by Mickey Rountree
In the next few articles I’m going to talk about a few of my most used Photoshop filters or plugins. There are many plugins that have had and never really used, and several that I use frequently that are no longer available. I won’t discuss them, but I dread the day when I can no longer use them. Also many common plugins can run as stand-alone programs, from Lightroom, or as filters within Photoshop. In my workflow if I’m using one of these filters, I’m probably going to be doing more extensive editing requiring Photoshop, so it makes sense to use them within Photoshop. If you don’t use Photoshop, the final results will be similar when used from Lightroom or as a stand-alone, so stay with whatever workflow you are most comfortable with. And as I mentioned in my last article, I often use the filters on a layer so I have the added benefits of masking, blend modes, and “blend if” controls.
The first filters I’ll talk about are sharpening and noise removal or denoise. Again, there are many different plugins available, but for the last couple of years I’ve used the products from Topaz Labs. Initially I bought the “Quality Bundle” which included Sharpen AI, Denoise AI and Gigapixel for upsizing images, and I was also able to download the Photo AI program which was new at the time and incorporates all three functions. Now you can either buy the Quality Bundle or Photo AI and each costs the same. The company is putting all of its R&D efforts toward the Photo AI program, and is essentially not updating the individual programs. Originally I used the individual programs thinking I would have more control, but I have now switched over to Photo AI. Photo AI is reviewing hundreds of thousands of images every week, refining its algorithms, and providing a program update every week.
When these articles are converting to PDF and sized for the newsletter, the resolution and quality of the images is seriously degraded. If you would like to read the article and see the images as I did, you can see this article on my website at this link.
https://mickeyrountree.smugmug.com/Articles/Basic-Photography-Series/Basic-photography-70-Denoise-and-Sharpen-Plugins
Photo AI is designed to work in “Auto Pilot mode” in which it analyzes the image and decides if it needs noise reduction or sharpening or both, and it decides how much of each to apply. There are manual overrides available, but I find the program usually makes good choices. Also, even when it doesn’t show sharpening is needed, just the denoise function includes a very nice sharpening. Photo AI has matured to the point that I use it on virtually every image. I also started using it on a copy layer so I could mask or change the opacity, but now I trust it enough to apply it directly to my image. It’s best to apply this filter as a first step, and not run it after a lot of editing.
Let’s look at a few examples and see how the different programs compare.
Removing Noise
Here is the original image we’ll work with. It was shot at a rodeo in low light at ISO 16,000 on a Canon 7D Mark II which came out in 2014, so it’s probably not as good as some newer sensors. However, at ISO 16,000 even the best camera will be noisy. The full size image is on the left and the tighter crop on the right shows the noise better.
This is the image after using the standalone program Denoise AI in a split screen comparison. The results are pretty amazing.
Below is the image in a split screen comparison after using Photo AI. The results are also dramatic and at least to my eye, at least as good as the Denoise stand-alone.
If all you need is noise removal, the recent April, 2023 update to Lightroom added an AI Denoise option. While the original manual denoise option is still there, clicking the denoise button runs an AI based denoise and saves a new DNG. It only works on raw files at this time.
Below is the result using the new Lightroom AI Denoise. I haven’t worked with it extensively, but the results are pretty good. That said, at this point Photo AI is an established part of my workflow and I probably won’t change. But if you don’t want to invest in buying an additional denoise program, this new feature may be all you need.
Sharpening
I had trouble with finding good examples for this section. It’s not that I never shoot an out of focus image, I just delete obviously blurry or out of focus shots on first edit. I would have liked a more out of focus image to show, but you’ll have to settle for slightly soft.
Below is an image I shot where I shot at very shallow depth of field and just slightly missed focus. I like the eyes to be very sharp, and you should be able to count eyelashes. Below is the full unedited image and a crop showing the face. Notice the tip of the nose is in focus, but not the eyes.
Below is the result using the stand-alone Sharpen AI. This filter I do use on a copy layer, because as you’ll see, it sometimes introduces artifacts. Notice the eyes are much better, but I’ve circled some areas on the cheeks and forehead where sharpening introduced artifacts exaggerating or even creating harsh texture patterns on the skin. Definitely not what a woman wants to see in a portrait. My normal skin editing might remove or lessen the problem, but that’s why I work on a copy layer.
By working on a copy layer, I am able to add a layer mask, and using a black brush mask out the skin flaws while keeping the sharpening on the eyes. By the time I finish with all of my normal portrait editing, the skin will look flawless.
Below is the result using Photo AI. After it analyzed the image, it did recognize that sharpening was necessary and the default setting it chose worked well. Notice that there is almost no harsh artifact in the Photo AI version.
Since you now buy either the Quality Bundle or Photo AI, I think Photo AI is the obvious choice since it’s constantly being improved and new updates come out weekly, while the quality Bundle is quietly becoming obsolete.
There are many other denoise and sharpening plugins available, but I haven’t used any other than the Topaz products. If you use some other plugins and get results you like stick with what works.
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