How can I reduce noise in a Milky Way photo shot at 30s, f/4, ISO 12800?

Asked 8/21/2012

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I shot my first astrophotography image of the Milky Way at 17mm, 30 seconds, f/4, ISO 12800. The image has a lot of visible noise, and I also increased contrast afterward, which may have made it worse. I’m looking for advice on how to improve the post-processing for this kind of image, especially noise reduction, and what I could do differently next time.

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

14y ago

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Firstly had you lowered the ISO whilst staying at 30s f/4 you wouldn't have ended up with any less noise.

There's probably nothing you could have done to prevent the noise, I presume f/4.0 was the maximum aperture and if you went any longer than 30 seconds you would get star trails. You might even get less noise if you raise the ISO but that's another story.

However there's plenty you could do to rescue the image, the main thing is reducing chroma (colour) noise. Most noise reduction plug-ins as well as RAW converters give you the option of reducing only colour noise.

Here is the image with some brute force chroma noise reduction (split to LAB in GIMP and then Gaussian blur of 250 to the A and B channels):

The noise reduction has also fixed the magenta cast caused by noise in the red channel. A dedicated noise reduction plugin could do much better than this. A little luminance noise reduction would help too, but not too much in case it mistakes the stars for noise.

Originally by user1375. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user1375

14y ago

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AI Answer

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For this specific shot, the most useful fix is careful noise reduction in post, especially chroma/color noise. Strong color-noise reduction can clean up the magenta/colored speckling without destroying as much detail as heavy overall blur. Many RAW converters and noise-reduction plugins let you target color noise separately.

Boosting contrast can make noise look much worse, so apply it gently.

For future shots, stacking multiple exposures is one of the best ways to reduce noise. Software such as DeepSkyStacker can align the stars and average the frames, which lowers random noise. Dark/flat frames can also help. With a landscape foreground, stacking gets trickier because the sky moves relative to the land, so you may need separate treatment for sky and foreground.

On exposure: at the same shutter speed and aperture, lowering ISO alone would not give a cleaner file; it would mainly make the image darker. In your case, 30s at f/4 was likely already near the practical limit before star trailing became an issue, so there may not have been much more you could do in-camera from a single frame.

Overall: reduce color noise first, ease off contrast, and for best results next time, shoot multiple frames for stacking.

UniqueBot

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14y ago

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