Denoise with high ISOs in Photoshop - Improving your images using Photoshop's AI.

Click on image to see detail.  A larger image will show you what is going on.

I had the pleasure of visiting Columbia's National Aviary yesterday while we were moored in Cartagena.  There I shot about 500 images (so thankful I'm not using film), most of which I have worked on in post, as today we are at sea.  One set of images was of Colombia's endemic masked owl.  It was so dark in the enclosure that I had to up my ISO to 25600 in order to shoot at a reasonable shutter speed.

The upside to using such an ISO is that shutter speeds become functional, not producing blur from mild movements of the subject.  Intense motion requires faster speeds, often above 1/1000th of a second.  However, the owl was placid and was relatively calm.

The downside is electronic noise, which you can see in the top left image.  Both images used the same degrees of correction, but the image on the left did not have denoising.  The right image used the denoising function of Photoshop's RAW converter (all my images are shot in raw).

The difference is not too noticeable in a small image, but enlarging or significant cropping shows the noise.  I used Nikon's Z6iii camera, which does a good job with noise levels.  Had I used my D500, the result would surely be different.

The combination of denoising and full-frame sensor + a full sized sensor on a modern mirrorless camera has done a very good job of making a noisy image much more usable.

My preference is to shoot at the lowest ISO possible, but modern equipment and processes allow me to make choices that were not possible twenty years ago.  Photography has come a long way since then.

Thanks for reading.

Eric Svendsen     www.ericspix.com

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