Neat Video & Neat Image community

I'm a fairly new user of NeatImage but having some experience of other image processing programs I would like to see a way of smoothing selected areas only for some photos.
At present some users appear to be creating layers in Photoshop - using NI - then recombining in PS & using the history brush to selectively bring back the parts of the original image that they want. This works but is time consuming.

Our approach to solve this problem is the following:

- users of Neat Image will always need selective filtration in certain cases;

- the most advanced tools to make selections (necessary for selective filtration) are those provided by popular image editors (PS, PSP, etc.);

- we either (1) need to create analogs of those advanced tools in NI or (2) provide a way to utilize existing functionality of image editors ; - (1) is very time consuming and, in general, it is quite difficult to do that better than specialized editors; you anyway need to select something for selective filtration, so the more convenient and powerful the selection capabilities are the faster you can do your work;

- we select (2) and the way to utilize capabilities of image editors is a plugin version of NI, which we are developing now; before it is ready the way to make selective filtration is to bring NI output in an image editor manually.

Therefore, what some users do now - combining NI output wth the original in an image editor - is along the lines of our approach to NI use and development. We believe this is the most efficient way of doing selective filtration, even now when you need to move an image between applications.

Many thanks for your very full reply.
I expect that many users of NI are inexperienced when it come to complicated manipulations in the likes of Photoshop . Would it be possible to post a working example of the procedures which you suggested with all the detailed steps described?

1. Open an original image (OI) in Neat Image, filter it and save the filtered image (FI)
2. Open both OI and FI in Photoshop
3. Select FI, click Ctrl+A, then Ctrl+C (this copies FI to clipboard)
4. Select OI, click Ctrl+V (this pastes FI into a new layer on top of OI)
5. Select Eraser tool, adjust its properties (mode - e.g., brush; size - e.g., 30; opacity - e.g., 50%)
6. Apply Eraser tool to the problem areas in the top layer (FI), where you want to restore some of the details/noise from the OI
7. Flatten the image when done

Many thanks for your reply. I must say you guys are very helpfull & attentive. It is a pleasure to visit this site

NITeam wrote: -the way to utilize capabilities of image editors is a plugin version of NI, which we are developing now; before it is ready the way to make selective filtration is to bring NI output in an image editor manually.

May I respectfully ask that your new plug-in be compatible with Photoshop Elements 2 and above? At less than $100, it's a much better choice for even advanced amateurs than full PS, and it does a great percentage of what non-prepress people need to do. Most plug-ins for Photoshop will work in Elements, but some do not. Since your product would be a great addition to Elements, I hope you can make it compatible.

Sure, we will try to make it compatible with as many image editors as possible, including PS Elements.

Vlad

You mentioned above applying Neat Image and then erasing the areas you don't want filtered. Sometimes I take this a step further. It isn't uncommon for me to run Neat Image twice on an image - once using the default setting and a second time using what I call the "light" setting (Advanced, keep more detail). I then place both of these images into layers in Photoshop and use the default setting where there is less detail (such as the sky) and use the light setting where I'm concerned about losing detail.