Some stuff up front here. This is mostly just a post to point out how crazy good Topaz DeNoise V5 seems to me. Just a "hey if you've never tried this, might want to give it a whirl." That and a bit of, "oh my god" at times. Next up front thing, I don't even know what I'm doing with it yet. I haven't read any instructions to help with the settings or anything. Next, never expect miracle work when it comes to fixing image issues, especially heavy noise or heavy out of focus..etc. Another thing, I've used noise removal before but honestly very very little. I've had a real old version of "Neat Image" from like 2002 or something, as a wild guess. Only used auto features on it for small images on the site at times. Pre-dslr stuff needed its help more than now. I never explored how to really use the thing and again nor have I with this Topaz thing. I looked into it because I find myself frequently annoyed at the fact 100 ISO can still be noisy on certain shots or having to push certain images. For instance fog, nothing will show that there is noise like fog will. Also a simple blue sky will. 100 ISO on a blue sky might not first appear noisy to you, but to me it'd be nice if a camera could pull off smooth as butter blue skies at 100 ISO. At least all the Canon's I've had really can't do it. Granted it's pretty close, but you look at it you can see "digital bumps"/noise. So the stuff is there, if subtle. Looking at fog shots full size can drive me nuts. Blue sky less so at 100 ISO. It's really so subtle in that case. The other part is like the above. It is shot at 100 ISO but a good chunk of the image is darker and at the same time flat in contrast. If noise is going to show itself it will do so in the darker regions like that, and it seems especially so in an image a lot of the rest of the image is brighter and more contrasty. I'll do 3 different image examples on this. I'll show a full sized version and then the 100% crops from in the image.

The above is the full sized crop at 100% viewing of the middle of the shot. The photo was taken with a Canon Rebel XSi at 100 ISO, 9 seconds. For what it is worth, the XSi has seemed like my cleanest rebel I've had out of the X, XT and the XSi. All done to the RAW file in photoshop CS4 raw converter was applying contrast to darken the sky back down. Before adding any contrast to the RAW file, the noise obviously isn't as apparent, yet it is still there. It's all besides the point for this anyway. This above has zero noise removal done in adobe camera raw in conversion.

Now this image above is applying the maximum noise removal possible in the RAW converter in Photoshop CS4. Looking at the sky you can see it leaves it blotchy and just not that nice. Much like video editors, it gets annoying that at their price points, around $700....you still need completely different programs to do things right! Evidently noise removal is one of the things.

Now this above was done with the Topaz DeNoise V5 plug-in. It is freaking amazing to me what the program does and I don't even know how to set things just right. It's nowhere near maxed out and the level of noise removal on the sky compared to maxed out Adobe Camera Raw....there's just no comparison. It's pretty much butter on this image from Topaz. The key to all this is retaining detail when fighting noise. One would think, well if it is smearing the noise out of the sky more than Adobe Camera Raw, then detail would then be worse. The next few comparisons will show how crazy things are. No need to even make the comparisons be between Topaz and Adobe Camera Raw. I'll just show zero noise removal compared to Topaz and one can note the detail NOT getting hammered.

Crazy becomes apparent in these before and after side by sides. If one is able to take away that noise completely to the point the sky is silky smooth, one would expect big losses in detail. Just look at the sky differences, then compare the Applebee's lettering. Or the bricks. There are some sliders in there for restoring detail. They were left where the preset put them. If anything, it has killed the noise completely AND the sign lettering is less soft! It's certainly not more soft. You can move some sliders for highlights and shadows to affect them more or less. So far to me it gets kinda confusing though. Because you set the overall noise removal strength and then if you want you can adjust the highlights or shadows slider to have those being more or less attacked relative to the overall strength. When you more just want to hit mid-tones it seems confusing. Cause sometimes it seemed upping the shadows slider for instance would make what you thought were shadows more noisy. Hard to explain since I don't even have a handle on that in my head. If they just had 3 sliders for shadows, mid-tones, and highlights it would be easier I think. And a one way slider up from a zero. But with the overall strength slider and then a shadow and a highlight one that each center on 0 and can either go towards +1 or -1.....it can get annoying when you see the area you want to attack the noise but aren't finding it easy to isolate it and worse it seems the slider movement is acting backwards. Just because of how it is all setup. I could kill the sky noise but it took some work to not kill the brick noise on that building.

Crop from the right section of the image, again Topaz DeNoise V5 compared to zero noise reduction. Major sky noise death going on and yet the rest of the image isn't toast. The Sunset lettering on the sign is pretty identical in sharpness. Remember these are 100% crops and zero sharpening was ever done to things. You can tell on that lower concrete wall some smoothing happened to the detail. Honestly though not that much there anyway. That pipe or stick thing looks identical. And if one wants they can always do a layer and mask in the stuff like that if they want the noise and detail back in some area like that. Sweetest part about this ap though is really you don't need to AND your noise is getting its ass handed to it completely. Not blotchy funky Adobe Camera Raw noise removal.

Took some work to do that and keep those bricks showing on the building. At first they were all smoothed gone. It is amazing considering the noise chopping going on in the sky. I also need to figure out how to keep stars. Dimmer ones tend to go with the noise. Can still see the one but it is a lot fainter. I know if you crank down the highlights slider you keep a lot more of them. But really in this case that is a damn faint star showing to begin with and it is still there to some degree. I still sit here and scratch my head at what it is able to do.

Ok, next up a 400 ISO shot from the XSi at 25 seconds. Not only was it 400 ISO but it was an under-exposed longer shutter 400 ISO shot. This needed a stop and a half exposure push in the RAW converter which meant even more noise. I can thank under-exposing the fogbow this night to something in the corn spooking me out. To do these I had to go out into my headlights 50-100 feet or so, in the dark and let the shot expose. It sucks because you can't see a damn thing when turning around and looking back at the car. Someone could stand next to your car and no way in hell could see them. A car could come from behind your car and no way you'd see that either. You look back in the dark and are blinded by your lights big time. Even looking away from your car toward the fogbow it was bright in the center area where your lights are reflecting back at you.

100% crop with no noise removal done.

Left image Adobe Camera Raw maxed out and right image Topaz DeNoise V5. Keep in mind this isn't even set high to kill all the sky noise that can be killed. I tried to do it as far as I could without losing any detail in the corn at the same time. Just compare the two noise removal methods. Adobe's sky noise remains blotchy and ugly even maxed out in the converter and the Topaz one a lot smoother....though not as smooth as can be made. But just look at the detail loss at the same time. Compare the corn on the Adobe one to the Topaz one. It's telling when you lose more detail AND at the same time aren't even killing as much noise either.

One last one for now. Possible I'll do more at some later date, who knows. This falls into the "trying to work miracles" category. As in can't expect miracles with noise removal but one can try. Some objects are better to try on, soft cloud stuff is one of them...especially spacey Noctilucent clouds which are blurry to begin with. Mammatus and fog would be others. I guess luckily stuff with detail hides noise anyway. Anyway, it's "miracle" related when you stick 1600 ISO night stuff into the mix.

Full sized crop, 1600 ISO from the XSi for 20 seconds, with zero noise removal done to it. Obviously with that much noise one can't expect a perfect outcome that doesn't kill some detail you wanted to keep. The thing to keep in mind though is this was at 100mm and for 20 full seconds. Never seen these rare clouds before but even as high as they are I bet they will blur some over 20 seconds. Also, they are wavey and blurry to begin with. So the noise removed images below may seem like they are getting really softened but some might just be the clouds are that way without noise. Topaz still hands Photoshop CS4 its ass.

The first example above here is from photoshop. I did whatever it took to match the Topaz one below in lack of noise. What that took on this one was first maxing out the RAW converter noise removal. Then once I had the TIFF in photoshop itself I had to then max out the noise removal option in there. That meant maxing out strength at 10 and dropping the "preserve detail" slider to 0%. Double maxing out to get the noise to get close to the Topaz image. But look at the thing. It's pretty dang plasticy looking and junky. Still some fair lumps of thick noise chunks in there.

Then there is Topaz not even close to maxing out lol. Sure it's softened some, but really the more I look at it and think about it, it's not softened all that much when you consider the serious amount of noise that came out of there. And again that is 100% viewing. You can pretty much print a 16x24 of that thanks to Topaz and have it look damn clean and smooth and not crazy soft. And again Topaz is not only leaving more detail than Photoshop but making the areas of cleaned noise look far far more pleasing. I'd say miracles actually are possible with this plug-in. The one thing this might not do wonders on is night star shots. But then again I've only just toyed with it and not read anything. At the moment it is an $80 download option here: http://www.topazlabs.com/denoise/ They have a lot of other stuff on there as well. This is just about making me feel the T2i I went down to from the 5D II can be as noise free. Course that would be before one takes this onto images from the 5D II...if they needed it. And given I haven't really had a need for it thus far, the need might still be nil anyway. BUT....if I was to do more printing and whatnot, at larger sizes....this would most certainly be handy. Make a great image that much better by really making it smooth. Looking at 100% crop examples really won't show what is actually possible. I guarantee I could make that clear if I was to take this last example, the 1600 ISO ugly noise sky, and make it viewable at 16x24 inches on here. As in the whole shot, not the crop made that big obviously lol. Here is the closest thing to that that I'll offer up, a 1920x1200 sized wallpaper image HERE. And remember just how ugly that was with 1600 ISO noise. Anyway, not a huge reason to do much more here, given the ability to try yourself. I'm impressed with it.