Fixing Grainy Sky

[Raihan Ahmed]

Is There any way to fix the grain of sky except using Photoshop Built-in Noise Reduction Tool ?

[brianw999]

Isolate the sky from your processing. That way you get the original sky quality with no processing artefacts.

1. Crop to size and adjust the luminosity histogram to correct exposure and contrast irregularities.
2. Create a background layer.
3. Process further as required. Grain in the sky is often caused by sharpening and use of the shadow/highlight tool. In fact, generally speaking, shadow/highlight does more damage than good.
4. Delete the sky area making sure that you get into all the nooks and crannies in the gear and flap slots. This will delete any processing artefacts from the sky. Be especially careful not to cause any dark outlines. You may have to selectively isolate areas for deletion using the polygonal lasso tool.
5. Flatten the image and save once only.

This method will not work on existing grainy skies caused (for instance) by high ISO settings. For this cause you will have to use a noise reduction tool. I can thoroughly recommend Noise Ninja for this.

This is how I do it. It can be a bit long winded but I find I can exercise a fine control on the processing. No doubt there other methods which others may share here.

[Raihan Ahmed]

Isolate the sky from your processing. That way you get the original sky quality with no processing artefacts.

1. Crop to size and adjust the luminosity histogram to correct exposure and contrast irregularities.
2. Create a background layer.
3. Process further as required. Grain in the sky is often caused by sharpening and use of the shadow/highlight tool. In fact, generally speaking, shadow/highlight does more damage than good.
4. Delete the sky area making sure that you get into all the nooks and crannies in the gear and flap slots. This will delete any processing artefacts from the sky. Be especially careful not to cause any dark outlines. You may have to selectively isolate areas for deletion using the polygonal lasso tool.
5. Flatten the image and save once only.

This method will not work on existing grainy skies caused (for instance) by high ISO settings. For this cause you will have to use a noise reduction tool. I can thoroughly recommend Noise Ninja for this.

This is how I do it. It can be a bit long winded but I find I can exercise a fine control on the processing. No doubt there other methods which others may share here.

Thanks a Lot Brian For Your valuable Suggestions. I've Installed Noise Ninja. But I can't select the sky over there. Can You help me on that ?

[brianw999]

You use the left mouse buttom to draw a box in the area you want to clean up.

Edit: I assume you are using Noise Ninja 3 which is the latest version and has a different adjustments screen to the older version that I use. Therefore you are going to have to read the instructions guide carefully.
Is there anyone else using the latest version who can help Raihan please ?

[Raihan Ahmed]

Brian I'm Using Version 2.4.2, I've attached its window as attachment.

[LX-A343]

I would strongly suggest you try to AVOID noise in the first place. Make sure, the photo is correctly exposed (Correcting underexposed photos can result in noise), you shoot at low ISO, the original photo is tack sharp, weather conditions are OK (no haze, no fog, ...) and so on.