The photo was shot under poor conditions resulting in a lot of noise.
First of all I adjusted the exposure. Now there is a need to denoise the photo.
An easy,one minute adjustment in the RT 5.5 denoise module results in a much improved image. See the close up of the face of the boy.
I’m sure it can be done even better using wavelets or other advanced tools and I welcome suggestions.
But Darktable is another story all together. How can I get a similar (or better) result using DT?
I have uploaded the original RAW-file, PP3- and XMP-files.
you can’t get the (almost) same result. dt has no “recover details” slider. RT is siginificantly superior to dt in terms of noise reduction. you can only get a very similar (or better) result with Ps-like image editing and sophisticated masks.
Regardless of what you can achieve with DT (I will have a go later with your photo and report back), to me the “good” result you obtained with RT is not good at all.
Denoise pumped to the max causes this over-plasticky result which does not look good. I mean, objectively not good. I understand that people have different taste and perhaps we’re getting used to the strong denoising that jpeg engines in all the phones (and also higher-end cameras, check my Fuji if I choose high denoise the mess it does), but I would remove color noise as much as possible and then leave the digital grain as it is.
We still love those old photos from shot on Nikons and Tri-X don’t we? Lots of grain in those prints. Grain is good! Digital noise too, if treated with respect.
Pay attention to other parts of the photo that are similarly illuminated and compare them to the face; e.g., the parquet floor. If it doesn’t look natural after the denoising, I would say that you have gone too far.
PS@obe, if you would like this to be a play_raw, please add a CC license.
I mostly agree with you, but I’d be careful also with too aggressive chroma noise reduction. imho it’s much better to have a bit of rainbow dust than extreme colour bleeding
Here’s my take. As you see, still lots of “grain” visible but overall I prefer it to the fake ultrasmooth look you get when using overly aggressive denoising.
I’m still perplexed by the equalizer module since it can be used for so many different things, so I’m curious to know how would you use it to “take some sharpness out of the noise” as you said?