Noise reduction software

[Brian500au]

I am in the market for some noise reduction software. I am currently trialling Topaz Denoise AI, ON1 NoNoise AI and DXO PureRaw2.

If I buy Topaz I can get all three packages (Denoise AI, Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI + the new Topaz Photo AI as a bonus). The price is around $275 AUD. I have tested it and like the results, but this price is for a one-off buy - I would prefer to be on some type of subscription which includes all new updates which is not offered.

ON1 is on a subscription but is very slow on my computer.

DXO PureRaw2 very good as what is does but lacks any user input and once again is at a one off-buy price of approx $200.

Does anybody have any experience with the above software and could recommend one over another?

[ameerat42]

Kel. I had the trial version of the Topaz suite and I'm pretty sure (but not 100%) that it included
a couple of updates and that later ones were pretty cheap. It was a while ago, so :o if it has now
changed :confused013

[Tannin]

Kel, Topaz is not professional-grade software, nor close to it. It offers little control and the defaults are horribly, horribly over-done.

It does often work well on seriously substandard images. I'm using it with great success on pictures I took close to 20 years ago, mostly with a 4MP point and shoot camera attached to a spotting telescope. With these, it can quite often turn unusably bad pictures into ... well, not great, not even good, but fairly presentable. And quite often not, of course, but overall it is amazingly good at tarting up very bad pictures and turning them into ones you don't actually cringe over if you think someone might look at them.

You can turn the Topaz pre-sets down ... sort-of. Some of them, not all. The slider controls default to 50% which is usually really, really overdone but if you turn them down to 1% or 2% they can often be OK. But not something you'd do to a decent picture. (Lord only knows what the result looks like if you push the slider up!)

Use Topaz (a) for bad pictures to make then less bad. (b) For medium-grade pictures to make them medium-good - but carefully! You need to roll off as much as you can of the Topaz over-processing. Dennis (who reminded me of Topaz in a conversation here not long ago) uses it for pop and sharpness by blending in a Topaz over-processed layer at something like 20% opacity. Of course, that isn't going to be much help for noise.

Summary: if Topaz was a cook, it would deal with every possible meal by smothering it in tomato sauce and adding a lot of salt and sugar. It really does make bad food palatable - but the better the meal is, the less good Topaz does, and on a genuinely good meal, Topaz just drags it down to average.

Worth having? Absolutely! It's a great tool and I love it. But only in its place - i.e., something you use when you want to rescue a picture and run out of better ideas.

For nose reduction, I cannot praise DXO PhotoLab enough. (Or DxO Pure Raw, which is essentially the same thing minus various useful extras.) DxO's Deep Prime XD technology blows any other NR I have ever used into the weeds.

PhotoLab is $219 USD on full price but they often have specials. PureRAW is $129 USD. Both packages are buy-once, own forever. Both come with a fairly reasonable runway of free upgrades and bug fixes - and yes, they really do mean "upgrade" when they say "upgrade", they add new features and abilities now and then. You need to pay again to do a major version upgrade (e.g., from the current 6.1 to 7.0 which is probably a year or two away) but they are very decent with their upgrade pricing. I paid $99 USD to upgrade to PhotoLab 6 Elite (the all-bells-and-whistles edition) a few months back. That's less than you pay for subscription software, and you remain in charge of your spending, not them.

I posted an example of it at work recently in this thread: http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?169884-Wobbly

[jim]

To just reinforce Tony's excellent post, never pay full price for anything from DXO. To say they often have specials is a bit of an understatement. And the markdown is always substantial.

[Mary Anne]

Kel I had used TopazDe Noise for about 8 years and then they bought out the A1 Version WOW!! what a difference.
Only they tried to slug us for the update promising us a decade before that would never happen.
People that bought the Bundles were not impressed, so they dropped that for all the ones that bought the originals.
I have watched two Tutorials where they used those three you are interested in.
And was not surprised to find that Topaz deNoise A1 came in first.
I do not use it on Auto though and there are a few Members here that use it.

Sometimes I use PS 2023 when I have only a little noise, that works OK for me too. I also prefer the Subscription Software
Do your Homework look at the reviews and make up your own mind, as what works for one does not mean it would work for everybody.

[Brian500au]

Thank you all for some useful information.

I have all three programs as demos on my computer (Topaz, DXO and On1). I like them all so it is coming down to two three main criteria. 1 - subscription (which I would prefer). I know some do not like this model but for me with experience now with LR / PS and with MS Office it is a small annual investment for the latest upgrades and both these two companies upgrade regularly (whether bug fixes or substantial improvements). 2 - only using a laptop now albeit a late model laptop how fast does the software run. On1 is definitely the slowest of the three. 3 - Value for money - Topaz offer four separate programs for 275 AUD where as DXO is $200 for the one program. I have also heard DXO only offer support until the next upgrade which I believe is due in March 23.

I really like the On1 software and at $150 AUD a year subscription it includes a full suite of tools including LR presets. It is unfortunate this software is so slow.

I will continue to test over the coming days and let others know what I decided and why.

PS I wanted to test Skylum Luminar Neo but they do not have an evaluation version - too bad it could have been a contender.

[Tannin]

Don't bother with Luminar Neo. I bought a copy sight unseen a week ago, knowing I had 30 days to get my money back if it wasn't what I wanted. It is real kiddy-car stuff, worse than Topaz in some ways. So far I have not found anything that I'd definitely use it for. (The auto power line removal is a good trick though. Maybe that.)

The user interface is awful. It is obviously designed by and for people who grew up using mobile phones and don't feel comfortable with real computers with actual keyboards and big screens. Don't get me wrong, it's beautifully done in its own way, but it is very much something which would be more at home on a tablet. Worse, it apes Lightroom - there is no "file/open" command (which is daft) and no way to change the name of an edited file (which is insane)! In other words, you can't open "my_file.tif" and do some edits, then save it as "my_file2.tif". It shows you the file name, but it's greyed out and you cannot change it. You must leave Luminar Neo and use some other program to copy the original file before coming back to do a save.

(I thought I'd seen the last of this sort of nonsense back in 1982 when Wordstar 3 came out.)

Nor is there any way to save into the same folder you started in, you have to manually select the save folder. (Any half- decent UI lets you save in the same folder you opened the file from - probably every other graphics program I have used in the last decade - and the good ones (PhotoLab, Neat Image, various others) auto-add the suffix of your choice.)

I uninstalled it after half an hour as an obvious non-starter and emailed them to ask for a refund. It was only then that I discovered that the company is from and operates out of Ukraine. I figure they have enough problems already, so I cancelled the refund request. I have now reinstalled it but, honestly, it's not something any serious photographer would use when there are so many better alternatives.

Note that it is not bad software, it's just not written for actual photographers. If you are a trendy social media kid hanging out on whatever is lots more fashionable than Instagram this week, and you are wanting something that does cool stuff with your phone pictures that the phone itself can't do, and does it quickly and well with the minimum amount of skill on your part, Luminar Neo is perfect for you. It is very good software in its own way. Useless for the likes of us though.

[Brian500au]

Thanks for review Tony - I was never going to purchase Luminar Neo without trying it and to be honest the more advertising and hype I see on the internet, the more the sceptic comes out in me anyway.