Affinity Photo
l £47.99 l affinity.serif.com
Affinity Photo is a very attractive alternative to Photoshop for anyone who doesn’t like the Adobe subscription model. It’s especially enticing as the £47.99 fee is a one-off and you don’t have to pay for updates. Like Photoshop, Affinity Photo allows you to work with layers and create masks which means that you can apply noise reduction and other adjustments selectively.
Affinity Photo’s noisereduction controls are found in the Details section in the control panel on the right of the screen when an image is open. As with most other software, Affinity Photo has controls for adjusting the degree of chroma (colour) and luminance noise reduction. Because chroma noise is more objectionable in an image, it’s best to start by working on this first – the controls are below the Luminance controls in the panel.
Moving the Colours sliding control to the right increases the intensity of chroma noise reduction and it should be moved until the coloured speckling just disappears. The treatment can then be refined by using the Colours Contribution slider, moving it left from its maximum value until the point just before the coloured specking starts to appear again.
Then it’s time to turn your attention to the Luminance slider which governs the intensity of the luminance noise removal. This needs to be used with care as it can soften the image dramatically. Drag it to the right to increase the intensity of the reduction, stopping when you’re happy that enough noise has been removed. Next, adjust the Luminance Details to set the detail edge smoothing threshold. Higher values make more fine detail visible while lower values smooth the fine detail and hide more noise.
Lastly, use the Luminance Contribution slider to control how much of the overall luminance noise reduction is added to the image. It’s a back-and-forth process with all of the sliders until you get a result that you’re happy with.