When post prorcessing I usually go over every image with Noise Ninja just to be sure. I'm also considering using the Unsharpen Mask in PSE. But would I do this before or after the noise reduction? Does the order in which you do it make much difference?

In advance; thank your for your help and advice!

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It really depends on the image and noise levels. Most often I will reduce the noise first, and then follow with minimal sharpening so as not to recreate the noise. I use an amount of 20%, radius of 80, and threshold of 0.

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I usually don't even resharpen. Whenever I try to, it comes out worse, as Karimala was saying.

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Hi,

Get the exposure right from the first time... in most cases a slight over exposure of 1/3 or 1/5 will get you there. Noise will not be an issue.

If you have to sharpen the pictures, here is a little but very good trick....

- convert you picture from rgb to lab mode;
- upsize you picture to double its size;
- go to the layers pallet, select the lightness channel, do your sharpening, be moderate... depending on files size different sharpening setting are used, for my 10 mpx nikon D 200 files i use : amount 250-300, radius 0.5, treshold 1-3... gives the best results on those files. Also, don't just use these setting on all files, it depends from camera to camera. The nikon d 200 has the tendency to produce soft images when all images setting are kept nutral. Best is to keep you sharpening in camera to neutral and shoot raw...!!!
- resize your picture back to its original size, convert back to rgb.... and voila... tell me this isn't working, it's not producing halos or sharpening artifacts. The reason you are not getting more noise and artefacts is because you will only sharpening the layer that contains the less noise, the lightness channel.

Euhm, this is one of my best well kept secrets, so keep it here on this forum..lol.

Patrick.

ps : shouldn't we start a separate forum with only good tips.?..

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wow patrick how do you know all this stuff lol. Trial and error? I think Im going to make a folder on my PC called Patrick's best kept photo secrets lol.

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We already do, sort of. The "How Did You Do That?" forum is a good place for tips and tricks.

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Okay...

Feel free to transfer this one to the explicit categroy...=-)

Patrick.

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Hey...

Try to post your xcperience with this method...

patrick

ps : time to go to bed... i've corected this one 3 times on spelling...

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Ok last night I tried this method step by step with an image that just got accepted on SS.

There were no signs of over-sharpening and no noise returned after sharpening, there wasnt any noticable noise anyway but sometimes sharpening slightly can make it look like noise on vegetable skin etc.

Ok Ive still not worked out the science in this method, but it worked for me :P

Just for reference I use a Nikon D50 in RAW format.

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Hey, you are giving away our secrets! ;-)
If you tell them how we make skies noise-free without hazing on the top of trees and masts, I'll come over again with a few bottles of the most unsweet wine I can find :-p

No honestly, I have Ninja noise too and I never use it any more. The thing is that de-noising your photos all over is pointless and can make them plastic. Been there, done that. Not all parts of a photo have visible noise, and a robot program (edited: as well as a SS reviewer - joke) just can't distinguish between texture and noise.

The answer is selective noise reduction on darker parts and sky in a separate layer (by the CS2 noise reduction filter), then sharpen the underlying image, and flatten. You never should sharpen noise-prone areas.
The lab color sharpening only in the luminance channel is great to avoid halos.