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RAW Developers Review – Noise Reduction (3rd update)

Tags: Adobe Camera Raw, Bibble Pro, Capture One, CR2, Developer, DxO Optics, FastPictureViewer, IrfanView, Lightroom, NEF, Olympus, Photoshop, RAW, RawTherapee, Review, Scarab Darkroom, Silky Pix, Software

For the second part of my review I will look at the effects of noise reduction algorithms on one night shot from Budapest. As in the first part, the post image is saved from IrfanView.

Technical data: Nikon D300, Nikon 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 AF-S DX @ 35 mm, F:4.2, ISO 800, 1/60s
In camera noise reduction: Off

As you can see the image is heavily underexposed and as a first step we’ll crank up the exposure to the available upper limit. Each program has a different scale for exposure compensation and, in the case of RAW Drop you can’t even control the exposure but the software autoexposes so 1% of the image pixels will be white.

Each software will have (with some exceptions as you’ll see in the conclusions below) a rendering using it’s standard settings with just the exposure cranked to the limit and then some other renderings using the different methods of Noise Reduction available. Below is a gallery of 1:1, 400 by 400 pixel crops from the resulting renders.

By request, I have added also the renderings and the text comment for Nikon Capture NX2.

[Show as slideshow]

[View with PicLens]

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Comments regarding the results:
- Bibble Pro – a really nasty error, the file is only partially read (see here), the last 20% on the right side are black. And this happens on two of the NEF files I have. The third one, depending on the “mood” of the software is either correctly read, or it presents severely black banding across the image;
- Breeze Browser – even if the file is correctly previewed as portrait, the rendered files are landscape. Also, the difference between the renderings is so small that you can export without any noise reduction at all.
- Adobe Camera RAW, Lightroom 2 and 3 – the resulting images are overly saturated, in order to have a image on par with the other RAW developers you have to reduce also the black clipping levels to 0. As stated by the Adobe Labs Team, the new rendering engine in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is just another story in terms of noise reduction compared with the old engine. Just be careful about the position of the slider: cramming it up to 100 produces a bad halo around the edges in the high contrast areas.
- Capture NX2 – The default rendering is good, but we have to take into account the fact that the exposure compensation is for only 2 stops. The color noise removal is not effective at all. It masks alot of details and if the High Quality mark is checked, we are back to square one. The difference between the standard rendering and the HQ color noise removal is nearly invisible in a 16bit tiff file. If the images are used only as 8bit, then fiddling with noise removal is just a waste of time.
- Capture One Pro – Using the Colour Noise Reduction is just as bad as using a large blur brush in Photoshop. You lose details very quickly, and by dragging the slider up to 100 you can obtain a really, really nice out of focus image. The best solution here is to remain with the default rendering – no noise reduction at all.
- DxO Optics Pro – the bad surprise of the batch! With a supposed working combination of Nikon camera and lens the rendered image was totally out of control. One of the images I have was taken with another supposed supported camera/lens combination AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED and its equally bad. And I’ve tried on four different operating systems: XP Pro 32bit, XP Pro 64bit, Windows 7 RC 32bit and Windows 7 64bit RTM. On top of that, I have to add the fact that the program is constantly crashing and you have the whole picture of a really bad combination. As a last resort I’ve tried also with the Canon CR2 File I have and it renders the file correctly but I won’t update the whole review just for the sake of a poorly written piece of software. As a note I’ve lost more than 5 hours to find the working combination in order to complete the review with the Nikon RAW file.
- LightZone – a nice treat: you can stack filters for a precise control of different developing processes.
- RAW Drop – As I’ve said before, it has no exposure compensation, but it automatically adjusts the exposure of the image to render 1% of the pixels white. I’ve exported the default rendering and 3 levels of noise reduction. From what I can see, it’s the last resort if you want to render RAW images.
- RAW Therapee – A medium contender for its noise reduction algorithm. But it gets a big plus because it’s a free RAW developer.
- Scarab Darkroom – I finally managed to install and to have a working combination of the software as it seems that some hardware/software combinations aren’t yet supported and Scarab crashes on start-up. It renders the file correctly and it has the basic editing tools but no noise reduction capability whatsoever. Though, you have to consider it’s still in the early beta stages.
- SilkyPix – just another case of weak noise reduction algorithms, better stay with the default rendering.
- SilverFast HDR – It has the most extensive array of noise reduction algorithms. I posted several combinations of the three different technologies included. Even if it’s not the most intuitive interface and the most accurate preview, I think it has the best potential to handle noise.

Just as an additional example of correcting exposures and noise reduction algorithms, I have added two one image HDR files made with Dynamic Photo HDR and Photomatix.

If you want to examine stripes of 400 px height across the rendered result from each developer and the results of the HDR processing, you can download them here (34.3 MB Zip file). The settings used are explained in the above gallery.

DxO Update: since DxO Labs published today the new Windows version of its software, I’ve decided to give it a try and reached the same conclusions as before. I have downloaded and installed the new version on the same test system as the previous version and it renders the test file exactly in the same way. The second test configuration for DxO Optics Pro 6 was a freshly installed Windows Virtual PC updated with the latest .Net FX 3.5 package as it is a prerequisite for installation. DxO worked fine on that single file but the rendered file is still totally wrong. I will install DxO on a second machine, but I don’t hold any hopes on that.

If somebody has the time and wants to test DxO Optics Pro 6 with my test files, please leave a comment on my blog and I will contact you.

DxO update 2: I have installed DxO Optics Pro 6 on another system just to exclude any hardware platform dependency (CPU: AMD Athlon XP 3000+, MSI Motherboard with nForce chipset, video card nVidia GeForce 5200 64 MB, 1 GB RAM, HDD Western Digital 40GB, Windows XP Pro SP3) and I got the same results on the test files: completely wrong rendering of the Nikon D300 NEF file and application hang-up if there are any unsupported RAW files in the folder(in this case one Olympus E-500 ORF file).

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4 comments

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   Trackback by uberVU - social comments on Wed, 4 November 2009 at 11:36

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   Pingback by Tweets that mention Tertulia.ro » RAW Developers Review – Noise Reduction -- Topsy.com on Wed, 4 November 2009 at 16:47

   [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Cristian Samoila, Cristian Samoila. Cristian Samoila said: RAW Developers Review – Noise Reduction http://bit.ly/1710Cx [...]

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   Comment by Kenner on Wed, 11 November 2009 at 06:18

   Thx for the review. I was looking around for an alternative to DPP for my Canon camera but so far I believe DPP fits the bill so far. There are only 2 things that I prefer to do outside of DPP, sharpening and luma noise reduction. I use the Topaz DeNoise plugin with Irfanview reduce luma noise and sharpen the image.

4. ---

   Comment by Chris on Wed, 11 November 2009 at 13:39

   There are some reasons I can’t really use DPP:
   - I shoot with two Olympus bodies;
   - I prefer some generalist tools since sometimes I have photos from my friends who are shooting Canon, Nikon and Pentax;
   - I prefer to have all the controls available in one window, maybe with tabs (the interface style of Lightroom, DxO, Capture One).

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