dSLR with a larger sensor would fare, but still quite respectable.

Now, if I’d had faster glass, I could have avoided such a high ISO. I could also have tried to get away with a slower shutter speed, but I was pushing it as it was. So, ISO 3200 it is, and it’s a noisy image, as you can imagine. Lr2 couldn’t do anything with it, so to even get it out-the-door, I had to use a third-party plugin for my first publish on Flickr (View On Flickr). I still wasn’t happy with the result, but for now, that was it. I had other images to work on.

After Lightroom 3

When evaluating Lr3’s noise-reduction, I wanted a subject that would really prove the NR’s worth. So I picked the same chipmunk. And with that, let the evaluation begin. The original image is above, and 100% crops from three different areas on the image are below. The final version is at the bottom of the post. Full-size downloads are available at the bottom of the post, as well, but beware – they’re huge!

Focusing on the Eye

The 100% crops below focus on the chipmunk’s left eye and include some of the whiskers and foliage as well. This gives a good view of how well detail is preserved as well as how the background is rendered.

Eye: 100%, Lr2 rendering, Default NR	Eye: 100%, Lr3 rendering, 37% Luminosity, 67% Detail, 50% Color
Eye: 100%, Lr3 rendering, 67% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color	Eye: 100%, Lr3 rendering, 100% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color
Eye (Final): 100%, Lr3 Rendering, 32% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 54% Color

 

Focusing on the Background

100%, Lr2 rendering, Default NR	100%, Lr3 rendering, 37% Luminosity, 67% Detail, 50% Color
100%, Lr3 rendering, 67% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color	100%, Lr3 rendering, 100% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color
Final: 100%, Lr3 Rendering, 32% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 54% Color

Focusing on the Fur

100%, Lr2 rendering, Default NR	100%, Lr3 rendering, 37% Luminosity, 67% Detail, 50% Color
100%, Lr3 rendering, 67% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color	100%, Lr3 rendering, 100% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 50% Color
Final: 100%, Lr3 Rendering, 32% Luminosity, 66% Detail, 54% Color

Final Version

The final version ended up with 32% Luminosity NR, 66% Luminosity Detail, and 54% Color NR. Other settings were changed (white balance, etc.), but the other NR sliders were left to their defaults (0% Contrast; 50% Color Detail). These settings were picked because they seemed to render the most detail without looking overly fake.

Having gone through this evaluation, I think Adobe has definitely improved the Lr3 noise-reduction, and my suspicion is that it would rank quite highly if placed along several third-party plugins. In fact, I prefer the final version above to the version on Flickr. Every photograph and situation is different, of course, but from this example, I quite like what I see.

That’s all for now; hopefully this post has been informative for all you Lightroom users. So, until next time, keep writing with light.

Links

• Original (2601k)
• 37% (1427k)
• 67% (1102k)
• 100% (745k)
• Final (718k)