Remove Noise from Studio images

Actually I started the wrong way, because my first introduction to digital imaging was back in 1986 when I first started using computers for image manipulations.

Naturally for me, getting a digital camera was a rather natural step, however for many people it is combined with lots of issues. Particularly loosing the darkroom is quite disconcerting for many photographers.

Not to worry, Photoshop is the new darkroom, and while I love the darkroom, I have not found anything which I can not do as well in Photoshop.

Some of the powertools naturally is using actions, I find that a good action really will put a smile on your face, and it it well worth paying with actions to get good hang of them.

Exposure Actions

Here is three actions I like to use when I have messed up a shot (unfortunately this happens much more regularly than I like to say). Just download the actions, open Photoshop and load them into your actions palette. Try them on a few images to see how they work. Feel free to improve and adjust. (Smile). This is stuff you could also do in curves, but it is faster this way for most people.

Click here to download the Photoshop Actions
If you use a Mac here is a ZIP file for you.

Light in the Dark
This action lightens the dark end of your image withou affecting the highlights.

Light the Lights
This Action pulls dark highlights up higher while leaving your blacks in place.

Brightness and Contrast

Is a "Don't go there" thing, this feature is build into all image manipulation software, but it is pretty dangerous to use. Brightness, litterally lifts the lightness value levels of your entire page, beginning at the top and going down. The danger is that it is not easy to see when important data starts to blow out of the top (or buttom) of the image. Problem is that once data is past 255 it is gone and you now have a nice burnout in your image. Much better, use "Levels' (Ctrl+L) or "Curves" (Ctrl+M).
When addjusting brightness in levels, will see a histogram when you open the menu. The histogram is a graphical presentation of your image, it is 255 pixels wide, one pixel for each brightnes level in your image (0-255), for each pixel there is a vertical line, some lines are tall and other short, the height of each line referes to the number of pixels in the picture at a particular brightness level, a perfect photograph should have a histogram reaching from the one side to the other, with data distributed across the entire range of brightness available to your camera. In a less perfect picture you will notice that there is a flat line on one end or maybe both, you can addjust the range of data by dragging the triangle at the end of the line into the point where the data starts to show up, This will pull the rearrange the data so that the hottest parts of your image now is set to 255 instead of where it was when you started dragging the slider. You can see the changes live by checking the "preview" option. If you want the over all image to get a little darker or lighter, you can slide the center slider to the right or left...