unfocused said:
Instead, I'd like to know what techniques people use to reduce noise, banding, etc. etc. What post processing tricks do you employ in Raw, Lightroom or Photoshop to fix noise issues?
Well, not being joined at the hip to a single Raw converter is a bloody good start - it shouldn't be news to anyone (and yet it surely seems to be) that some converters are better than others at heading off noise/banding
problems, so being open-minded here is a very smart thing: having a few converters under your belt is still a cheaper option than "needing" to go from crop to FF for better noise performance; or "needing" to jump ship to another camera brand so that you can open up the shadows a bit...
I don't actually rate Lr/ACR as highly as I used to in terms of noise handling, and give the nod to Capture One these days. This is what
10,000 ISO looks like (from my 70D) straight out of Capture One at default NR, with no additional PP NR added: and
this is a 100% crop of a 6400 ISO file from the same camera, again with no additional NR (and check the Exif - this was
not a well-lit scene. "Available Dark", really).
As to "that other thing" (that you've forbidden us to discuss!):
this is a 100% crop of a low (160) ISO 70D file off the web somewhere, and
this is the same thing out of Capture One, with the Shadows slider maxed out
and +1 EC in Capture One. More than 5 stops' adjustment, all told, on the shadows.
At the image level,
it looks absolutely fine (starting from
this), and (because, you know,
everybody's printing big
) it would print really well. All the detail that was in the shadows is there; and nothing's chewed up with tons of chroma and/or banding. That slight texture (visible at 100% view) in what were the darkest shadows is nothing much to worry about.
This is partly down to the camera itself (the sensor in the 70D is actually pretty damn' good - no pattern noise/horrendous chroma in the shadows here); and partly down to the way Capture One converts the files.
(
Just for larks, and to emphasise the point that choice of converter matters: this is the same file out of DPP, with only default NR; with the Shadows slider banged over to the right as far as it will go; and with the maximum +2 EC added. Clean as a whistle in the shadows, at zero cost...)
In my own shooting, I used to ETTR with my 7D, which kept things clean (it didn't take much of an adjustment, and I had no qualms at all about using the 7D well into
4-figure ISOs - 3200 ISO here. This is dull, overcast, end of a Winter's day light incidentally, and I ended up at 5000 ISO, IIRC, to maintain a reasonable shutter speed. No problem.
Again, smart choice of converter would do most of the noise "heavy lifting" (Capture One here too, as I recall); but I also habitually used selective sharpening (and where necessary, selective NR) in order to maximise image quality: nothing more complex than a duplicate layer in PS, with sharpening (or NR) applied globally and then erased from where it wasn't wanted.
I don't use ETTR as much with the 70D - it's generally slap-bang in the middle unless I'm shooting in low light, in which case I add some + EC and bump the ISO to maintain shutter speed.
Selective sharpening/NR is still part of my bag of tricks where necessary.
I am a big fan of Topaz Denoise, but to be honest, the native NR in current versions of Photoshop is really good, and Denoise is getting less use than it used to. I do a lot of my selective sharpening with Topaz Adjust these days - I prefer the result to that provided by Smart Sharpen.
It's all
very easy...