I've tried the lot: GEM, SHO, ROC, and GEMAirBrush. From what I can
tell, GEM is a little agressive at default settings for grain removal
when compared to NoiseNinja, NeatImage, or GrainSurgery (the last is my
favorite for film). SHO may do something that a curves adjustment
doesn't do for shadows/hilights, but it's minor (curves are much
faster). ROC does do some things for old slides/negs that would take
a bit more fussing with using standard photoshop. Airbrush, though, is
pretty nifty for a quick global facial touchup, even without a mask.
One thing I like about GEM is that it can bite into shadow noise or
things like blue sky pretty effectively, but both require a mask.
And, for what it's worth, Digital Light and Color's Color Mechanic is
the single most useful plug I've ever encountered for the photographer.
It can do things pecisely that I've never been able to do with
masks+curves+levels. Truely an amazing plug, and I've tried a BUNCH of
them. Rare is the scan I'm working on that doesn't pass thru Color
Mechanic. I urge you all to try it.
-Lon
Bob Shell wrote:
You should have included the URL:
http://www.asf.com
They have free trial downloads of a bunch of nifty products.
Bob
On Feb 14, 2006, at 11:28 PM, William Robb wrote:
On the advice of one of my customers, I downloaded and tried Kodak's
"Digital Gem" plugin for Photoshop.
It looks like a pretty good noise reducer that is easy enough to use.
Results with skin tones can be cotrolled right from just a little
smoothing to full polyethylene, depending on your taste.
The demo version leaves a watermark on the image, but it gives a good
enough demonstration.
The download is less than 3mb.
