Reduce Noise in Photoshop CS6

Edited by Freya, Amanda, Eng

You're watching VisiHow. In this video, I'm going to show you how you can reduce noise in an image in Photoshop CS6 on Windows 7. To begin, you should have a document open. Either create a new one or open an existing document. We've shown you how to do this in other tutorials. We have a document open that has one layer. If your document has more than one layer, make sure you've selected the layer you want to be editing and not possibly a background layer. That can cause problems later on.

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Steps

  1. 1
    Click "Filter"
    .
    It is located in the navigation bar that runs along the top of the program window.
    Reduce noise in Photoshop CS6.mp4-canvas41 924708.jpg
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  2. 2
    Hover over "Noise"
    .
    This brings up a dropdown menu.
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  3. 3
    Click "Reduce Noise"
    .
    It is the last option.
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  4. 4
    View the preview
    .
    A preview of the image is showing on the left of the menu. This means we don't have to move the menu out of the way to see the image. Reducing noise is really useful if we've taken a photo and there's low lighting. This tends to put a lot of different colors in the background, which makes the image look very grainy. To make the quality a little bit better, this feature is useful.
    Reduce noise in Photoshop CS6.mp4-canvas65 31152.jpg
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  5. 5
    Click, hold, and drag to move the preview image around
    .
    Reduce noise in Photoshop CS6.mp4-canvas75 15544.jpg
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  6. 6
    Click the plus sign at the bottom to zoom in
    .
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  7. 7
    Click the minus sign at the bottom to zoom out
    .
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  8. 8
    Click the circle next to "Basic" or "Advanced" on the right to determine which settings are available
    .
    For this demonstration, we will stick with "Basic" because it's unlikely we would need "Advanced".
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  9. 9
    Check that the "Settings" are on "Default"
    .
    Now let's start to edit the image.
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  10. 10
    Click and drag the slider beneath "Strength"
    .
    The lower the number, the less strength, and the higher the number, the more strength.
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  11. 11
    We can just click in the white box and type in a number as well
    .
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  12. 12
    Click and drag the slider beneath "Preserve Details"
    .
    It's normally 60, but maybe we are not so keen on it and want to reduce it. Reducing it softens the image.
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  13. 13
    Drag the slider under "Preserve Details" farther to the right to sharpen the image
    .
    Again, we can also click in the box and type a number as well.
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  14. 14
    Look at "Reduce Color Noise"
    .
    This is what happens, as we mentioned, when we have a sort of grainy dark background. It will add other colors, like pinks and greens. This makes the image look distorted.
    Reduce noise in Photoshop CS6.mp4-canvas130 918986.jpg
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  15. 15
    Drag the slider to the left to reduce the color noise reduction
    .
    Reduce noise in Photoshop CS6.mp4-canvas140 605929.jpg
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  16. 16
    Drag the slider to the right to increase the reduction in color noise
    .
    Again, we can just type a number in the adjacent box.
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  17. 17
    Drag the slider under "Sharpen Details"
    .
    Dragging to the left softens the image, while dragging to the right sharpens it.
    Reduce noise in Photoshop CS6.mp4-canvas161 284742.jpg
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  18. 18
    Click "OK" to apply the changes to the image
    .
    Alternatively, click "Cancel" to avoid changing the image.
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  19. 19
    Look at the image
    .
    The program has updated the canvas.
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  20. 20
    This is a VisiHow video
    .
    I've just shown you how you can despeckle an image or reduce noise in Photoshop CS6 on Windows 7. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to add them to the section below, and we'll do our best to get back to you.
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Video: Reduce Noise in Photoshop CS6

If you have problems with any of the steps in this article, please ask a question for more help, or post in the comments section below.

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Categories : Software

Recent edits by: Amanda, Freya

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