100 replies to this topic

[John Berger]

I sent him 2 PMs about this: the first one, I just straight up asked him ---no answer---, the next time, I basically begged him, still, ---no answer---; it was obvious he cared about me no more than he would care about a fly (and he lost a follower as a result; not really because he didn't tell me his secret, but because he didn't even say anything to me); others have asked him, and he ignored them or dodged the question, like, once, a person asked, something like, "how do you do your denoising?"

 

he answered, "very carefully" 

 

he obviously has some secret; he know something special and he doesn't want anyone to know about it (which is fine)

 

check out his Goblet of fire nebula or whatever it's called; look at the image in the description, look how noisy it is, and now look at the result - how???? no noise, and every detail is preserved??? what sort of tool is he using? NXT doesn't do that.

 

I think it's some form of convolution, maybe, something inside Photoshop, but I'm not sure

 

and ideas? is there something in Pixinsight that I don't know about? Pixinsight's standard denoising tools are more crappy than NXT.

[dx_ron]

Looks like he views AP and selling AP tutorials as his job. I guess if you want to know you should pay the subscription price.

[StargazerLuigi]

I’m no YouTuber but NXT works pretty darn well for me

[Robert7980]

He’s got very advanced processing skills for sure, he’s pretty much doing AP as a full time job with millions of dollars worth of equipment at his disposal loaned to him… So you’re competing with a professional astrophotographer for performance, probably not a healthy thing for your wallet  … 

 

Denoising isn’t magic, I’m betting he’s using over a dozen different tools and the reason he’s not telling you is that it’s case by case and complicated. 
 

I’ll bet he’s using NoiseExterminator along with Wavelet Transforms and basic convolution with lots and lots and lots of masking. I would not be surprised if he spends 60 hours just making layers and layers of very detailed masks to apply all of the huge amounts of processing. Whatever he’s doing you can bet that it’s not just pushing a button, but a very complicated process with probably thousands of steps… 

 

Wavelets is the most powerful tool I know, but it’s horrendously tedious, if you hone in the parameters it can be nearly perfect at noise reduction though. 
 

I just use NXT (sparingly) and simple masks with convolution… My data isn’t good enough to go throwing hundreds of hours of work at though… So meh… 

Edited by Robert7980, 04 November 2024 - 08:59 PM.

[joshman]

I've been mulling over it over the last few weeks, and my suspicion is some careful application of masks, along with very aggressive noise reduction, and a liberal application of the "orton effect"

 

A lot of his images are of nebulous whisps and vague "clouds" and shapes of nebulosity - all very soft structures. I see very little well defined rigid structure, no hard defined edges.

 

EDIT: if you go and look at his images where hard structure and fine detail are required (eg his Veil nebula shots), I would say this his noise reduction attempts are actually kind of lacking, which kind of lends credence to my initial thoughts.

 

EDIT EDIT: I also think he's pretty careful about the resolution that he uploads images at. He seems to upload at a resolution where the noise disappears with the resizing of the image.

Edited by joshman, 04 November 2024 - 09:08 PM.

[NiteGuy]

Topaz DeNoise. It's cheap. It's very effective. The denoise algorithms aren't optimized for astrophotography but it's quick, easy and there are many selections and options to choose from, including letting Ai make a choice as to what it thinks is best for your image. Once you make the best selection for your image (by comparing one setting to another), it works extremely well.

 

The only "odd" thing is that your perfect choice for one image may be totally wrong for another image. Another "odd" thing is that, because it does use Ai, an astro image can be denoised perfectly but, on closer inspection, there may be a few small areas that escaped denoising. Fortunately, the program has a masking tool and, if that occurs, you can mask those areas and denoise again (using a different setting) to fix. I had excellent results on my Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas images.

 

Since Topaz DeNoise is out of the realm of astrophotography, not many know about it. Many regular photographers have used it as "their personal secret" for the last few years but now it's really starting to catch on. I don't even think about "noise" anymore when I'm shooting landscapes, dimly lit settings, people, street nightscapes, or astro images.

 

Not sure, but I think Topaz offers a trial version or a return for full refund if you're not satisfied.

Edited by NiteGuy, 04 November 2024 - 09:07 PM.

[John Berger]

I found a clue

 

go here https://astrofalls.c...rocessing-guide

 

scroll to the bottom

 

read: "For this guide you will need the following software:"

 

it doesn't show NXT, so I guess that means, possibly, that he doesn't use it

 

it shows Photoshop though

 

has anyone bought that processing guide? if anyone has done so, then this mystery can be solved faster

Edited by John Berger, 04 November 2024 - 09:30 PM.

[Robert7980]

Topaz DeNoise. It's cheap. It's very effective. The denoise algorithms aren't optimized for astrophotography but it's quick, easy and there are many selections and options to choose from, including letting Ai make a choice as to what it thinks is best for your image. Once you make the best selection for your image (by comparing one setting to another), it works extremely well.

 

The only "odd" thing is that your perfect choice for one image may be totally wrong for another image. Another "odd" thing is that, because it does use Ai, an astro image can be denoised perfectly but, on closer inspection, there may be a few small areas that escaped denoising. Fortunately, the program has a masking tool and, if that occurs, you can mask those areas and denoise again (using a different setting) to fix. I had excellent results on my Comet Tsuchinshan-Atlas images.

 

Since Topaz DeNoise is out of the realm of astrophotography, not many know about it. Many regular photographers have used it as "their personal secret" for the last few years but now it's really starting to catch on. I don't even think about "noise" anymore when I'm shooting landscapes, dimly lit settings, people, street nightscapes, or astro images.

 

Not sure, but I think Topaz offers a trial version or a return for full refund if you're not satisfied.

Topaz might not be good anymore, the older version that was good for AP isn’t available anymore and I’ve heard that the newer version doesn’t do as well with AP, I could be wrong but I would research it before anyone buys it.

 

I’ve got a copy, but stopped using it not long after I purchased it, it’s pretty impressive on initial runs, but eventually I started noticing a lot of artifacts that made it not nearly as good as other options… It’s decent if you go very easy with it and that’s not always easy to do. It  is better than fantastic for terrestrial photog though so it’s still useful for me… 

[John Berger]

topaz doesn't have free trial

[rj144]

Topaz might not be good anymore, the older version that was good for AP isn’t available anymore and I’ve heard that the newer version doesn’t do as well with AP, I could be wrong but I would research it before anyone buys it.

 

I’ve got a copy, but stopped using it not long after I purchased it, it’s pretty impressive on initial runs, but eventually I started noticing a lot of artifacts that made it not nearly as good as other options… It’s decent if you go very easy with it and that’s not always easy to do. It  is better than fantastic for terrestrial photog though so it’s still useful for me… 

It works, but you can't use it a lot.  Always use Severe Noise and not much sharpening.  Also raise thee Keep Details slider.

[Robert7980]

I found a clue

 

go here https://astrofalls.c...rocessing-guide

 

scroll to the bottom

 

read: "For this guide you will need the following software:"

 

it doesn't show NXT, so I guess that means, possibly, that he doesn't use it

 

it shows Photoshop though

 

has anyone bought that processing guide? if anyone has done so, then this mystery can be solved faster

Makes sense, it’s probably mostly done in photoshop… PS is the ultimate software, it’s just difficult to learn, my experience with Pixinsight and Photoshop is that photoshop is 10,000 times more difficult to master… There’s so much more to it that what’s in the menus, start adding hundreds of plugins and away you go on a decade adventure with an ultra steep learning curve.. 

 

Masking is a killer feature in PS and with a Wacom tablet (or pro tablet monitor $$$$) it’s truly amazing what can be done, that’s something that just isn’t even close to practical in PI… 

 

So yeah I’ll go with he’s probably doing nearly all of it in photoshop… 

[John Berger]

I'm gonna do a bunch of random stuff with pixinsight's noise reduction tools, and report my findings

 

I'll also probably check into photoshop's filters/tools

Edited by John Berger, 04 November 2024 - 09:43 PM.

[Robert7980]

Here’s a random vid that shows the MultiscaleMedianTransform (Wavelets)… If you are super serious about NR that’s the tool to try and master… It’s just too much work for me lol… Lots and lots of iterations to get it right… 

 

https://youtu.be/A4r...E48inUeywP5Ky3N

 

It’s probably a good video, haven’t watched it though, was just easier than booting the PC to find the names of the tools and get screenshots haha 

Edited by Robert7980, 04 November 2024 - 09:49 PM.

[John Berger]

Here’s a random vid that shows the MultiscaleMedianTransform (Wavelets)… If you are super serious about NR that’s the tool to try and master… It’s just too much work for me lol… Lots and lots of iterations to get it right… 

 

https://youtu.be/A4r...E48inUeywP5Ky3N

 

It’s probably a good video, haven’t watched it though, was just easier than booting the PC to find the names of the tools and get screenshots haha 

THANK YOUUUUU!!!!

 

MultiscaleMedianTransform is the tool I was looking for; I bet you a million dollars, Bray Falls is using that in combination with masks (plus some tweaking in photoshop)

 

I'm gonna experiment with it

Edited by John Berger, 04 November 2024 - 10:01 PM.

[John Berger]

okay, well the guy in the video made it look easy

 

but it's too hard to use

 

I'm gonna see what I can do in photoshop

[Oort Cloud]

The best way to fight noise is to get yourself an f/2 RASA, put it under a B1 sky, and image for a few hours.  You won't need noise reduction.

[John Berger]

Despeckle helps a little; I have no idea how to use masks in PS

 

I guess I must look further in PI

[rj144]

Never heard of him, but just looked at his Astrobin.  His integrations are crazy long... like over 100 hours on quite a few.  Does he really need much denoising?

[John Berger]

Never heard of him, but just looked at his Astrobin.  His integrations are crazy long... like over 100 hours on quite a few.  Does he really need much denoising?

he goes for exotic stuff that are noisy even with hundreds of hours

 

like the goblet of fire nebula I was talking about in my first post

[rj144]

It's not ideal, but download his pic and run it through GraXpert or some other denoising algorithm and see if you can get close.  I bet GraXpert gets close.

[rj144]

Triple RASA on that one?  Must be nice...

[Zambiadarkskies]

I recall a processing video from a while back where he talked about how effective de-noising is in PS, specifically within Camera Raw. And it does work very well.

[John Berger]

I recall a processing video from a while back where he talked about how effective de-noising is in PS, specifically within Camera Raw. And it does work very well.

is Camera Raw different than Camera Raw filter?

 

I tried Camera Raw filter and it makes wormy geometric patterns

 

 

It's not ideal, but download his pic and run it through GraXpert or some other denoising algorithm and see if you can get close.  I bet GraXpert gets close.

 

yes, I forgot about Graxpert, thank you, will try that out

[John Berger]

he already posted another image https://www.astrobin.com/kuptzh/

 

he did it again with the OIII

[Robert7980]

okay, well the guy in the video made it look easy

 

but it's too hard to use

 

I'm gonna see what I can do in photoshop

Yeah it’s a real pain to use MMT… it’s more practical if you dive into the math behind it to make better guesses at the factors. I don’t enjoy going though lots of trial and error either… 
 

Camera RAW is not the same as Camera RAW filter… the filter plugin is what you want, it’s almost a must have if you are fairly serious about fine tuning. Really good for brightness and contrast and getting colors just the way you want. I’d be careful with some of the other functions, the noise reduction is pretty terrible for AP… and it’s better to just generally go very light with any adjustments, almost always less is more… It’s one of the hardest things for me to do, I know I should stop, but I keep playing around until it’s too much  … If you can avoid doing that you’ll progress much faster and get better images… 

Edited by Robert7980, 04 November 2024 - 11:53 PM.