cgbeige wrote:I'm a professional retoucher - here's the best technique for removing fireflies in my opinion (This is is less destructive than Despeckle, which is better for removing halftone scans, not specks but it's a dated filter and not as good as other noise reduction filters). Use the Dust and Scratches filter with a high threshold setting. It will leave everything untouched and just zap the fireflies:
Before:
http://grab.by/3QbY
After:
http://grab.by/3Qc1
Obviously that's too noisy for a final image but it was just to show that Dust and Scratches can preserve image detail (low contrast detail)
So you can have relatively grainy images and only remove the fireflies. If you want to remove the grain overall, I recommend the Neat Image Photoshop filter. It's very good and I worked at a film magazine (tons of grainy images) and this was the best of the lot (Noise Ninja is good not as good IMO).
thanks, that indeed looks like a much better technique
Radiance