Nik Collection Tutorial - Part 2 - Reduce Noise With DFine 2

hi this is Ed Gregory fall photos in color calm and today I'm going to show you how to reduce noise in your photos using the Photoshop and Lightroom plugin by Nick collections called define which is now free theme tune do-do-do-do-do-do well thank you jelly you move as my jetting wobble so yesterday we announced that the Nick collection is now completely free so today we're going to this is part number two where I'm going to show you how to use define 2 which is this plugin what it's called and how to reduce the noise in your image we're starting with this one because this is probably the first one that you would use in your process now side note if I look a little sunburned that's because I got sunburned today I went slacklining and you would know that if you follow me on snapchat if you don't here's my snap code three two one there it is so let's jump into Lightroom and Photoshop and have a look at D fine too and work through it so this is the image that we're going to use today now I'm going to show you first of all in Lightroom so this is the image if you wanted to use define 2 in here all you have to do is so you just have to right-click on the image and then you go edit in D fine to super simple now if you wanted to do it a photoshop and that's what we're going to do it in today use two ways of doing it you could just M export to Photoshop and then do it in Photoshop or you could open as smart object in Photoshop and what that will allow you to do is later on you can actually go back and make any of these adjustments again defined to not so important but some of the other plugins it might be so let's go over to photoshop which is just here and we will be using this image it's an image of me you can actually download this image if you wanted to work along you can get it from stock pic calm and the image is called man feeling happy outside that's my stock photo website that you can always go to to download free photos anyway here we go so if you want to do it here all you have to do is click define - now if you don't see this dialog box okay you just go file automate and then you have to Nik collection selective tools so if you click on that that is what would bring up this box now you'll see at the very you'll see all of the different versions the different plugins are all here and they can it in the order that you'd want to use them so define - is the top one so you'll click on that and it will open up this just here okay so I'm going to quickly work through all the different things which you will see here okay so let's have a quick look through here okay so here we are this is what we have just here basically what we need to look at is there's three different views that you've got the regular one which is all of the images the split screen which shows the before and the after and then you have the before and the after next to each other or on top of each other then you can press the button in the middle they'll actually put them side-by-side so you can compare them so let's leave it at this main one at first preview that's obviously you toggle that on and off if you want to see what the one effect is actually happening modes now we'll work with that later and I'll show what this is but this gives you a different view of the image okay that's really important up here now the other thing is you've got your zoom button here so you can select an area and it will zoom into that area it's just coming out of that and then there's a hand tool to move it around then the next one as you change the background the border I would recommend being in the medium gray so let's have a quick look at this we're going to hit I'm going to hit reset so we can actually work on this now what happens is when you first will open this it will do it automatically but essentially if you watch when I hit measure noise what it does it analyzes the image and you can see that it's got this far here now what that's doing is actually analyzing this entire image and it's going to look at all sorts of things it's going to look at where the noises and in different areas using different colors shades and textures and then it's automatically going to little bit a profile for this specific image and then it's going to reduce the noise for you so it's set on automatic right now so essentially it will have reduced the noise so if we just go before and after okay and then if we just zoom in by double clicking what we're going to see here you can see the before over this side and the after over here the noise has been reduced dramatically it's kind of amazing actually and that was uh nota Matic so most of the time you just hit okay but what I want to do with these tutorials is work through every element so that you can see how it works the other options you've got here so that's automatic is manual okay so with manual essentially you then select an area okay so you can say I want you to take build a profile from this area here and it's then going to measure the noise in that area so we'll do it now analyze it and that's what it's going to apply on to the rest of the image reducing the noise here will then apply it to what it's like on the rest of the image okay so let's just come back out of this so we've added the point we can actually delete these points okay so we can but we're going to use all of these points right now so it's already done a great job but now let's have a look at some other things that are really important so we have the reduce so this is where we can do some amazing things so you'll see here to reduce something so you can actually change the method so at a hundred percent it means it's affecting the image a hundred percent of reducing the noise but what you can do is you can do the contrast noise or the color noise now contrast noise essentially looks at the highlights and the shadows so it looks it gets rid of the color and it just looks at the contrast and then it looks at a little flecks and changes in the contrast and reduces that okay then the color is obviously the differential in color for the selected areas so the green it can look at the different terms of green and essentially what it's doing is adding a bit of a blur to it to get rid of the noise so I like to zoom in to actually have a look at so we're going to zoom in on this area here and then up at the top here we're going to go for comparison okay so you can see the exact same part of the image because that for me is really important okay so we're actually going to look and we're going to have a little bit of my face in there too but you can see that it's actually applied a blur to this image a little bit which allows me to do it so what happens if we move these sliders so if we were to move the color noise all the way up if you watch what happens now it's gonna add even more smoothing to it and then the contrast noise even more look how smooth that's gone now it looks terrible it looks very fakes you wouldn't use that very often you know if at all so let's reset these back again to a hundred okay so we're just going to pull those in here now you can actually just type in 100 on each of these so that's that there now the next thing that you can do okay now what I want to introduce to you here is the color points okay so you've got color points control point sorry and then you also color ranges so let's finish off the control points that that we're working in so let's add a control point now there's two different big buttons down here minus and plus and this is really important for the entire Nik collection so let's come back out to the full view okay and want to demonstrate this so if I hit - that is going to reduce the amount that it's going to affect it they've hit a plus it's going to increase the amount that it's going to affect it so let's for example let's do a poor let's do a minus actually okay so when you take the minus control point and then you click somewhere now importantly this is how the control points work okay and this is vital for the Nik collection when you set it somewhere you'll see the black dot that's what it's referencing and then you can change the size of it now what people get confused is they think that the circle okay this is what it's affecting okay all of this round area and I can change the size of that that is not true it is not a mass okay the way that Nik collection works it's very clever is it analyzes the image it looks at the contrast and the tones and the textures and it figures things out so for example up here the black dot okay is actually in this white area what I tell it is so then analyzes the image it finds everything that is similar to that white area and then I say well but everything inside this circle that is white is what I want it to be so and that's what what the mask is so to demonstrate this we're actually going to go to color noise mask okay and you can actually see here okay so I'm going to remove this control point so I've got it selected I just hit delete okay so color noise mask what that actually does is light gray like this says that it is masked everything evenly at a hundred percent so I'm going to go for - so if it goes to a darker color that means that that's actually going to be taken away so it's affecting the dark areas less and if I hit a plus then it's going to hit those areas okay even more okay so essentially I've got that one clicked so that's going to add to that mask so let's just delete them because I want to just go over this the way that it works again watch that's in that light section so what it's done is I've gone everything inside the circle which is like the light section okay it's actually analyzed the image and then it's made its selection okay like so if we come back to the image we can see that's that section that's pretty accurate now let's move it to the green okay now when I look at in here as well I can actually see oh it's done all the greens and amazingly watch when I go to skin tones this is pretty amazing it's just going to select the skin tones so now I can affect this and say you know what I want to not reduce the noise at all on my face so I've got these all at zero now let me show you actually what that means okay so I'm going to reduce noise on everything okay everything quite a lot but when I come inside here and let's compare these images actually we'll zoom in and look at the difference here now this is quite amazing the Greens use is reduce the noise but actually the skin tones that I just selected now the noise is still there and if they turn this off you'll be able to see now it's going to smooth those skin tones for me but if I put the control point on it's going to take away those which is amazingly powerful and what a lot of people seem to be missing with this software okay so that's how you use your control points now let's try one other things we're going to turn this off and now I'm going to show you the next one which is colour ranges now this is exactly what it said it analyzes the colour range so let's use skin tones again okay so everything's set okay so you can have three different color tones that you can use and what we're going to choose is the skin tones again so if we come in here let's zoom in on the image and let's do a comparison just like we did before and now what it's going to be doing because I turn that other point office everything's gone smooth but if I take the dropper tool okay and I I drop out on the skin so now it's got the skin tones and then if I pull these back to zero watch what's going to happen now what's happened is all of the green areas you see have been reduced noise yet the skin has not so let's elevate that more now let's select the greens and then we're actually going to boost these all the way up and now watch what happens this has gone milky and smooth yet I have managed to keep all of the detail on my face now this is just purely for demonstration purposes so you can see the power that this really has so now let's come out of this image and we're going to show you a few more things that I'm going to do one more demonstration at the end okay so now we are inside this okay let's come back to control points and what you have you have this little more button down here few things inside here edge preservation basically what that means is it'll smooth everything because it does add this little blurb but if you 100% on the edge preservation it means that anything that there's a line it's not going to add any of that blur into it okay so if we look at this now it's going to have to generate this as a preview like so it's going to take a while so you can see this has got like a really strong line still if I remove the edge preservation now that's going to be a little bit softer okay now if you're working with the JPEG that we are now JPEGs have kind of a very specific artifact so as you it reduces quality you get them certain types of like banding and things so essentially you can click on that and it will remove as much of that as it possibly can as well and then you've got the banding which is if you've got any lines that some cameras give you can get rid of those too okay but we're not going to do that for now okay we're going to pull that out we're going to leave that as it is and I want to go back into my color ranges and make sure that we have these oh I just deleted one so we can add another one back hit in the plus button down here I'm going to come back in here sorry I'm just going to do this one again I'm going to start the skin tones and we're going to take those two absolutely zero and make sure the greens are 200% great so now we've got all that done all you have to do is hit okay like you ready we're going to hit okay now I want to do a really great demonstration of how powerful this is by looking at the masking of this inside Photoshop and this is why Photoshop is great over Lightroom because you can now mask these elements in and out so what we're going to do here if we zoom in we're going to come all the way into that same area of my face because I want to show something here and I'm gonna add a mass to this by hitting the mask button down at the bottom here and it's set white so it Curly's a hundred percent okay I've done the D noise and if I click on this you can see with the noise without the noise and look at my face hasn't nothing's changing but in the green is changing dramatically and I'm going to zoom all the way in so that on my screen you can really see this so that's the original and now that's with now watch winner actually so I'm going to add a black brush to this and I'm going to make sure that it's got a really hard line on this and what I'm going to do is I'm going to paint on this mat so I can actually delete where that was you so watch this one actually paint on here look at how dramatic the difference is here so let's look at this with it and without it and I can actually paint that back on but now let's look at this different masking area if I actually go over this line here if you watch the actual face has barely changed but yet the green has changed a lot so let me paint over this and watch what happens if I just paint you can see it happening but then when it goes on the face barely nothing has happened because by using define to what I was able to do was selectively reduce the noise of an image that I can keep sharpness where I wanted it now that was the demonstration purposes but you can see the power of it so that there is really the power of defined to and you can use that in lightroom and photoshop in lightroom when you hit save it will then save it as a second image okay but you can see that this software really is powerful once you learn how to use it so if you like this please give me a thumbs up and remember over the next 6 days whatever I'm going to do a full training course on all of the Nik collection by Google all of the plugins there ok anyway it's as ed Gregory for photos in colors calm thank you

Channel: Ed Gregory

Views: 170,119

Keywords: PIC, Photos In Color, Ed Gregory, nik collection, google nik collection tutorial, nik collection tutorial, how to use nik collection in photoshop, Google Nik Collection plugin, Dfine 2 tutorial, Reduce noise in photoshop, how to reduce noise in lightroom, how to reduce noise in photoshop, Nik Collection tutorial, nik collection photoshop

Id: TQ6oPcWK-Co

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 27 2016