How to Remove Digital Photo Noise
Digital photo noise is a plague a majority of us have to deal with as more people discover digital photography and abandon older film cameras. The cause can be anything from low light to slow shutter speeds and is fixable by following a few easy steps using your photo editing software. The following steps are for those using Adobe PhotoShop, but can easily be adapted to any photo editing software.
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Instructions
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Use "curves" in CMYK mode to balance your colors. You can also do this by using the "levels" tool, but curves is a bit more flexible. Perform this fix before doing anything else, because it tends to exaggerate filtering.
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Try to isolate the noise rather than filtering the whole photo. Do this by masking out the brighter areas of the photo to isolate shadow noise or by using the dust and scratches filter to isolate more prevalent noise.
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Sharpen your photos after using the filters. Using the Unsharp Mask in a low setting several times will result in smoother textures.
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Try cropping the picture to eliminate some of the noise. This can often result in a better photo, eliminating areas that you probably didn't want in the photo in the first place.
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Tips & Warnings
There are a lot of photo editing products available that can do all of this for you at the click of a button. Although the result may not be as good as when you follow the process listed above, they do an adequate job of cleaning up your digital photos. Links to a couple of these products are listed below.
