Dfine
Dfine lets you improve the quality of your digital photos by eliminating noise while maintaining detail and sharpness. It can do this on specific parts of the image or across the entire image. It lets you choose exactly how much and where to apply the noise reduction.
Dfine allows you to correct all kinds of noise: luminance noise, chrominance noise, and JPEG artifacts. It has fully professional features such as noise analysis, with optimization using camera-specific profiles. With these tools you can control the relationships between detail, noise, and color, thereby maximizing the quality of the image.
To keep noise at bay, Nik Software's User Guide mentions "4 Golden Rules," namely: 1) turn off in-camera noise reduction, 2) turn off in-camera sharpening, 3) use flash in low light, and 4) avoid above-average in-camera contrast settings.
Nik Software has deployed its U Point Technology in Dfine, which means you can easily select parts of the image by using control points (rather than worrying about masks and layers). This makes Dfine particularly flexible and easy to use, especially with the new, resizable interface that graces Define 2.0.
Comment
One improvement to the original (and admired) Dfine software is the new reduction engine that retains even more detail when it reduces image noise. Other features include automatic camera profiling, obviating the need to purchase camera profiles, and multi-image support when working with Adobe Lightroom and Apple's Aperture.
Dfine is one of the leading noise reduction packages and goes further than anything you can find in standard photo editors.
Highly recommended.
Tech info
- Plugs into: Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom and Apple's Aperture
- OS: Windows XP onward; Mac OS X
- Price level: Approx. $100
Nik Software
Famous for its U Point image area selection technology, Nik Software is headquartered in San Diego, California with branch offices in Germany. Established in 1995, it is a privately held company.
Note: Amazon price (see right) is well below list price.
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