Tutorial: AKVIS Noise Buster

How to correct the usual artifacts of a bad JPEG image file

The following tutorial was created by Philippe GREGOIRE.

I'm a 41 Belgian digital painter, living in Brussels.

I've been working with Photoshop, and other graphic programs, namely Poser and Corel Painter for a few years now.

A few weeks ago, I was told by a friend about a plug-in called AKVIS Noise Buster that could help me with my picture noise problems.

For my work I always start from photos I take by myself and I also do a lot of scans. My main problem is to improve the photo and scan quality first because all the scanned pictures have always a lot of noise especially those that come from prints. Photos taken under bad light conditions also have a lot of noise.

The only solution I had in Photoshop was to Gaussian blur and then to Unsharp mask my source images. I was also struggling with PS noise filter to remove remaining noise. But the main point with all these tools is that whatever you try, you always loose picture sharpness and details in the end.

I then tried AKVIS Noise Buster and on my firts attempt, I was immedialtely amazed. It gives me such a smoothness in my pictures without loosing sharpness. For example, with visage close-up where you can see all the skin imperfections of a visage, AKVIS Noise Buster transforms it to a perfect nice smooth young skin and preserves the sharpness of eyes, lips, and all details.

Sometimes you get a very bad JPEG image file.

At first sight it looks not so bad, but if you zoom a little, you'll see the typically square-pixellated design which can be found on bad JPEG's.

Click the image to open its larger copy in a new window

That's when the AKVIS Noise Buster plug-in can be very helpful.

• Step 1. Load the JPEG file into Adobe Photoshop. Call the AKVIS Noise Buster plug-in (you just have to choose in the main Photoshop Menu "Filter->AKVIS->Noise Buster").
• Step 2. In the Navigator, push the slider to the right until you very well see the JPEG Artifacts in the main window.
  
• Step 3. Press the button Automatic Filtering.
• Step 4. Select an area in the main window for well seeing the differences between the processed and the unprocessed part of the image.
  
• Step 5. If the result of the filter satisfyes you, click on the button and examine again your image, remaining in the AKVIS Noise Buster plug-in.
• Step 6. You find it OK? Then click on the button.

  Click the image to open its larger copy in a new window

• Step 7. Now you can decide to try a more powerful effect of the plug-in. Then you go into the History palette of Photoshop and click on the first history state (here "Photo SCKP0198"). So you return to the original state of the photo.
  
• Step 8. Call the AKVIS Noise Buster plug-in again and choose more powerful settings.
  

  Click on the and buttons again and you get a more corrected image. Perhaps you'll find this one is too much corrected.

  
• Step 9. In any case, if you compare the original image and the firstly corrected one,

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  you see that the correction is good on some parts of the image (the posts and the sign) and too strong on some other parts (trees, grass...).

  

  The solution will be to isolate these parts from one another.

• Step 10. Make a selection of the parts to be corrected. The best way is the Quick Mask Mode Method, which is described on the AKVIS Web site at the following address: http://akvis.com/en/photoshop-tips/selection-tools.php.

  I choosed a yellow color for highlighting the unselected area.

  

  But it's up to you to choose another color and to highlight the selected area. Personally I usually try both methods and two or 3 different colors on the same image, depending on the dominant color of the image on which I make a selection. For changing these settings you only have to double-click on the Quick Mask Mode button in the bottom of the toolbox.

  
• Step 11. Then press Ctrl+J on the keyboard. You get a copy of the selected parts on a new layer.
  
• Step 12. ou apply the AKVIS Noise Buster plug-in (as described here before) on layer 1 only and you get an excellent image, where the posts and the sign are corrected and the grass remains perfect.

  Click the image to open its larger copy in a new window