Hi there, this is Unmesh from PiXimperfect and today I'm going to share with you a simple
photography trick to remove harsh noise with Photoshop.
So let's say you're in a situation where there isn't much light and the pictures are coming
out noisy and you cannot even do long exposure, this technique is for you.
Doesn't matter what you're taking your photos with, whether it's a phone, a camera or even
a webcam, anything will work.
So without any further ado, let's get started.
Before we begin, my friend, we need to understand there are two parts to this technique - the
photography part and the Photoshop part.
In the photography part, you're in a situation, let's say, you only have your phone, it's
very dark, pictures are coming out noisy, all you got to do is to keep your camera stabilized
or your phone stabilized at the same place and just take a bunch of photos.
That's it.
Even if it's coming out noisy, don't worry about it.
Just take a bunch of photos.
If you can stabilize your shot.
Amazing.
Let's say you have a tripod.
Amazing.
GorillaPod or a table or a railing where you can keep your camera.
Great.
If you cannot do that, no problem at all, let's say you're taking photos with your phone,
just keep your hand as stabilized as possible and take 15 to 25 or higher number of shots.
Once you have taken all the shots, bring them into your computer.
And now let's begin with what we have to do with Photoshop.
So here we are back in the magical world of Lightroom this time and we have all our photos
open right here.
If you have a look, it has a ton of noise.
Now, if you're worrying about not having Lightroom or you just have photos on a folder or something,
don't worry about it.
I'm going to tell you what to do if you just have them in a folder.
But, in case you're using Lightroom to import your photos and keeping them organized, this
is the way you do it.
As you can see you have a ton of noise.
This is actually one of my speakers, I took a photo of it.
And I've taken a lot of photos actually, if you have a look at this.
We won't be using all of them.
The more photos we use, the more cleaner it's going to be, but, it's going to take a longer
time.
So, for the sake of keeping this tutorial short, we're not going to use a lot of photos.
But if you have a close look, look at the amount of noise.
I've actually turned off Noise Reduction.
Look at this, that is a whole lot of noise.
So all you gotta do is to open a bunch of photos.
So I'm going to choose the first 15, or let's go with the first 20.
So I'm going to choose the first one, click on the first one, hold the Shift key, I'm
going to click on the last one, or in this case, the 20th.
And all we got to do is to right click on this and then we need to open all of this
as layers in Photoshop.
And to do that, just go to Edit In - Open as Layers in Photoshop.
And now Photoshop will do its job automatically.
So it will slowly and gradually open all of these images on top of one another inside
of the Layers panel.
All this is 16 bit.
So it took a little while.
To make the tutorial a little faster and shorter, let's change it to 8 bit.
Let's go to Image - Mode and then just change it to 8 bit.
You can keep it 16 bit if you want to.
Now, in my case, I actually used a tripod to take all of these shots and that's why
all of them are now aligned.
So if I turn this off, turn this one off.
As you can see, all of these photos are aligned.
They're not moving as like turn them off and on.
But if you had taken them handheld, you might see a little bit of movement.
And in that case, you might have to align them using Photoshop.
So let's say if they were handheld and not aligned, you can select all of those layers
by selecting the first one, hold the Shift key, select the last one and then go to Edit
- Auto Align Layers, keep it at Auto and hit OK.
It will automatically align all the layers for you.
But mine is already aligned.
So I don't have to do that.
Now once aligned, we just have to group all of these, but just in a Smart Object, not
a layer group.
Alright, so select the first one, hold the Shift key, select the last one and then right
click on them and choose Convert to Smart Object.
Now it will group all of these layers into one Smart Object, as you can see, right there.
If you double click on the thumbnail, another document will show up with all the layers,
so it still has every content in it, as you can see right there.
Alright, so we can actually close that.
Now, we just have to make a copy for backup.
So select this layer, Ctrl or Command + J to make a copy, and let's name this Noise
Free.
All we got to do now is to use one of the stacking capabilities of Smart Objects.
So let's go to Layer and inside of that Smart Objects, have a look at this, Stack Mode.
There's a lot of ways which we can stack and maybe this is for future tutorials.
But the one thing we are concerned about right here is Mean.
So select Mean and it will average out all the noise in all of those pictures.
Have a look at this.
It's done.
Let's have a closer look.
So here is the before, here is the after.
Actually, the noise did go a lot.
See this logo right there.
Here's the before.
You couldn't even read it properly.
Turn it on.
Look at this, before - after, before - after.
So much more cleaner.
Have a look at this part of the image, this nail, right there on the wall.
Here's the before, here's the after.
So much noise removal so easily.
All you got to do is take a bunch of photos.
Now, the more photos you take, the cleaner it's going to get just keep in mind that all
of the photos are aligned perfectly or Photoshop aligns them perfectly.
Now Photoshop cannot align your photos if you change the angle on every photo.
So be a little careful.
Take steady shots as much as you can, and you're good to go.
So that's how to remove noise using the Mean Stacking Mode in Photoshop.
Of course, there are a lot of other ways to do it.
This is just one of them.
The only problem with this technique is that, let's say, there's a moving object in the
photo and we took a bunch of photos.
Even if the camera is stabilized, you won't be able to Mean at all because the object
is moving.
Then it will become a whole mess.
So this technique is limited only to stationary objects.
That's the only drawback.
I hope this video helped you and if it did, make sure to give us a like and also don't
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miss any other future tip, trick or tutorial.
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Thanks for all your support.
Thank you for watching.
I'll see you guys in my next one.
Till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating.
Let's do a quick little recap.
First of all, bring all the photos to your computer, open it up in Lightroom, then import
all of them into Photoshop as layers.
Now, if you're not using Lightroom, here's how to do it.
All you got to do is to go to File - Scripts and then Load Files into Stack.
Then you can select your individual photos or you can also open a folder.
So let's say we want to choose a folder, click on Browse and then I'm going to choose the
folder which has all the photos of the speaker.
So this is the folder, hit OK.
And every image in that folder should show up as it did.
Now you can simply hit OK and all of them will open as layers in Photoshop.
Once aligned, again select all of them and convert it into a Smart Object.
Right click on it and choose Convert to Smart Object.
It will convert all of them into one single Smart Object.
And then make a copy of that Smart Object just to reference the before and after if
you want to, and then simply go to Layers - Smart Object, and inside of that Stack Mode
and Mean.
Select that and you're pretty much good
to go.