Astrophotography Noise Reduction Battle! TopazDenoise, PhotoNinja, and Lightroom!

Disclaimer: I am terrible at noise reduction - so I wanted to find a tool that would let me easily deal with noise in my images!
After comments on my previous video ( • AI Noise Reduction?! T... ) asking to compare with other solutions like Lightroom and PhotoNinja, here is my comparison on very noisy data! Two objects: the Rho Ophiuchi nebulae, and the Crescent Nebula, both very noisy.
05:03 Lightroom, Rho Ophiuchi
08:46 Lightroom, Crescent Nebula
11:48 PhotoNinja, Rho Ophiuchi
16:19 PhotoNinja, Crescent Nebula
18:27 TopazDenoise, Rho Ophiuchi
21:30 TopazDenoise, Crescent Nebula
23:17 Comparison, Rho Ophiuchi
26:30 Comparison, Crescent Nebula
30:15 Final Images
The original images and their processed counterparts available here (for PhotoNinja, I used Gimp to get back to sRGB): drive.google.com/file/d/10kiK...
Happy Noise Reduction!
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#astrophotography

[@Fredruiz622]

Cuiv, fantastic video, very nice job!!!

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Thank you!

[@BrokenPik]

Very kool Kurt ... keep em coming ..

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

I definitely will! Thank you!

[@BrokenPik]

@@CuivTheLazyGeek was NGC-6888 taken where you live ? maybe i missed it in the video. it happens . :-)

[@cryptoalchemist10minutes44]

Fantastic! 4th clear night here in the UK. Don't forget Nina Polar Alignment :)

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Thank you! I'm not forgetting NINA's polar alignment! But we are in the rainy season now... so when I have clear skies at night, I want to take advantage of them rather than use something new! But I'll get there :) Clear Skies!

[@davecurtis8833]

If you use Lightroom sharpening make sure you use the masking slider so you only sharpen the edges and not the background. If you hold down the Alt key (windows) while you use the masking slider you can see the mask change in real time.

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Thanks for the tip Dave! Very useful to know - I no longer have Lightroom, but I'll definitely keep it in mind!

[@benda2250]

you should try deepprior and astro-unet. Or a nice mure denoise with PI.

[@davidemancini7853]

Nice video,i have got everything i need with in Pixinsight :)

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

You're a better man than I am! I am so terrible at using the NR tools in PI effectively! The simplicity of TopazDenoise for example is what draws me to it!

[@GioFar]

@@CuivTheLazyGeek TGVDenoise it's tricky at first, the problematic setting is the edge protection, if you get that right it will work well, I use it in CIE mode so that I can control lightness and chrominance separate, set the strength a 1,-1 for starting, smoothness at default, 1000 iterations but automatic convergence on, at default so that it uses just the much he needs without overdoing. To get the value for edge there is a trick, create a preview of the background sky, the bigger the better but don't include nebulosity or stars, then open statistics and set it to analyse the preview in Normalized Real[0,1] scientific notation, then go to the settings icon on the right and set to see the standard deviation, now you just calculate the standard deviation average out of the three channels and use it in tgvdenoise as the edge protection value on the left of the slider, the end part of the number in the statistics that come after the - use it in the number on the right side of the tgvdenoise as negative. Sorry for the long message, hopefully, I wasn't confusing, I wished youtube would let put screenshots.

[@StarlancerAstro]

Try Neatimage, there is a free version that works well and has a lot of options

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

I'll have a look, thanks!

[@StarlancerAstro]

@@CuivTheLazyGeek Yes it really allows tuning of the noise reduction, been using it for years.

[@ASTROPLANETES]

I m using DENOISE AI V2 fantastic tool for denoising

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

It is indeed impressive! I started using it recently on my processed images!

[@pamelawhitfield4570]

Denoise was a game-changer for my processing. I have to say I much prefer the added control the older non-AI version gave you though. The AI is improving but not there yet....

[@angryBOT]

Best noise reduction: Take more subs :P

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Exactly! Also, build an EMP device that will be smart and won't affect either your house or any emergency or critical infrastructure. Run it, and enjoy the milky way from Tokyo :p

[@WiseGuy02]

Dude you need to lock your focus. Too much "breathing".

[@CuivTheLazyGeek]

Yeah fixed in later videos