How to Avoid and Reduce Noise in Your Digital Images?

You talk about sound or digital image, noise is never pleasant. And the worse part, it is unavoidable. Every electronic device has a component that receives or transmits signals. Noise surfaces differently for different devices such as in mobile phones it is the distorted voice, in music players it is the hissing sound in the background, and in digital photographs it is the presence of tiny speckles or grains on theie surface.

There are some factors which are responsible for significant level of noise such as a bad whether condition may refrain you from watching your favorite season, and low-light conditions may spoil your photograph (thanks to high ISO) and make you doubt on your photography skills.

Advancement in technologies has managed to keep noise to negligent levels as far as popular electronic goods are concerned. If you have shelled out some serious money for a latest DSLR, you would hardly require this article. Now-a-days the camera sensors are well-equipped to tackle adverse conditions, not particularly termed as good for photography. But if you mainly use your point-and-shoot camera or only a decent-enough DSLR, I will tell you the simple steps through which you can reduce noise in your digital images.

Tip1: Keep ISO to minimum possible

This is probably the easiest and most effective way of reducing noise. ISO is the measure of the sensitivity of camera sensors towards light. In low-light conditions, one may tend to increase ISO but this may lead to an increased level of noise.

ISO can be lowered without hampering the right-exposure factor of the equation. Read on!

Tip 2: Achieve Right Exposure by Decreasing Shutter Speed

If you have lowered the ISO number then you have basically decreased the sensitivity of camera sensors towards light, and in order to balance this out, you must allow the camera to gather more light. You can achieve this by reducing the shutter speed of your camera.

In this way, the shutter will remain open for a longer time and the camera will take more time to capture the scene. And you have guessed it right! The more the light gathered by camera sensors, the better the exposure. But don’t overdo it otherwise the photos may come out as over-bright or over-exposed.

For the right exposure, strike a balance between ISO, and Shutter Speed. Is that all? No.

Tip 3: Use a tripod stand 

Shakes or vibrations do no good to your photos especially when you are using very low shutter speed. As mentioned earlier, decreasing the shutter speed will make your camera taking a longer time to capture a scene and if the camera is taking more time, any vibration (even the natural shake of your hand) can introduce blur.

To counter this, use a tripod-stand. So ideally, to capture a beautiful scenic beauty in a cloudy day or at night without noise or blur, set ISO to a minimum, reduce shutter-speed, and let the camera rest on your tripod.

However, if you are shooting objects that are in motion, a low shutter speed is destined to introduce blur because camera will take a long enough time and before it could finish clicking an image, the object would have moved considerably. So, in this case, you are better off increasing the shutter speed.

Tip 4: Use a Third-Party Noise reduction software like Noise Reducer Pro

You have done it all but the grains are still bothering you. No problem! You have not run out of options.

You can use any of the noise reduction software, desktop or smartphone based. Some popular ones are Adobe Lightroom, DeNoise, Noise Reducer Pro etc. While the first two alternatives demand a certain level of expertise from users, Noise Reducer Pro is a completely automatic option for non-techy people, and all you need to do is select a photo and the app will work on it to reduce noise in photos.

Noise Reducer Pro is available for Mac and Android.

So in these 4 tips I have explained how you can get brilliant photographs without needing to change your camera. I hope you get better results by following these tips.