Applications Review :)

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Oh boy! Have I ever told you that I've got Adobe Photoshop Plugin to reduce grainy/noise called TopazDeNoise? Well now, After I upgraded my Adobe Lightroom 2 to Adobe Lightroom 3.3, well, I will probably leave my Photoshop Plugin behind or I'll rarely use it. This new Lightroom is bloody awesome. Not only it can reduces grainy/noise but also maintains the details when the photos is zoomed.

Well, reducing grainy is a take and give process. To get the result of clear photo with less grainy, you'll somehow lose the quality/details of the photo. But it's not a big deal, as you can't really notice the different in quality unless you compare it side by side or zoom the photos. Sometimes, after you reduce noise on photo, your photo will looked a bit blur, but I prefer a bit blurred pics rather than grainy pics. It's personal taste, you know. Well, here in Lightroom, you can always adjust it, see how much you want to remove the grainy and the cool thing is, you can always adjust how much you want to keep the details. That is how it works. So, you'll get a good-free-from-grainy-pics with a good details too!

Here are the example. You have to click the photo to view it in a larger version, or else you can't really tell the differences. :)

Original photo. Taken with iPhone 4 in low light, no flash.

With LR 3.

With Perfectly Clear Photoshop Plug-in.

With TopazDeNoise Photoshop Plug-in.

Here for comparison side by side. Click to enlarge.

Well, Perfectly Clear is automatically sharpen the image and brighten it. It's a smart apps, if you busy, in a rush or too lazy to edit the brightness and contrast of your photo, I suggest you to use this. It will makes your life easier in a single click. Well, you can adjust it to your personal taste of course, but why bother to do that when the apps can do it for you, right? But to me, it doesn't really "clear" the noise on photo, considering the name is Perfectly Clear.

For Topaz DeNoise, you can also adjust it manually, how much you want to remove the grainy but, it always blurred your photo badly, I can say-well, after compare it to LR, but I still don't mind-especially when you want to reduce the noise on a pics that full of words, you can see and compare it here. That's why I sharpened it again, that how I usually edited my photos. Removed the grainy first, using Topaz DeNoise then sharpened the image or if it's too dark, I applied perfectly clear first to get a brighten photos and remove some of the grainy, then re-applied Topaz DeNoise to make sure no more grainy left then sharpened the image. Pheww... need some extra steps to make my photo looks nice and good for my eyes to see and yours too, hopefully :) Imagine, if you are DSLR user and you used these great apps on your every photo. I believe all of your photos would be even nicer to see than seeing it with our own eyes! :D

Anyway, if you don't really have "good" eye to see the differences, it's okay, just forget it or else, you can always try these apps and decide which is the best and suits you the most. Maybe, you love the interfaces of one apps more than another or whatever. It's not a final, that LR 3 is the best, you can always apply with all of those apps in your photo and who knows, you'll get nicer result, right? :) For me, LR 3 is producing the clearest photo with better details, and less blurred results in the end, compare to others. Umm... I also want to make a correction for my words above. I will still using my old plugins, since my laptop is running slow if you open several applications all at once, and mostly, I edited my photos on photoshop, well, maybe I'll be too lazy to open LR first then edited more on PS, but, yeah I don't know. When I'm in  a mood, I might be want to use all of them. We'll see. :p

Oh, yeah, if you don't have PS because you find out that the apps takes a lot of spaces in your computer or laptop, well, you should think twice for not having LR, because it's quite light, especially for a smart apps. :)

I tried different pics to get different result.

Zoomed 1:2

There you go... I hope with this little review from me could brighten your day and your photo of course! :D

A good snapshot stops a moment from running away. ---Eudora Welty