It takes up only 2.6 MB of hard drive space, but it’s so powerful that we strongly recommend it for professional photographers.
Neat Image Pro is a standalone application designed for curing noisy images.
The ISO speed is also boosted by the camera when using Sports/Action modes so that fast action can be frozen with fast shutter speed even in broad day light. This is because the ISO speed is boosted by the camera in order to make the sensor more sensitive to light for better exposure. Shoot a picture with your cellphone or digital camera in low light or at night and you’ll find colored grainy artifacts all over the image. Purchasing products and services through these links helps support our efforts to bring you the quality information you love and there’s no additional cost to you.Dealing with noise is a tough challenge for digital cameras, especially indoors and in low light conditions. *The Current Photographer website contains links to our affiliate partners. You can try a demo version of Neat Image for free, and purchase a Home or Pro edition from Neat Image’s website. When I have a noisy image, I don’t want to spend hours fiddling with it just to get rid of the grain, and for this reason, the simple (and pretty speedy) workflow that Neat Image provides is great.īest of all, Neat Image also comes as an Aperture or Photoshop plug-in. Neat Image is not hugely refined, but I really couldn’t care less.
Once this is complete, images can then be outputted at 8, 16 or 32 bit (depending on which edition of Neat Image you have). Luminance and chrominance reduction, sharpening, and a vast array of other settings can be adjusted, and the results can be previewed using a sample box – click and hold within this box to see the “before”, release for the “after”. The Noise filter settings stage is where Neat Image really comes into its own. You can also load previously used profiles. Noise reduction begins with image profiling – the auto setting seems to be very accurate, but fine-tuning is available for control-freaks. Essentially, the Home edition is designed for images originating from compact cameras. Additionally, the Home edition is restricted to 8 bit image processing, whereas the Pro edition allows up to 32 bit.
The Home edition allows for up to 100 images to be batch-processed, whilst the Pro edition allows unlimited batch images. When you input an image into Neat Image, the image exposure may be corrected before moving on to noise reduction. Whether you choose the Home edition ($39.90 for the standalone app, single-user) or the Pro edition ($69.90 standalone, single-user), noise is almost eradicated, with only a small amount of detail being lost. The look of Neat Image – very dull, very functional (almost Windows-like…) – belies a highly polished noise-reducing app. For this reason, many swear by the grain-combating qualities of Noise Ninja, but this isn’t the only app that does a fine job of reducing noise – Neat Image should also be considered as an option. And whilst many image processing apps have noise reduction on them, the results are often very poor. You know the feeling – great light, perfect composition, beautifully exposed but ruined by grain.