Your need for noise reduction depends very much on the way you process your photos. Especially HDR processing can create an enormous amount of noise, which has to be dealt with. There are different ways you can do this and I think Imagenomic is one of the best.

Imagenomic Noiseware gives you a big amount of sliders you can push around to remove noise, but in the years I’ve been using it, I never used one. I bet that will make the results better, but the results you get just using the first two under Noise level are good enough in almost all cases.

I also never use it at strong settings. The values go from -20 to +20 and I usually don’t go above 0 for most of my photos. In the sample screenshots I included different situations with different settings.

Recently with Lightroom noise reduction getting much better, the need for a separate noise reduction plugins was not that big. But for some photos, Lightroom can remove very much detail when removing noise. Noiseware can have better results there. I personally use both, Lightroom noise reduction by weaker noise, Imagenomic by stronger noise. Sometimes even both, Lightroom for the initial noise reduction and Imagenomic for finishing touches.

Btw. same as with all noise reduction, be careful not to overdo it. It can remove photo detail and also introduce color banding into your photos.

You can find more information on the plugin on the Imagenomic Noiseware site.

View all my other reviews here.

And the HDRshooter photography contest, sponsored by OLONEO is over. I had for you three copies of Oloneo Photoengine, and here are the winners:

Judges vote

First of all I would like to thank you to the judges Jimmy Mcintyre from ThroughStrangeLens, Daniel Cheong from Daniel Cheong photography and Anthony Gelot from A.G. Photographe, they had a tough job choosing the winner from 170 entries.

But they did, and the winner is number 36, Marek Kijevský with his edit:

I would like to also mention number 170, Reena Goordin, who was a close second.

Facebook voting

The second winner with the most likes on his photo is number 154, Joey Bustamante . His edit:

Raffle winner

And last but not least the winner from the Oloneo Photoenginne raffle, is Ivana Cvijovic.

My congratulations to all the winners and you all will be shortly contacted by me, or by Oloneo.
And here is once more all the 170 entries, so you see how hard the judges job was :)

Last 3 hours

Only 3 hours left to the Oloneo Photoengine giveaway, so if you haven’t done so yet, you still can join in. The winner will be chosen at midnight today. You can join on the contest page.

How to remove lens flares

There is a new guide on the blog, this time dealing with lens flares. So if you want to know how I deal with them and how I remove them, head over to the guide page.

Westminster bridge in the morning

Sometimes I can feel so stupid. I finished editing this photo and by accident I clicked the close button and dismissed the save dialog without realizing what it was. So I dismissed all my work, and had to start from scratch. Good that I remembered at least partially what edits I did, so the repeating process was much faster :)

This is a very early morning view of the Westminster bridge in London. During my stay there earlier this year, my hotel was very close to it, so it was the ideal place to go to take some sunrise photos. But with the ugly weather, the sunrise photos were nothing to be proud off, so at least the blue hour shots were not bad. This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine and the manually blended with the original exposures.

As plugins go, this one creates a very particular effect. I think you all have seen photos, where the lights or the sun look like starts. This can be usually achieved in the camera, by using a smaller aperture. But what if you don’t get the look you wanted, or you had to use a bigger aperture, as you needed a shorter exposure time. In that case, this plugin can help you.

Topaz Star Effects will create a star from any bright area in you photo. You can specify the look, color, brightness, opacity and many more. You can also brush it only on the places you want it to be applied, or have it applied based on the strength of the light. It also can create a light glow, or a sun flare.

There are many presets, but I find the they create just to strong of an effect. They are good for a start, but you will probably go and change the settings right away.

Overall I like the look of the starts, even if I don’t tend to use them. If you need this kind of effects in your work (maybe you are creating and add for diamonds and you want to add few sparkles here and there) or you just like the look, I suggest you try it out.

For additional information please visit the Topaz Star Effects site. And if you want to buy it, between the December 10th and December 31st 2013, you can use the code “decstar” for a 50% discount.

View all my other reviews here.

Last day of the giveaway

Tomorrow is the last day you can join my Oloneo Photoengine giveaway, so if you have not yet joined, this is your last chance. You can find it on the contest page. It’s also the last day to vote for you favorites in the editing contest, so head over to the contest album and give a like to your favorites.

Nik Analog Efex Review

To continue my additions of reviews to this blog, there is a new review of the Nik Analog Efex Pro plugin. This is the latest addition to the Nik plugin collection, and one to give you that popular vintage look.

Castle an the bridge

The Bratislava castle is a very dominant landmark in Bratislava. You can see it from so many spots. But it also is hard to come up with a new view, I haven’t used before. But this time I found one. I went to the Port bridge, and took a photo with my longest lens. I was hoping for a nice reflection of the bridge in the Danube, but as it was a quite windy day, I had no luck with that. But that only means that I will have to revisit the spot :)

This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine, then blended with original exposures.