We talk alot about digital noise in images, and sometimes there’s nothing like a good example to really drive it home. A few weeks ago, a former student emailed me about “noisy” images and wanted details on what could be done to control it.

First, a little background on what noise is. Whenever you increase the ISO on your digital camera, you are increasing its sensitivity to light – it is the same as shooting with a different film speed in the analog film world. The benefits of doing this are clear :

• allowing hand-holdable shutter speeds in lower light situations (usually about 1/50th or 1/60th of a second )
• allowing indoor (and outdoor) photography with reduced flash power or no flash at all
• allowing broader depth of field with higher shutter speeds, especially in lower light situations

The list could go on, but these are a few quick reasons.

Now what does this digital grain look like and how can it be controlled? I’ll take a look at the first question.

Here is a photo taken at ISO 1600. Notice the graininess and color patches on the underside of the body of the sea gull. There isn’t anything wrong with the image – that’s digital noise! Notice how the noise seems more prominent in the shadow under the right wing (bird’s left). This is a common problem with noise – it likes to lurk in the shadows!

Imagenomic’s Noiseware “Community Edition” Standalone 2.6 is a freeware software tool that you can try out and see if it improves your shadows. Imagenomics makes several variants of this tool, and you can compare them all here : http://www.imagenomic.com/nwsa.aspx.

After running the Community Edition of the standalone tool, here is the side-by-side comparison.

You can see, the noise has really been improved without loss of details. Now the noiseless image is amazingly smooth and clear!

Shooting at high ISOs can be a tremendous creative tool for your photography. Now you can feel more confident about shooting at those higher ISOs without worrying about that annoying digital noise!

There are plenty of tools out there to remove noise and Imagenomic’s Noiseware is just one of many good tools to consider in your digital photo editor’s toolbox!