I am posting a photo with a very high ISO value of 12800.
This photo was taken in the old wool dye works in Ebeltoft in Denmark in June 2025.
My numerous attempts have led to this result with which I am already very satisfied although the denoising of DxO Photolab is still several classes better.
Have I exhausted the potential of darktable or is there more to be done?
Better leave some noise in instead of making everything plain and even. A bit of noise is supporting the impression of a sharp photo.
I love lively photos. Therefore, this is my suggestion:
Here’s my proposal:
My first problem to tackle was chroma noise, so I was thinking about using the Wavelets-chroma only preset…
But that has a major side effect: it seems so absolutely destroy fine color details – I’d describe it a bleeding the chroma details. Taking an example from the other Playraw:
So I decided to use contrast equalizer chroma denoise preset and boosted it. I added hot pixels and also added what I’m guessing is the luma-only equivalent of wavelets denoise.
EDIT:
Darktable ignored denoising on export, I fixed the files.
This time I dont have a photo from the „Jylland“ because there was no change compared to my old pictures from this ship.
But I can try to publish an older photo.
A different strategy:
Avoid to much brightening and leave dark things dark. Instead use more overall contrast. Don’t zoom in. For denoising itself I use most of the time more than just one module.
As much as I love FOSS editing, the NR capabilities just don’t compare to DxO for my high ISO images that really count. For that reason, I use DxO PureRAW. That said, I can then apply a custom Fuji color profile to the resulting .dng file in RawTherapee. That keeps me in the FOSS environment and minimizes my use of commercial software. DxO noise reduction is nothing short of sorcery.
