Noise Reduction...acceptable??!!

[Edmond_Terakopian]

Greetings All,
Just wanted to throw a question out there and see what the reponse was!
In a Photojournalistic / Press image, is it right to use a noise reduction program (like Noise Ninja)??
I personally think that to keep our images valid and real, one should only use darkroom type techniques in Photoshop, eg dodging, burning, density and colour correction and retouching of dust particles on the sensor.
In the days of the darkroom, we always used different film developers/times/temperatures to give either finer grain or higher contrast to the negatives. At the printing stage (in B/W), paper choice and grade also made a huge change to the look of the final image. Would you folks agree that using a noise plug-in is the same thing??
I rarely use this myself, but do on occassion when having to shoot at 1600ASA or higher use Noise Ninja, and then fade it by around 50% to make the image look more real and closer to the original. After this I'll sharpen the image.

Any thoughts??!!

Cheers,

Edmond

[David_Buzzard]

Good question. The newer Nikon digital cameras have high ISO noise reduction built into them, so by extension I would think that it would be okay to apply it in post production.

Back in the darkroom days, we went from pushing Tri-X four stops to using T-Max 3200 film. That cut grain (the old word for noise) by a huge amount. Likewise, I can remember stretching a black stocking over the enlarging lens to increase grain. We also used to do stuff like burning backgrounds to almost black, and dodging out eyes to make them pop.

David Buzzard

[Guy_Warrington]

hello,

photo journalistically speaking i see nothing wrong with reducing noise in an image. all you are doing is making the image more readable (legible if you like) for your viewers. it is just another tool in the photographer’s kit that allows him/her to do their jobs as effectively as possible under different lighting conditions and achieve the best results.

as i see it, telling a photographer that they can't or should not use noise reduction, is like saying that you can't change the contrast or color balance on an image. your not obscuring the truth from you readers by correcting noise. i think the basic questions to ask oneself when one is correcting and editing images for the purposes of journalism are: am i obscuring the "truth" of the event that i am photographing by altering the image and am i communicating as clearly as possible to the reader?

alternatively, leaving the noise IN may also be an effective tool of communication, exposing some portion of the truth that would not otherwise make itself apparent to the reader.

anyhow, there is my two cents.

regards,

guy

[Walter_Kimmel]

The luminance and color noise in an image is not the *truth* found in the scene, but the *truth* found in the limitations of the sensor, especialy under long exposure and/or high ISO conditions. I would compare digital photographic noise to the hiss on audio tape, which was handled quite well by Dolby noise reduction. News broadcasts on FM stations that were Dolbyized were subjected to the same processes as music, and I don't believe anybody ever raised the issue of veracity.

Would you increase the contrast of an image to make it more readable if a strong source of light in the frame produced a generalized flare? It would seem to me that removing enough of the digital noise would fall into the same category, from an ethics standpoint.

I'm not a PJ...this is just my opinion.

[Bill_Becher]

I'm a PJ and I think the operative principal is to not deceive the reader when they see the photo. Obviously the photographer can change a scene without darkroom tricks. For example the recent NY Times portrait of Mark Warner taken close with a wideangle lens distorted the subject and made him look like a grinning fool.. this provoked an apology of sorts from the the editor. See NPR Unflattering NYT portrait The apology was for "color correction" but that missed the point.

Digital noise is an artifact of the camera, not something present in the original scene, so I see nothing wrong with removing it. Same with dust on the sensor.

[Edmond_Terakopian]

Interesting points.

Thanks to all who responded,

Edmond

[Milutin_Labudovic]

i also agree as a consumer of AP/EPA/FP/REUTERS for my paper, that a noise reduction can be done.
But i would like to have it on emended in EXIF.
It does not boder the reader or some other department where the photo file goes, but a photographer that consumes all this agencies for his paper should know what was altered on photo, including any PS technique or crop.
not to mention that ALL the pictures that comes to our system are with NO EXIF data.
so your question is OK, but when the end line of the proces (the consumer of services) does not know even with what camera it was pictured.
me and my coleuqes have a fun quiz all the time.
canon-nikon?