NZ Photo Info

As you increase the ISO (or amplification) of your available light in digital photography it has the effect of introducing noise into your images. While the current range of DSLR's generally produce good results, sometimes the images need a little bit of help.

After testing a number of different products (all the big names that I could find evaluation copies of software for on the net) I have settled on Noiseware Professional.

Overall, with my testing it produced the most effective and natural looking results across a broad range of different subject matter in different lighting conditions.

Prior to by purchase I was reluctant to shoot at 400 ISO with my Olympus E-300. Now, I am confident that I can achieve a great, natural looking result at 800 or in some cases 1600 ISO.

As an example the below image is a 100% crop showing the before and after effects of the noise filters (perhaps not the best subject, but it serves the purpose). In this particular image I used the Stronger Color Noise preset to achieve these results. You will notice that there is still some noise apparent viewing at the pixel level. This will be negligible on a printed image.

• 1600 ISO
• 1/25 sec
• f4.5
• 54mm
• handheld
• No sharpening applied

Please be patient while the image loads - Hover over the image to see the filtered version.

Remember, there will always be a compromise between loss of detail and noise. Over suppression of the noise will result in unnatural plastic looking images.