Tutorial: Selective Noise Reduction

Shooting at high ISO can result in noise. Most of the time noise both color and luminance are found at dark areas of the photos. Applying noise reduction to the photos will also result in reduction of details. I've devised a method in selectively reducing noise on my photos shot at high ISO. Below is step by step guide to my selective noise reduction work flow on photoshop. (Click on the images to view full size)

1. Open the file

2. Create a duplicate layer of the file

3. Apply Noise reduction to the entire photo. You may use any noise reduction filter you like. I prefer the Reduce Noise Filter.

Image Averaging - How to Increase Detail and Remove Noise from Images

Shooting with low light means that you need to use high ISO, resulting in a lot of noise. I found two articles that improve the quality of photos taken at a high ISO level. The first method is to stack underexposed photos to create a proper exposure. The other method is to stack a few high-iso photos removing the noise and increasing the detail.

Single Image ISO 3200

9 images averaged at ISO 3200