Noise, when shooting at higher ISOs, is inevitable (unless you can afford one of the new Nikon D3s, which is supposed to have amazingly low amounts of noise, even at high ISOs). That’s where noise removal tools come in to play. This post will review my recent experience with two such tools, PictureCode’s Noise Ninja and Imagenomic’s Noiseware Professional.

Several weeks ago I attended a night event that had low (although nicely colored) lighting, which required me to shoot at 1600 ISO in order to get a shutter speed that was fast enough to hand hold. This was one of the first occastions that I’ve had to shoot at that high of an ISO and actually wanted to share the pictures with others. As a result, I decided to purchase a noise reduction tool. When choosing the product, I used the following criteria:

• Remove the noise
• Easy to use
• Work as a plugin for Photoshop (and allowed itself to be run as an action)

I’m a subscriber to several photography magazines and read blogs fairly regularly. As a result, I was able to quickly narrow down the search to two similarly-priced options, Noiseware Professional and Noise Ninja.

After downloading and installing the trial versions of each, I ran them on the following photo, taken at 1600 ISO. Both products overlay a grid on the photo when run in demo mode, which still provided an adequate view of the results to determine quality.

Photo BEFORE noise removal. Click on the photo for a larger view.

The Results

Removing the Noise

As expected, both products removed the noise well (both products are highly recommended and are considered some of the industry leaders). See the following photo for results. As you can see, it can sometimes make the skin look a little waxy, but that seems to be the result of most any noise removal tool. Duplicating the layer, running the removal and then lowering the opacity of the new layer helps reduce the waxiness. Also, artificates are occasionally introduced or enhanced, which may require some additional Photoshop work.

Photo AFTER noise removal. Click on the photo for a larger view.

Ease of Use

Up to this point, the two products seem very evenly matched. This is the point where Noiseware Professional pulled ahead. The user interface was much simpler and the presets easier to access. When running, both allowed manual adjustments, but Noise Ninja required loading external profiles in order to apply various presets. This turned out to be overly cumbersome for what should be a simple plugin.

Work as Photoshop Plugin

Both products worked as a plugin in Photoshop and can be run as actions (Noiseware required purchasing the professional version to run as an action).

The Final Choice

Both Noise Ninja and Noiseware Professional stand true to their reputations as leading the industry in removing noise from photos. They do a great job at removing noise. They also work as plugins to Photoshop and are available as stand-alone products.

My final choice, though, was Noiseware Professional, for two reasons.

First, the user interface was much easier to use, allowing access to several presets and other useful features.

Second, at $70 it was just a bit less expensive than Noise Ninja, which came in at $80. I also received an extra 20% off by using a discount code that can be accessed as an NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) member.