darktable ep 045 - Noise reduction in darktable 2.6

[@SG-rp2ts]

@Bruce Williams....human eye is more sensitive to green, not less sensitive...hence bayer senor has more G pixels compared to R and B to mimic eye. Your videos on darktable are fantastic and thoroughly enjoy them and much needed for a anyone looking to get started with DT.

[@audio2u]

Thanks for the support!

[@danielspenner3683]

I have repeatedly watched your videos on denoising and on masks. They carry so much in-depth information, it's just incredible. I still keep discovering new hints and details that I had previously missed out on. Thank you so much for all the great work. It's really worth supporting! Sincerely Daniel Spenner, GER

[@audio2u]

Thanks Daniel, that's lovely!

[@getafix5917]

Thank you so much for all your work in putting these tutorials together. You have got me back behind the camera after a few years in the dark. Not understanding digital editing left me feeling helpless but your to the point, easy to follow lessons have made me rediscover my love for photography all over again. Can't thank you enough. Much love and respect mate.

[@audio2u]

Wow. Thanks for that. That would be up there as one of the nicest comments I've received in relation to this series of videos. And if I inspired you to pick up a camera (again), then that's awesome! Cheers.

[@jackdeangelis6585]

Bruce, once again I've learned a lot from your video. I don't worry too much about luma noise, to me it looks like film grain. I do aggressively control chroma noise so lately I use a single instance of denoise (profiled). Raw denoise + channel mixer seems a bit too fiddly for me. I'll date myself here, I think many images nowadays are over processed with too much emphasis on reducing noise.

[@audio2u]

Re: over-processing.... Couldn't agree more! 😃 I know that I am way less picky than some people when it comes to processing. Each to their own, I guess. You and I can start our own "under-processed" club! 😜

[@_chickenhead]

Thank you so much for all of these videos!!!

[@MrConcord75]

Thanks for the great video and have a safe and fun holiday.

[@audio2u]

Thanks!

[@blender3dkwakiswahilinamen286]

@5:26 We running with you my guy.👍

[@audio2u]

Bwahahaha!

[@bigb2602]

Great, thanks for your good explonations! Wish you a nice holiday.

[@audio2u]

Thanks Bernd!

[@arnaudbimont2563]

@Bruce Williams Thanks for the valuable content! How do you manage to only have the Original in your history stack? Mine always includes by default some white balance, demosaic, raw black/white point, input color profile, output color profile, display encoding, and orientation or a subset thereof and I can't deactivate them apparently...

[@audio2u]

For RAW files, you will always have those 8 or 9 default steps. I think it was in ep 069, I explained that darktable is unlike other software, in that it shows you everything it does. Every other piece of photo editing software you've ever used did all those things too... it just didn't let you see it. The reason I had no other modules in my history stack would have been because I was not processing a RAW file, but either a jpeg or a tiff. Seriously, DO NOT STRESS over the 8-9 default modules you see when processing RAW files! :)

[@ajithabeysekara9105]

Great..... Welcome to Sri Lanka. And hope you will have a great time and collect some beautiful snaps from all over the country.

[@audio2u]

Thanks Ajith! We are so excited.... Can't wait!

[@leona_devon]

Thank you Bruce, still struggle with dealing with noise, so this is really helpful, I keep referring back to the videos when I edit to remind myself., thank you, enjoy your holiday x

[@audio2u]

Thanks Leona. As I'm writing this, I'm standing in a queue for immigration at Colombo airport, 26 hours after getting out of bed. Totally wrecked. Looking forward to getting to our hotel.

[@davedrake7253]

Hi Bruce, Many thanks for making such insightful videos - I had to get my head around this topic, but it's opened my eyes to doing it properly - as opposed to the one-click solution.

[@audio2u]

Yeah, it does take a few brain cycles to wrap your head around it... Or at least it did for me! 😃

[@joaovtaveira]

YES, definitely that change in raw denoise occurred in 2.6.

[@philgolden8619]

Excellent!!

[@nickknight2095]

Thanks Bruce, enjoy your well deserved hols!

[@audio2u]

Thanks Nick!

[@nonsolovita]

Really informative video as always

[@audio2u]

Thanks!

[@zephyrxcyrus]

"WHAAAAATTT??" That got me laughing cause that was my reaction as well. I have a shallow sense of humor. Always insightful and amazing content.

[@audio2u]

Thanks!

[@wido123123]

Have a great holidays!

[@audio2u]

Thanks! Will do!

[@notme9872]

Why don't you use the snapshots feature (right under the small image in the top left corner) to compare before and after activating a module? I find it really handy.

[@audio2u]

Good question! It's not a feature I ever use. I should do a video on it! 😃

[@PeteBarlow]

Hi Bruce, thanks for this very informative - have a good holiday. Are there any circumstances in which you would move the curve to below the line? I have had a play but it doesn't seem to affect the image much at least for the image I was using.

[@audio2u]

Sorry Pete, which curve to below which line?

[@PeteBarlow]

Hi Bruce, it's the RGB curves that you adjust to control the coarse/fine noise. I was assuming that the flat setting did no noise removal but I think from reading the manual that it does some. If you pull the curve down then I think it reduces the amount of noise reduction but I found it difficult to see much difference.

[@puppy_BYTE]

thanks for very good videos. Some of my cameras do not have lens profile in DT. Any chance of steps necessary to add a lens profile?

[@audio2u]

I don't know the link off the top of my head, but I'll find it and paste it here for you.

[@audio2u]

Try this page.... lensfun.sourceforge.net/calibration-tutorial/lens-calibration.html

[@fotografie-joerglang]

great video! it is verry helpfull. i wish you a good time on holidays and now i must look the episode 19 ;-)

[@audio2u]

Thanks!

[@cryptomilkone]

Important: The denoise (profiled) presets have more or less a bug in darktable 2.6. The first one chooses 'color' as the blend mode. This is bad as color operates in Lab mode. L above 100% lightness is undefined! Same for the 'lightness' blend mode. Use 'HSV color' and 'HSV lightness' instead to avoid killing highlights! This should be fixed hopefully soon.

[@audio2u]

Thanks for that, Andreas!

[@jacquesensink9045]

Hi Bruce, WOW what a shocker I just got dealt. There must be a big mistake with my version of Darktable. I just got informed that my first images that was edited with darktable is unusable due to noise. I imported the raw images and exported them without altering them (therefor I didn't enlarge to check for noise). Darkroom generated so much noise that they are indeed unusable. Is this a setting or just the way it is? Kind regrads. Jacques

[@audio2u]

Nah, something not right going on there. Can you send me one of your raw files?

[@jacquesensink9045]

@@audio2u Hey, the bronzes I photographed are not on display yet so cant send you the photo. I did reinstall darkroom and the same thing happened. Take it to lightroom and its fine. I don't get it.

[@audio2u]

Weird. If you're ever able to share the raw files down the track, it would be interesting to know what's going on.

[@stylllyfe]

I am having difficulty exporting my images from light table

[@joaovtaveira]

After using raw denoise, you turn off the channel mixture, right?

[@audio2u]

Yeah, I think that's the general idea. Did I not mention that in the video? Thought I had.

[@joaovtaveira]

@@audio2u I think you didn't.

[@Eigil_Skovgaard]

I know this is hybris, and I'll be punished severely by the Darktable gods and their earthly disciples, but ... after having used DT for more than a year - to my taste - an AI solution dealing with heavy noise in my raw files did a much better job than any traditional algorithm has done so far. The chosen one was DxO PureRAW 3-4 for the heavy noise, applied up front. And yes, it introduces its own demosaicing and spits out a dng file. But that file is loaded into DT and edited without problems. Of course PureRAW doesn't come for free, it's my most expensive software but worth every cent. This is meant as a suggestion... and a supplement to Bruce's perfectly disciplined tutorial.

[@audio2u]

Interesting stuff. I genuinely think we are about to witness the Cambrian (digital) Explosion.

[@Eigil_Skovgaard]

@@audio2u Not for Darktable I hope?

[@audio2u]

I hope not, but what the devs decide to do is up to them. But no, I was speaking in more of a wider software sense... what AI will contribute to code-writing will be very interesting. Of course, it'll only be as good as the input, so it'll take a little while, but I imagine the improvement of AI-generated code will be an exponential curve. As it writes better and better code, it will slowly disabuse itself of the poorly-written human code, and feed on its own, much better code, and that is what will fuel the Cambrian Explosion of software creation. That's my prediction, anyway. :)

[@Eigil_Skovgaard]

@@audio2u Bruce, you are welcoming the tragedy demonstrated in Terminator 1-n, AI taking over by rewriting itself and within no time reducing humanity to free game. Now I consider recirculate my PureRAW if I can do anything to avoid such a future. I am sure you are joking?

[@audio2u]

Hadn't thought about it like that, but I guess you're right. It IS a little Terminator-esque! But no, not joking. I really do think AI will learn at an alarming rate, and it will learn to filter out human error, in favour of outcomes which it has seen to be free-from-error. Whether that ends badly for us as a species, I guess only time will tell. I'm HOPING that the companies responsible for AI development have got appropriate safeguards in place.

[@warped_spacetime]

Thanks for this. Have you seen this video on denoising in DT 2.6? kzbin.info/www/bejne/iH7Fk3-vgNaXgrs He covers a range of techniques, some quite sophisticated that I think I will need to watch 2 or 3 times. By the way, I started with the Konika-Minolta 5D (similar to, but less pro than, your 7D), then moved onto the Sony 57, which I'm still using. It's quite noisy from ISO1600, but generally I tackle the chroma noise and leave the luma noise (though since DT2.6 I often do luma as well using a wavelet curve similar to that in the above video).

[@cosmo0080]

i do not understand the trouble you go through to de noise images, -----------------------just do what i do keep your speakers off ;} good video thank you

[@audio2u]

Bwahaha! Nice. 😃