Most of us have digital camera’s and mega-pixel camera mobile phones and we do keep clicking photos wherever we go. Sometimes, even digital cameras fail to give quality photos due to less amount of light. In some cases, wrong configuration of settings, extra light, automatic mode of camera results in producing grains (kind of dots) all over the photo. Noise is good thing in some cases if you are an artistic photographer, but commonly its of no use to normal people.
So what you do when a photo gets grainy in low light? Curse the camera and accept the photo as it is? Well, here is a simple solution (which is free of-course).

Noiseware Community Edition

Website: Imagenomic
Download Page: Here

Step 0: Download and Install Noiseware Community Edition
Download and install the software from links above. If you don’t know how to download stuff from internet you should read “what is download?” followed by “download managers”. I recommend FreeDownloadManager.

Step 1: Using Noiseware

Open Noiseware Community Edition which should show you this window: (Click on image for bigger version)

This screen needs us to press OK button every time as we are using free edition (not much trouble, is it?).
Now you will have to drag and drop photo in this window or use OPEN button or use File Menu-> Open.
Note: Noiseware is mostly useful for fixing grainy images and noise problems. There are some types noises but I don’t think we need to know technical theory stuff for now. So open photos and proceed to next step.

Step 2: Processing (Clicking a button ONLY)

Now we have this window: (See bigger version and notice grains and dots in image)

Here you can use set of predefined noise filters(see step Extra) Next is simple, just find GO button and press it. Its simple. Everything is automated. In this step, the software uses algorithms and stuff developed by Imagenomic experts to process the photo.

Step 3: Final

Now thing you see is cleaned photo which is far more excellent than original one. You can now save the photo with different name.(So that you don’t lose original photo). After Processing:(Click to enlarge)

Step Extra: More Options

You can just use DEFAULT settings in most of cases. There are few more options available if you click button labeled “Noise Filter” near to GO button. You will need some extra knowledge to use them. But believe me, we generally don’t need them.

You can find a great article about this at Connected Photographer. Any doubts? Fire away. And last but not least, don’t forget to use PICASA for further retouching and processing.

I use these softwares myself. You can see my photoblog here The Perspective.

Cheers. Happy Processing.

( Note: For screen shots I use FastStone Capture Free and Thanks to Hemant for allowing me to take his photo. Well I asked permission later )

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