Getting rid of "splotchy/blotchy noise"
Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 12:30 pm
I have a number of images taken at my Mom's 80th birthday party (mainly group shots of family with her) that turned out very underexposed. I was using a bounce flash, and had to boost the ISO to 200 (Fuji S9000) and although they looked OK in-camera, when I got to ACR, I had to boost the exposure by about +2 to lighten them enough. As a result they are very noisy, but Neat Image does a wonderful job of getting rid of the overall noise. There is still a lot of splotchy noise, especially in the darker areas, that can be lessened with the "very low freq" checkbox, but there is still enough left to be noticible when I print the pictures. Is there anything I can do to decrease this type of noise? For some areas, such as a black sweater, I desaturate them, but other areas, like blue pants, aren't as easy to deal with. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.