Noise-reduction software
At this time of year in the Northern Hemisphere, the window of photographic opportunity can seem pretty narrow and unless it’s one of those rare clear-sky days, we have to embrace shooting in low light or even at night. Consequently, we often find ourselves having to push up the camera’s sensitivity (ISO) setting to enable us to shoot at the shutter speed and aperture combination that we want –especially when handholding the camera. Consequently, you may see a bit more noise creeping into your images than you do at the height of summer.
Most cameras offer a small collection of noise-reduction settings for JPEGs but they can be rather crude and apply a blanket treatment so that while the sky in an image might look great, the detail of the foreground is smudged. Meanwhile, using a low setting can mean there’s more detail visible in the foreground but there’s coloured speckling visible in the sky and shadows. The solution is to take control over how much noise reduction is applied to each image so that you can strike the right balance between concealing the noise and retaining the detail. It’s also best to do this while looking at the image either at 100% on a computer screen or at the size that you intend to use it at. In some cases you can even go the extra mile by applying different levels of noise
