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Although it's not the purpose for which it was
designed, the new Color Replacement tool in Photoshop CS is an
incredibly efficient way to remove digital noise from photos.
Paint away noise quickly and easily!
Noise, those red, blue, and green specks in a
digital photo, can destroy an image. Most common when taking
images in low-light situations, noise can appear in virtually
any image.
You'll want to use this technique in areas of
reasonably-similar color (although luminosity differences are
not a problem). Start with the Eyedropper tool. In the Options
Bar, set the tool to sample a five-pixel by five-pixel area.
Click in the area that you'll be fixing to select that color as
the foreground color.
Now select the Color Replacement tool. In the
Options Bar, you'll want Sampling set to Continuous, Limits set
to Find Edges, and a Tolerance of about 30%. Paint away the
noise! Notice how the reflection in the table's surface is
preserved, even as the noise is removed.
In this image, we can also use the Color
Replacement tool to eliminate noise in the patterned wallpaper.
Since the pattern is created with two similar colors (with
substantially different lightness values), it is preserved. If
the wallpaper used two very different colors, such as yellow and
red, the Color Replacement tool would not be effective.
Compare the "before" image (top and bottom left)
and the "after" image (middle and bottom-right).
Now, about that grain problem…. |