Neat Image License Key

[Giovanni Sealy]

Bettercameras generate less image noise. Neat Image processing minimizes the noise out of your photos. So your point-and-shoot camera can produce pro-quality results. Neat Image reduces image noise so that shots taken at faster shutter speeds and higher ISO become more usable with Neat Image post-processing.

We've also optimized Neat Image for speed by taking full advantage of multi-core CPUs and GPUs. Superior noise reduction combined with blazing speed makes Neat Image the most efficient noise reduction solution available.

I don't think this is fair. It looks like it may be more complicated, but it also looks like (once you make it over the "learning curve") that it actually offers more benefits. Again I'm still learning, still experimenting.

I would very much like to hear a real comparison from anyone, truly conversant with both systems, as to which is better, and why? Maybe even articulating precisely what are the advantages/disadvantages of each product?

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AP's Denoise does a fair job, Dfine2 is good if you add more control points in manual mode, neat image I haven't tried but I'm downloading the trial now to test with. I think of the 3 Dfine2 appears to work best, Neat Image didn't seem to have much affect.

Neat Image do a trial version so you can have a play before you buy and decide for yourself, personally I found it a bit unrefined, the GUI wasn't the nicest to use but don't let that put you off, try it and then make a choice, you never know it might be the "best noise removal software on the market" for you. lol

I like Dfine, I like the finesse you get with the control points. The only program that comes close for me is DxO Photo Optics although It's now called DxO PhotoLab but it has a hefty $200 price tag for the elite version which has the Raw Denoising option. So Dfine is the clear winner when it comes to results, control and of course price.

Well there are a bunch of tools which allow to remove noise/grain to some degree here, though results also highly depend on their algorithmic accuracy and the kind of input image noise, aka high ISO and lighting conditions. - Another tool which sometimes gives good results is Topaz DeNoise which is also easy to use. However, I first would try the tools you already have available there.

I have just done a comparison of Dfine and Neat image on a scanned slide of a sea anemone. I have cropped the image to just the background plus a tentacle. All images are the original resolution (not re-sized). In both cases, I used the a region in the area shown as the training area for the denoising.

I would probably agree in this case. I used this image as I was using it as a subject for trying masking to combine de-noising and sharpening. My overall impression over a variety of other slide scans is that Nik is marginally better.

I recently heard about Neat Image via a tweet on Twitter. The tweet claimed that Neat Image was a great noise reduction tool. The Neat Image web site even mentions "astro" imaging. That caught my attention. I have tried using the native Aperture noise reduction but have always been disappointed with the results. So I had to try it out Neat Image. There are three versions of Neat Image: Demo, Home, and Pro. It is available in plug-in versions for Apple Aperture (Mac OS X) and Adobe Photoshop (Windows and Mac OS X), and standalone versions for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. Each version is described on a Neat Image feature map (link to the Mac standalone version). I downloaded and installed the Mac OS X standalone Demo version. (By the way, "Demo" is somewhat of a misnomer. The free "demonstration" version is fully functional, with only a few limitations.) I also downloaded the Quick Start Guide and User Guide from the Neat Image web site. Neat Image has these features (from the User Guide):

RAW images can be processed after they are converted to TIFFs (using TIFF is recommended to avoid quality loss due to compression) or to JPEGs (this involves quality loss, because JPEG is a lossy format).

As I do with all software (and hardware), I first read the documentation. It was cloudy anyway so this gave me an opportunity to learn the application. After reading the Quick Start Guide, I said to myself, "it can't be THAT easy". So, before delving into the User Guide, I had to try it myself. Since it was cloudy, I couldn't take any dark frames (which Neat Image can use) or new images, so I decided to use one of my older Nikon D7000 DSLR Deep Sky Object astrophotographs taken through my Meade 8" LX200-ACF as an example image. I selected an image of Centaurus A. This is the version I originally posted on my Cassiopeia Observatory web site. The raw image, 5 minutes, ISO 6400, had been edited in Aperture and saved as a JPEG.

There is a lot of noise in the image. I followed the five simple Neat Image steps: open image, use Auto Profile, use default Noise Filter Settings, Preview, and save the image, as seen in these screen shots:

Wow! Simple and yet extremely effective at removing the noise from the original image. Typically, post-capture noise reduction is done by blurring out pixels, which can reduce image sharpness. However, as you can see by looking at the stars, the sharpness has not been significantly impacted by the Neat Image noise reduction. If you find the sharpness reduced, you can use Neat Image to adjust the image sharpness. This is the filtered image with sharpness increased by 250% (the max available):

Based on these two simple tests, I knew that I had to read the User Guide to learn more about the power of Neat Image to remove noise in astrophotographs. If you want to go beyond the basics of using Neat Image for noise reduction, reading the User Guide is essential. It includes an excellent discussion of the theory of noise reduction and fully describes how Neat Image does its "magic". The User Guide also describes how it can be used to manually adjust the various settings to maximize the noise reduction without harming the look of your images. In fact, the Neat Image User Guide is one of the best software manuals I've read in a long time. Yes, Neat Image can work wonders automatically, but it can sometimes do even better with some assistance and the User Guide will help you do that.

Neat Image can automatically build a "profile" for your camera (or scanner) from information contained in the image file itself (using the EXIF metadata and image content). Auto-profiling will likely work well, but you can also build your own profiles (as discussed in the manual). There are pre-built profiles for many cameras available online. This page shows the profiles available for the Mac standalone version. However, these may or may not be ideal for your camera. For astrophotography, taking "dark frame" images at the same exposure settings and temperature (and power source) as the astro images will allow Neat Image to accurately determine the noise characteristics of your camera for those conditions. You then use the dark frame image to build the profile, which can be used on future images that match the exposure settings and conditions. Over time you can build up a library of profiles. One alternative to using a "dark frame" is to use the Neat Image built-in Calibration Target. However, this method is likely not ideal for long duration exposures with the camera mounted on the telescope. As seen earlier, another alternative to a dark frame profile is Auto Profile using the image to be processed; this can yield impressive results. Due to cloudy (and rainy) weather, I had to wait before I could do imaging with matching dark frames.

I received a license for the Mac OS X standalone Pro version from the Neat Image team at ABSoft. This allowed me to try out the expanded capabilities of the Pro version. In particular, this allowed the use of higher bit depth TIFF files as the input image and provided the most accurate camera profiling using dark frames. While waiting for the weather to clear, I processed many of the images previously posted in the Cassiopeia Observatory Photos albums using Neat Image. Even without dark frames for these older images, Neat Image cleaned up the noise that is apparent in the long exposure, high ISO images, making them look considerably better. Here is an example using one of my Comet McNaught C/2009 R1 images, taken in June 2010 with a Nikon D70 DSLR, 5 minutes, ISO 1600 (the highest ISO setting for the D70). Move your mouse on and off the image to view the original and re-processed images.

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