Dfine 1.0

nik Multimedia, Inc.

www.nikmultimedia.com

Reviewed by Maureen Shannon, NJPCUG

Dfine is a filter that reduces noise and other unwanted artifacts and helps the user control the image details.

“What is noise? Simply put, noise is image detail that does not appear exactly as it was intended to appear. These small detail errors appear as part of the photographic detail of the digital image and become visible as bright, colored, or dark specks. When visible, noise can distract the viewer and create an unnatural appearance in a digital image.” (nik Web Site)

Noise is caused by various factors such as the presence of light at the time the photo was taken, exposure time, temperature of the sensor (CMOS, CCD), and also the way the sensor processes the image. (Complete information including photos are available on the nik Multimedia web site. Their information is thorough and very helpful. I recommend visiting their site if you are interested in learning more about their filters and how they work.)

There are two types of noise. Chrominance Noise is noise that is looks like small off-colored spots (or specks) in the image. Luminance Noise looks like small dark spots often resembling grain in a photo. You may be familiar with adding noise to an image for an effect such as stars in a dark sky; Dfine will help you remove the unwanted noise that spoils your photo. It also allows the user to make adjustments to the exposure and tonal adjustments.

I have been familiar with adding the noise effect for many years. I first discovered this effect in an early version of Micrografx Picture Publisher. Noise reduction was something I learned about later on; more so when I started to work with digital images. Spots appearing in photos can be difficult to remove and finding the optimal tool for achieving this goal may be difficult. Generic tools do a fairly good job sometimes but nik’s Dfine adds a multi-level series of tools that remove the many unwanted elements that noise throws into your image and impressively improves the quality of the image.

In Photoshop two separate sets of tools are installed. The first is available as all other plug-ins are; it is located in the filters drop down menu. The other knows as “Dfine Selective” can be found under the File drop down menu – File>Automate>Dfine Selective.

↓:View of Photoshop CS with an open image with arrows indicating where Chrominance Noise is plus the Dfine Selective tool palette. The second image is an enlargement of a section of the image.

  ↓:This is an example of sky noise that is very strong. The sky is covered in color spots.

Using the Dfine Selective Sky tool and the Paint brush, seen in the tool palette to the left, the noise can be removed. The Selective tools include a button to launch the filter’s interface (Dfine button), along with buttons that adjust the background, hot pixels, JPG artifacts, hair & fine structures, skin, sky, shadows, strong noise, and normalize. The Paint brush is used to work on the affected area, the Erase brush removes sections that have been worked on, the Fill option fills the area with enhancement, and the Clear is used to remove sections that have been worked on. Using the Discard or Apply options you can add the changes or chose to discard them and return to the original image.

This is the workspace the opens when Dfine is selected from the filter menu. There are four options here for removing noise. The types of noise are: Luminance, Chrominance, Contrast & Light, and Color Cast & Color Balance. Each of these choices has a drop down menu that shows the selection as off, has a quick fix option, print options, and other various adjustments to chose from.  It also has a selection of view options, available in the “Mode” drop down menu, besides the side by side comparison shown in the image above. Each tool has an explanation of what it is used for and why you would use it. By adjusting the sliders, you control the strength of the adjustments. When the image needs more detailed adjustments, you can use the Selective tools to make the improvements. Other options include the ability to load a camera profile, save one, load another save profile, or access the help files.

Analysis Mode: Across the top are the settings for the analysis mode. Shown in the left image below in blue spots are areas of high luminosity. Using the Contrast & Light Selection – the Global Counter Light slider moved to right removed the blue area.

If the areas appear in red, they show shadows and low light. Clicking on the “Eye” icon above each image selects this low and high contrast feature of the analysis mode.

The first icon on across the top opens the histogram feature in the analysis mode.

Side by side views of before and after the high contrast adjustments made using the “Analysis Mode”to reduce the areas of high luminosity. Some changes may be difficult to see due to various monitor settings but if you look at the shadows and light on the bricks you can see the changes clearly.

Another feature of Dfine is the availability of “Camera Profiles”. They are available as a separate purchase and you can use multiple profiles. This further refines the applications ability to repair you images. Each profile is tailored to a specific camera and how it processes the images. My camera is an older model and there is no profile for it so I was unable to test the camera profile options.

I have reviewed several nik Multimedia products and have been quite impressed with each of them. I use the Color Efex Pro all the time and combined with the Sharpener Pro and Dfine, I have a very nice selection of tools that help me enhance and refine my digital photos. I have tried to express the importance of having good tools in my various reviews. The better your digital toolbox is the better your ability to improve the quality of your images will be.  I mentioned above that visiting the nik Multimedia web site would be very beneficial too. They have examples of how their products work, tutorials, help files, and product manuals, this is an excellent source of information. I found their resources very helpful and extremely useful in helping me to understand the applications and gain the most from using them properly.

Several images used in this review were examples from the nik Multimedia web site. I used their images in my tests as well as my own. Color examples of the images in the review can be found at (www.njpcug.org/graphics/reviews.htm

One last example: This photo is mine. In the cropped section, I have outlined the areas that were pixilated and had a lot of noise. JJ’s arm had pixilation and the baby’s arms and legs were other areas that had jpeg artifacts. The rest of the image had a lot of noise. There are also water drops on baby Becky’s face, they belong there! Using Dfine, I was able to reduce the excessive spotting and the result is the image on the right. It’s clearer. I also used Dfine’s Contrast & Light settings to brighten the image. (Photo of Janice Fung-Yong & baby Becky Yong – friends of ours in Singapore )

Dfine is a Photoshop compatible plug-in. It must be installed into your image editor in order to use it. It requires Windows 98/Me/NT/2000//XP or Mac OS 9-x/OS- X, Photoshop 5.5 or later or Photoshop Elements.