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I AM GOING TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT REDUCE NOISE. Because I hate pixelly screencap icons. They bother me irrationally. We are going to be using icons of KHARG and HEAT because Heat said it was okay and Kharg apparently likes it when I touch her icons in the interest of random exposition on Photoshop. There will be a bonus shot of LITTLEFOOT.
I love Reduce Noise like I love puppies and this is why:
LOOK AT THOSE PIXELS. WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
I WILL TELL YOU WHAT IS TO BE DONE. But it is hard to show you because my laptop refuses to recognize print screen. You go to FILTER and scroll down to NOISE and you go to REDUCE NOISE and click on it. It is on the BOTTOM of the Noise list.
Filter >>> Noise >>> Reduce Noise
You get THIS.
I'll explain each of the attributes highlighted in red!
Strength refers to how much crazy noise-smoothing you're going to do. I always leave this on 10 because I like EXTREME smoothing.
Preserve Details refers to how crisp the original sharper details are going to stay. You usually want this to be fairly low because you only want the clean lines to pop out. It depends hugely on the picture!
Reduce Color Noise refers to how much you want to tone down dramatic color shifts. I leave this between zero and twenty usually but you honestly don't need to worry about it that much.
Sharpen Details determines how sharp you want those details you preserved to really be!
Remove JPEG Artifact is stupid and you should just avoid it. Checking it has always made my pictures look worse and I have used Reduce Noise on every nonmanga icon I have.
SO LET US SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN I USE SOME FAIRLY NORMAL SETTINGS ON KHARG.
There is a small but appreciable difference!
I'll show you on a couple more.
Man Heat looks sexy there. ANYWAY
In this particular case I didn't like how the reduce noise smoothed out the highlights in his hair, so I just slapped an 80% Lighten layer of the original icon over the smoothed layer, and it kept most of the effect for me. I AM HAPPY. If you are NOT HAPPY there are ways to fix that which don't lose the mild smoothing on the pixels of his face, which is our aim!
And! If you chance to APP FROM LAND BEFORE TIME. You will love this technique because all of the screencaps suck.
OBSERVE
My face looked like that when I saw this image TOO, Littlefoot!
BUT THEN
And then all I have to do is crop, resize, and sharpen again... and mess with Curves and a few other things because I'm picky about the coloring on his icons. BUT STILL. DEAD SIMPLE.
I'm still not totally happy with this, I'll finish it up later. App Ducky and Petrie.
In conclusion I find Reduce Noise a beautiful and versatile thing and if you have CS2 you should consider abusing the heck out of it. Because it is amazing. The end.