Figuring out ready made Noise Reduction

(Revised after I noticed a purple colour cast). 

It's an interesting time in image processing technology. There are genuine improvements in easy to use (read: hands free, almost) digital noise reduction features of consumer, off the shelf, software. I purchased Topaz Labs Denoise AI, like it a lot, use it a lot, for my photos.There are two algorithms - the standard and the Low Noise option. There are adjustment sliders for them. I've an affiliate link here if you want to buy it and also reward me.

DxO has just released version 4 of their PhotoLab - this has been a well known, well regarded general purpose raw processing program - the Elite Edition has an enhanced noise reduction feature named Prime Noise Reduction. Now there's Deep Prime. 

I'm just testing at the moment. Below are crops of .tiff files from an Olympus E-PM2 raw file, shot at, ahem, ISO 25,000 - yes rubbish ISO, pretty much only useful for a snapshot rather than a polished professional photo. The full .TIFF files are downloadable via links.

When I first made the Topaz Denoise AI images, I ran Topaz Denoise as standalone, loading the Olympus .ORF raw file directly, then saved as .TIFF - for some reason there's a purple cast in the images, I didn't see any Colorspace option.  Then I ran Topaz Denoise as an Adobe Photoshop plugin, loading the raw first through Adobe Camera Raw. This time there was no colour cast. 

Hope this is useful.

Olympus Workspace - Standard Noise Filter - .tiff file

Olympus Workspace - Noise Filter Off - .tiff file

Topaz Denoise AI (Low Light Mode) directly loading the raw .orf file - .tiff file

Topaz Denoise AI directly loading the raw .orf file - .tiff file

DxO PhotoLab 4.0 HQ - .tiff file

DxO PhotoLab 4.0 Prime - .tiff file

DxO PhotoLab 4.0 Deep Prime - .tiff file

Topaz Denoise AI through ACR / Photoshop - tiff file

Topaz Denoise (Low Light mode) through ACR / Photoshop - tiff file

Topaz Denoise (AI Clear mode) through ACR / Photoshop - tiff file

Getting Film Simulations for Free

I sometimes have that bit of nostalgia for that film look. I shot film from my school days until after I got married. We've influenced younger generations to think and feel that organic film colours is something to want. 

Movies are often heavily colour graded, like Christoper Nolan's Interstellar.  The quirky palettes of Wes Anderson continue that trend.  Every photo guru is keen to sell unique Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom presets. There are also, well established colour grading software like DxOLab's Filmpack. Photo editing software often throw in presets or LUTs or Actions (recorded steps).

It is very tempting to put money down and get some yummy film simulations. But. There's always a But. But what if you could have fun and fool around with that idea for free? It might not turn out to be your artistic centre to use such a tool or you might run hot and then cool off. One way to dip your toes in the water is to use Raw Therapee with the HALDCUT Film Simulation Pack. Here's how:

1. Download and install Raw Therapee. There are downloads for Linux, 64 bit Windows, 64 bit MacOS. If you don't want to contaminate your Windows computer by installing Raw Therapee, Portable Apps has a version of Raw Therapee that you can unpack without embedding itself into Windows Registry and Windows folders. 
2. Download and unpack the HALDCUT Film Simulation files into a folder of your choice.
3. Start up Raw Therapee and go into Preferences to nominate where that HALDCUT folder is.
4. Restart Raw Therapee
5. Load an image into Raw Therapee and then go to the Color > Film Simulation panel to start using the Film Simulations
6. Save the resulting image.

SOOC JPEG from Kodak P880

Image after applying HALDCUT Agfa film simulation

Topaz AI products showing Text Menus properly - Windows PC - Kensington USB Dock

Topaz Labs post processing software were one of the first to implement AI (Artificial Intelligence). AI software for photo editing is quite the buzz these days, so I tried out Gigapixel, then Denoise (or was it the other way around). I found various products unstable, slow or just didn't work on my Acer Aspire 5 laptop then backed off for a while.  That laptop was a Core i5 with dual graphic card (Intel and nVidia), originally with a magnetic hard disk, with a touch screen but pretty poor colour rendition (not IPS), I attached it to a Belkin USB Dock and external IPS monitors.

Then, gaming laptops became more common (read, less expensive) and I purchased an Acer Nitro 5

Core i7, again dual graphic card (Intel and nVidia), with SSD - so a higher performance machine. This time it would be attached to a Kensington USB dock (which allowed me to connecto to an IPS UHD (near 4K) screen. I tried Topaz Gigapixel, Denoise again and eventually I bought the whole suite.

Sometime later, I upgraded the SSD  in the Nitro 5 to bigger one and one thing led to another, I had to start fresh with a Windows 10 install, fresh installs of the Topaz products. Then, I noticed with disappointment two issues:

• If I nominated the nVidia as the GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) for the Topaz Products, they would with no text in the menu or user interface and after a few seconds, the program would exit.
• If I nominated Intel as the GPU, the Topaz Products would take display menus but processing of the images was very slooooow.

I filed a Support Request with Topaz, there was to and fro, and in the end of that case, we could not arrive at a cure.

A few weeks later, I changed one thing and Hey Presto, it worked. If I nominated the nVidia GPU, the Topaz products would show text in the menus and user interface, the program processed images much quicker. The change?

When you use multiple displays with Microsoft Windows, you can invoke the Display options dialog in the Settings hiearchy. Here, you can nominate which display you want to be the Default Display. This is the one that will host the Windows Task Bar, the System Tray icons and the Clock.

Set the Default Display to the built-in screen of the notebook, not one of the external monitors. If you do this, the Topaz products will work properly. If you set the Default Display to be one of the external monitors, the Topaz products will fail to display user interface text when the nVidia GPU is assigned or be very slow when the Intel GPU is assigned.

Whether the additional DisplayLink driver muddies the diagnosis of the issue, I am not sure. But this is what works for me.