HowTo: Substitute NI in existing action that uses PS nr?

[l_d_allan]

CS4 for several months (so still a beginner with lots to learn) and trial of Neat Image.

I've been trying out some tools from Glenn Mitchell's website, The Light's Right. He provides some free action-sets for sharpening, noise reduction, and other capabilities.
http://www.thelightsrightstudio.com/TLR ... uction.htm

I'm unclear on all that his n.r. actions do, but they seem to involve building an inverted edge mask to apply the built-in P.S. noise reduction filters. My impression is that it is preferred to avoid doing n.r. on edges, but rather do n.r. on surfaces.

I've attached several screen-shots of the action. I'm interested in whether it would be appropriate to substitue Neat-Image capabilties for where built-in P.S. noise reduction filters are referenced. If so, how?



Near the start, the action "plays" another action to make a mask. Then it "plays" another action to "Remove Chroma" noise. This action appears to use the built-in P.S. filters for "Dust & Scratches" on the "a" and "b" channels. Would it be feasible and approprate to use the Neat-Image plug-in instead?



After playing the two subroutines, the main action also references the built-in PS filter for "Dust & Scratches".



Or does Neat-Image already have equivalent capability? Or am I confused?

In books from Bruce Fraser, he describes actions for sharpening and noise reduction that involve layer masks. If I comprehend his guidance, you want to do sharpening on edges, and do n.r. on surfaces. He describes building an edge layer mask for sharpening. Prior to the sharpening, my impression is that he advocates using a similar edge mask that has been tweaked and inverted for noise reduction.

But I am not all that experieced with CS4 and actions, so perhaps I'm confused. I'm ignorant about whether you can edit actions.

[NITeam]

Neat Image does all the necessary processing inside its filter so there is absolutely no need to assist it with any external masking or anything like that. You can directly reduce noise, preserve details, sharpen edges if you use Neat Image only. You can do all that using Neat Image plug-in interactively or in an action. I recommend to try Neat Image on its own to see what you can get using the filter. You will most likely then prefer to keep things simple and not mix Neat Image with other actions because you can achieve the desired result using Neat Image alone.

Hope this helps,
Vlad

[l_d_allan]

Thanks .... that certainly simplifies things.