Features
- Highest-quality noise reduction and sharpening
- Device noise profiles
- Photoshop plug-in and standalone application
- Actions and batch processing
- Instant visual feedback
Highest-quality noise reduction and sharpening
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Advanced noise filter
Neat Image is programmed to filter noise more effectively, and preserving more image details, than current research has indicated is possible. A recent development in noise reduction that is usually regarded as state of the art is wavelet-based denoising. However, Neat Image uses an even more efficient proprietary approach to noise reduction. Our noise filtering method distinguishes more effectively between noise and details in noisy images than wavelet denoising. As a result, Neat Image reduces noise better and preserves more true details in digital photographs.
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Complete control over noise reduction
Neat Image provides you with direct control over all noise filter settings. You can adjust the noise level estimation and specify how much of the detected noise must be removed for every color channel component and spatial frequency component of input image. The default filter settings work very well for most images. But if you want to tweak the filter settings, then all the controls are directly available.
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Smart sharpening filter
Neat Image provides an intelligent sharpening filter. This sharpening filter works together with the noise filter to avoid noise, and makes the actual image details look sharper without any degradation of image quality (which is usually inevitable with noisy images). Neat Image sharpening also has a halo-free mode which reduces halos that tend to appear along edges in images which are sharpened.
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Support for 16/32-bit per channel images *
Besides regular 8-bit images (like most JPEGs), the Pro edition of Neat Image also supports 16-bit and 32-bit per channel format in both RGB and grayscale images. This allows Neat Image to process higher bitdepth images from modern DSLRs without loss of accuracy, support HDR workflow using 32-bit data, and integrate better with modern image editors like Photoshop CC.
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Speeding up with GPU acceleration
Neat Image can take good advantage of your computer’s graphics hardware and multi-core capabilities. We process images faster on computers with modern NVIDIA GPUs supporting CUDA technology, a large number of AMD video cards via OpenCL and Metal as well as GPUs integrated into Apple Silicon chips. In addition, Neat Image can use multiple GPUs and combine the computation power of GPUs with regular multi-core CPU for maximum performance.
Device noise profiles
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Device noise profiles
Neat Image produces better noise reduction by being aware of your imaging equipment. Neat Image uses device noise profiles which are reusable analyses of noise properties of a particular image acquisition device — such as a digital camera or a scanner — working in a certain mode. The noise profile makes Neat Image noise reduction custom-tailored for example to a specific digital camera and specific shooting mode. This provides the highest accuracy of noise reduction for images produced by that camera.
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Auto Profile to automatically build profiles for your camera or scanner
Neat Image can automatically make necessary noise analysis of the input image from your camera or scanner to build a custom noise profile specifically for this image.
You can also manually select a featureless image area for noise analysis and let Neat Image do the rest automatically.
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Batch Profiler
Neat Image includes a special Calibration Target to shoot a series of test shots and then automatically build noise profiles for the whole set using the Batch Profiler. This helps you easily develop your own set of profiles for your digital camera (or scanner).
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Profile library: a rich set of free pre-built noise profiles
Profile library contains many free pre-built sets of noise profiles for digital cameras and scanners prepared by Neat Image users and shared with the community.
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Profile matching
When a ready-made profile set is available, Neat Image can automatically select the profile that best matches the input image based on its EXIF data with the help of the Auto Match feature. This capability is especially useful in batch processing and Photoshop actions.
Photoshop plug-in and standalone application
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Neat Image standalone
Neat Image is available as a standalone application. You do not have to be a user of any particular image editor to make your images look cleaner, sharper, better. Just download Neat Image standalone — available for Windows, OS X, and Linux — and you can start improving your image library right away.
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Photoshop plug-in
Neat Image is also available as a plugin for Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements, or another compatible editor). Neat Image is fully integrated with Photoshop: you can apply noise reduction exactly where it is required: in a layer, channel or selection. Using Photoshop's selection tools, you can apply noise reduction with different strength to different parts of the image. You can use Neat Image Pro plug-in as a smart filter in Photoshop CS3 or newer.
Any file format supported by the plug-in host can be processed by the Neat Image plug-in. For example, you can open a PSD, TIFF, JPEG, JPEG2000, RAW, DNG, etc., image in Photoshop and then directly process it with the Neat Image plug-in. This streamlines the use of Neat Image noise reduction in your workflow.
Actions and batch processing
Neat Image standalone
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Powerful batch processing features *
Save time, increase production and reduce errors by taking advantage of Neat Image’s batch processing capabilities. Create several filtration tasks (one task is one input image) and let Neat Image process the tasks one after another. You can create such tasks manually one by one or automatically using the Batch tool.
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Background processing
Don’t let image processing take over your workflow. Neat Image can automatically process batches of images in the background. Meanwhile you can still use Neat Image to prepare new images and batches, manually process individual images, or verify processing results. You can also use other applications, too, since Neat Image behaves nicely in a multi-task environment.
Photoshop plug-in
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Support for Photoshop actions *
Neat Image is integrated with Photoshop’s actions. You can record a Photoshop action with Neat Image plug-in and later automatically re-apply (or play) it to other images. Neat Image behavior in actions is fully configurable.
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Support for Photoshop-based batching *
Neat Image is integrated with Photoshop’s batch processing. Once you have recorded Neat Image into a Photoshop action, you can use that action in Photoshop's batch processing to automatically process many images.
Instant visual feedback
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Easy preview for any selected image area
Neat Image provides instant feedback of filtering results so you can achieve just the appearance you need. When adjusting the filter settings, you can immediately see the preview results in any area if the selected image or in the whole visible part of the image. You can manually select any area or just move across the image and zoom in to specific parts to get a better feeling of how the filtered image will look like as compared with the original.
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Channel and frequency component preview
Per-channel and per-frequency preview modes help to identify most noisy components that require special attention. You can adjust the filter settings corresponding to those components and immediately see the results.
NOTE:
* Some features are available only in certain editions of Neat Image. Please see the detailed feature map.