ON1 NoNoise 2024

Recently I had a conversation with a photographer about noise and ways to deal with it which made me take a look at what I’m using these days, namely Topaz standalone apps, native Lightroom tools and occasionally Photoshop’s Smart Sharpen. Since I still get emails from ON1, I knew they released an update for NoNoise so I decided to check it out and I’m darn close to pulling the trigger.

And another from the same session –

This is with only denoise and the detail enhancing properties in that section. I tried using the Tack Sharp part with dismal results most of the time. Verdict is still out on that one, but I like the noise reduction quite a bit. Here’s another file that was shot at ISO 6400 –

Here’s a look at the three methods used for NR and the starting RAW file –

It might not be the cleanest image ever, but it’s usable and since I love the pose and reflection so much, I’m glad I could make it worth looking at. Plus a little Photoshop magic doesn’t hurt. You may not be able to see as close as I can in Lr, but there is more detail in the ON1 image than the others when I zoom in to 100%.

Going back to some favorites for another crack at them, too. Can’t say I’ll do this with everything (who has the time?!), but testing is different. Here’s the 2024 edit –

Compared to the 2020 edit –

A little less contrasty and with better crop, lens correction and less blue above their heads. Not perfect because there’s a lot going on, but an improvement.

Not every experiment was better and I found that NoNoise didn’t quite match up to what I’d been able to pull off before with Topaz products. This is because the Tack Sharp aspect isn’t as good as Topaz Sharpen all by itself. Every image has its own set of variables.

This next one isn’t really noisy, but I wanted to see what I could do in terms of sharpness. Tack Sharp made things really crunchy, but in NoNoise, pulling back on the NR a bit and adding detail and microsharpness resulted in this –

It’s a tad overdone, but I think some of the masking tools or layers in the app could work to produce a single file with the right amount of detail throughout. The alternative is to layer in Photoshop and achieve something similar.

I did another test with a songbird and the G9 M2 didn’t go ON1’s way though I tried it twice. Both times the noise remained even though it looked gone in the preview and the detail is a bit crunchy. DXO did a bit better with detail, but much better with noise – similar results to what I got in Lightroom natively. Used auto on most of them, so maybe tweaking will do better. Further testing will be needed. I have another 12 days or so with DXO and nearly a month with ON1 as I write this. Not sure if I can test drive Topaz Labs’s Photo AI, but it might be worth it if I can.

So that’s it for now. When I get back from Norway we’ll see if I have images that need this kind of help. In the meantime, here’s a Ruby-crowned Kinglet from last year that I never processed for some reason even though it’s the only one where that little crown is lifted just a bit. What a cutie. Maybe I’ll see some again this year!