Mourning Dove final

With all the snow we have been having, most of my photography has been photographing the birds that are coming to my deck feeder. I have had little son and most the time it is been dark due to the snow and clouds. I've had to use higher ISO and probably could've gone higher than I have. The main problem with using higher ISO is noise. If you use either Lightroom of Photoshop for your post-processing, Lightroom develop module and Adobe ACR are the same and give you the option how to remove noise. I am going to show you today a different way to remove noise utilizing a method that I learned from Artie Morris and Denise Ippolito. The methodology for me requires both Lightroom and Photoshop.

My settings were 1/400 sec-f/5.6-ISO 2000, D810, 70-200 +2x converter at 260 mm

After importing my photos into Lightroom and doing the initial post-processing but not sharpening or doing noise reduction.

Mourning Dove original

Next, I export the image into Photoshop, where I do any cleanup on the image that is necessary, and then I convert the image into a smart object.

I ran my 2 favorite plug-in filters, Topaz Clarity and Topaz Detail, after running Detail. It does leave more noise in the photo. Previously I removed the noise by using the masking portion of detail or using Topaz Denoise to remove noise.

My steps now is using the quick celestial action tool I select out the object that I do not want to change the noise in, refined the edge, invert the selection and paste the selection in a new layer. Then I utilize the surface blur filter to get rid of the noise. Once you get the hang of it. It really doesn't take much additional time and does an excellent job.