Nikon NX Studio Turn down the noise
Neil Freeman shows how NX Studio’s noise reduction and sharpening tools can improve the quality of images
Sometimes you need to raise the ISO setting in your camera to get the shot you want, but this can potentially introduce high-iso noise into your image. NX Studio has noise reduction tools to help you reduce the noise in any shot, resulting in cleaner images. The noise reduction tools are located in the Adjustments tab, under the Adjust Details menu.
A further dropdown menu by default will show Original Value. This is the setting used for .NEF Raw files imported from most Nikon cameras. This menu also gives you the option to Record Adjustments or Edit Recorded Adjustments, enabling you to create a ‘noise profile’ for a specific ISO on a camera that you could apply to images in future.
When you tick the Noise Reduction box, the Method dropdown menu activates and should show ‘Camera’s noise reduction’. This will apply the High ISO Noise Reduction value you have set from the Photo Shooting menu on your camera.
The Low, Normal and High settings apply the corresponding levels of smoothing. For certain file types or cameras, you may have options listed as Faster or Better Quality. Using Better Quality gives the best results and you can further refine this using Intensity. Higher intensity values will produce smoother results, but choosing higher values may smooth the image to a point that details become lost.
Noise reduction should really only be applied to Raw files; using noise reduction on JPEGS is much more limiting and you will not get the best results.