Comparison of various Noise reduction software for Olympus .orf files
Blog on noise reduction of om-1 files using 4 programs i.e. lightroom, pure raw 3, photo ai and om workspace. This was written on 12th August 2023 and all the software used were updated as on that date
Variables
1) Comparison of various engines at 4 different ISO ranges. 3200,6400, 12800, 25600.Pure raw at 2 conditions i.e. soft and standard. No distortion correction, no vignetting correction. AI photo. Standard or ai defined. LR auto, om workspace standard across all and also best of class. Also On1 Nonoise, Topaz Denoise and Photolab 6 will be studied
2) Comparison of NR in 2 step process. First om system and then topaz ai or first pure raw and then topaz ai.
3) Noise levels for ETTR with 1 stop +
4) Noise levels comparison of 1 stop less exposure and hence 1 stop less ISO and then boosted in LR. Comparison of 2 different f-stops.
5) Effect of stacking high iso images on noise levels
4 softwares are compared. DXO Pure Raw 3. In this, 2 variants were tried. Sharpness SOFT and sharpness STANDARD. No lens distortion, vignetting or chroma corrections were applied. Second software used was Topaz Photo AI. Once again, 2 variants were used, strength and deblur were set to the figures as mentioned in the file name. 2 models used were RAW NORMAL and RAW STRONG. Third software used was lightroom denoise. Strength was always set at 50. Last software used for denoise AI of OM workspace. So in all, there were 6 noise reduced images for each RAW image
ISO 25600
Pure Raw 3
First the Pure Raw 3 images were compared. Both were processed using the new engine, i.e. deep prime XD. Pure Raw 3 is the standalone NR program from DXO and has 4 settings for sharpness. Only the first 2 i.e. soft and standard were used. Hard and Strong were not evaluated. Similarly, the program also allows lens corrections like chroma, vignetting and distortion corrections. These were also tried on the ISO 25600 images. Then these 4 images were compared.
The noise removal was excellent and the detail retention was also excellent. I feel the sharpening is slightly harsh especially in the shadow areas. The fine feather details is getting a bit clunkier. I wish the details could have been dealt with a bit gentler. But the results are very good and this is really pixel peeking.
When all effects was used, the details were less heavily sharpened. SO my preference is soft_all_effects, then soft, then standard, then standard_all_effects
Topaz:
Since I don’t have an updated version of Topaz denoise, I used the latest version of Topaz AI. This is a fascinating program which is only improving over time. It has very good functionality, i.e. in the same program, you can denoise, sharpen and also resize.
The noise reduction levels were excellent. Strength and deblur were set to 50 each. 2 options were run, i.e. strong and standard. Standard produced excellent results. Noise was very well managed except in some areas. And this is really the Achilles heal of Topaz products. The noise reduction seems to be blotchy in some areas. Increasing strength to 60 from 50 largely resolved this problem.
In terms of detail: detail retention is excellent and more subtle and realistic than the DXO. However, detail in the shadow are crushed a bit and subtle detail in the shadow area is lost. However the texture of the fine detail is actually better in my opinion so I am quite willing to sacrifice slight amount of shadow detail in exchange for more eralistic sharpness and details. Photo AI also has a provision to mask out areas so if u want to retain the fine details, you can try to mask this out. I haven’t tried this but based on past experience, it should work.
Lightroom:
Lightroom has recently introduced a host of features which were missing from LR earlier like masking and noise reduction. The masking in LR is now quite exceptional and has pulled ahead of my preferred software which is capture one. Capture one seems dated now and its also become too costly. LR seems to have better value. The noise reduction implementation in LR seems incomplete. It seems to retain detail better in shadow areas, but doesn’t do a complete job of doing noise reduction. There is still a significant amount of grain visible in the background. I think the details are well maintained but you will have to run it through another program to get complete noise reduction.
OM Workspace
The AI noise reduction is essentially unusable for high ISO and crushes all details. Theres really nothing much more to say about it
Conclusion: I would go with Topaz AI or LR (if I am able to run a secondary program to reduce noise further). I actually ran the image through an older version of denoise ai and it worked brilliantly.
ISO 12800
Pure Raw 3: PR3 did and excellent job of removing noise. In this one, the standard is a bit harsh and the feather details are taking on a harsh highlight. I prefer the soft one. I didn’t try the all effects version. Once again, it does a fine job of retaining shadow details. But in this photo, the highlights in the feather details has become too harsh. It seems to me that PR3 is focusing more on acutance than on actual sharpening and that’s what is causing this harsh contrast and blocky feather detail
Topaz AI
The software does a great job of NR but once again the fine details are quite crushed. Subtle details are completely smoothed out. Once again, masking out the shadow areas could be an option, but I have yet to try that. As it stands, the photos are just short of acceptable for large prints but perfectly fine for social media. The loss of detail is quite minor. I also think that for ISO 12800, the noise reduction setting of 50 was too high. I will experiment later with different settings and see if theres a way to save the fine details. The strong was slightly better than the standard
Lightroom:
LR does the best job among the 3 of saving the fine details. The sharpening is also more subtle and natural. Once again, some residual noise is left in the background and it will be necessary to run another round of noise reduction before you can start processing. However, the results are quite pleasing
OM Workspace
The AI noise reduction is essentially unusable for high ISO and crushes all details. Theres really nothing much more to say about it
ISO 6400
PR3: once again, the difference between soft and standard is slight. However I would go with soft and I feel the standard is being a bit too enthusiastic in sharpening and is slightly creating artifacts and once again blowing up the highlights a bit. The output from the soft is well managed and believable. Noise is properly controlled, there aren’t any hotspots. Feather details in the shadows are well maintained and retained.
Topaz AI: This did a great job of noise reduction. Some of the finer details in the shadows were crushed. I think if you play around with the settings, it should be possible to get good results. Once again, I have no hesitation in recommendeing this for social media. But for pixel peepers and folks who want to print large, I feel the detail smoothening is just short of acceptable.
LR: LR does a good job of controlling noise. I think the setting of 50 is too high for this ISO and is leading to crushing of some details but more details are retained than the Topaz AI implementation. With careful application or with a 2 step process for NR, I think LR will give exceptional results.
OM Workspace
The AI noise reduction is barely usable at this ISO and does a reasonable job of reducing noise and maintaining details. This output is acceptable for social media.
ISO 3200
PR3: this does a marvelous job. Details are very well retained. Noise is fully controlled. Soft is more than adequate. Standard starts to have too much sharpening. Colors are very well maintained. In fact reducing clarity a little and reducing highlights gives it a very good and natural look and takes away the slight harshness of oversharpening.
Topaz AI: Normal; does a sufficiently good job. Setting used were 10 for noise reduction and 25 or deblur. Even at 10 though, some of the finer details are lost.
LR: LR does a great job of removing noise and retaining fine details. LR output is noticeably better than Photo AI at retaining fine details.
OM Workspace
The AI noise reduction is barely usable at this ISO and does a reasonable job of reducing noise and maintaining details. This output is acceptable for social media.
Conclusions:
This is based on testing 4 software only. Results from On1 Nonoise, Photolab. 6 and Denoise AI will be updated subsequently as also study ofETTR (expose to the right), and possibility of under or over exposing at various ISO.
Pure Raw 3 does an overall better job of noise reduction whilst retaining sufficient details across all ISO’s. It has a tendency of creating harsh details and highlight which can be mitigated by reducing highlights and clarity later on. The effects of lens correction on the image needs to be studied further. The sharpening is almost crude and unnatural in nature I feel it’s a bit forced and not nice looking. Its perfectly fine for social media. But not my preference for large prints.
This is closely followed by LR in terms of retaining detail. However, LR doesn’t do as good a job of removing high ISO noise and only holds its own below ISO 6400. An additional step of NR will be necessary to get the best out of LR at high ISO. I think though that this is quite doable and would probably generate the best image among all the 4 softwares. An additional image was made using first LR noise reduction followed by topaz denoise and gave in my opinion, the nest compromise between detail management and noise removal at high ISO of 25600. Below ISO 6400, I think LR is in itself capable enough and alongwith the masking potential is currently the best bang for the buck software for .orf files. This would be my goto choice for processing images for large prints.
Topaz AI is an amazing software. If you can ignore the loss of details especially in the shadow areas, I think this would be the goto software for social media posts. They are also introducing a bunch of new features and with the inbuilt size increase and sharpening modules, its unbeatable in value especially for social media and fast hacks.
OM wokspace is somewhat usable at ISO 3200 and barely usable at ISO 6400. I would not use it over that. Its overall very slow and clunky.
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