Digital BW, The Print

Has anyone used Dfine grain and noise reduction program?  It's made by
http://www.nikmultimedia.com/dfine/usa/entry.php, and there is a free demo
that can be downloaded.

 

I tried it with an image initially shot with T400CN film and scanned with
the Nikon 8000.  I did one scan without the scanner's grain reduction
program activated, and one with it activated.  I then tried a number of
Dfine settings on the straight scan to compare results to the Nikon (Applied
Science Fiction) GEM program.

 

I may not know how to use the Dfine program, but my initial conclusion is
that it is about like careful use of Photoshop blur tools.  When the grain
is effectively reduced, the details are badly blurred.  So, my initial
conclusion is that for film scans it is not close to being as effect a tool
as the Nikon GEM feature and is not worth buying.

 

Paul

www.PaulRoark.com <http://www.paulroark.com/>  



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Roark" 
<paul.roark@v...> wrote:
> Has anyone used Dfine grain and noise reduction program?  It's 
made by
> http://www.nikmultimedia.com/dfine/usa/entry.php, and there is a 
free demo
> that can be downloaded.
> 
>  
> 

My noise removal tool of choice is NeatImage Pro+.

It's inexpensive. Support is great. Works great.

It is a sophiticated tool that does a lot more than apply gaussian 
blurs or median to despeckle the "a" and "b" channels in a Lab 
conversion (which is what most PS actions do).

There is a learning curve to using NI. It is easy to overdo the 
noise removal and noticeably soften the image.

Vlad also has a free demo of NI.

Cheers,

Mitch