What is the best moment to use NeatImage in a normal workflow.
My current is more or ess like this:
Shoot RAW
Convert with Breezebrowser to Linear TIFF.
- no sharpening, no noise reduction
Convert Linear to normal TIFF with Pekka's LinearSharpen
- no sharpening, no noise reduction
Crop, and fine tune tonality
Save as final TIFF or JPG
If I print the picture, I re-open and sharpen.
Nils
NeatImage position in normal workflow
Nils,
Neat Image uses device noise profiles that normally depend on camera parameters. If you build these profiles immediately after receiving the images from the camera (without postprocessing) then you just need to keep records of these camera parameters. If you do some processing (conversion, transformation, color balancing, etc.) and then build profiles, then you need to add a description of postprocessing steps taken to the device mode as the noise properties may be quite different after all these steps. You don't need to bother about recording all these if you just use a profile once and then build a new one for every new image you process. However, if you want to reuse the profiles then you need to be accurate about keeping records of both device mode and postprocessing applied. That is the only important consideration which may influence your decision to use NI in a particular point of your workflow. From the standpoint of noise reduction itself, this choice is not very important as long as you don't do noise reduction after such operations as sharpening ( see also: http://www.neatimage.com/qna.html#FQ8 ).
So, please take the above considerations into account and find a place in your workflow where use of NI is the most convenient for you.
I think I would use NI closer to the camera.
Hope this helps.
Vlad
Neat Image uses device noise profiles that normally depend on camera parameters. If you build these profiles immediately after receiving the images from the camera (without postprocessing) then you just need to keep records of these camera parameters. If you do some processing (conversion, transformation, color balancing, etc.) and then build profiles, then you need to add a description of postprocessing steps taken to the device mode as the noise properties may be quite different after all these steps. You don't need to bother about recording all these if you just use a profile once and then build a new one for every new image you process. However, if you want to reuse the profiles then you need to be accurate about keeping records of both device mode and postprocessing applied. That is the only important consideration which may influence your decision to use NI in a particular point of your workflow. From the standpoint of noise reduction itself, this choice is not very important as long as you don't do noise reduction after such operations as sharpening ( see also: http://www.neatimage.com/qna.html#FQ8 ).
So, please take the above considerations into account and find a place in your workflow where use of NI is the most convenient for you.
I think I would use NI closer to the camera.
Hope this helps.
Vlad
