Reduce Color Noise

We all have been there, images provide by our client with an important amount of Noise. There are ways to deal with it and the process depends on the Noise involved.

In this particular case we are going to deal with COLOR NOISE.

Color Noise is seen as a spray of color pixels, seen usually as dots of yellow, green and red. Almost all digital cameras produce some kind of Noise especially in low lights ambient.

Step 1 Convert to LAB mode

Image > Mode > Lab Color.

This changes the image from RGB to Lab Color. Lab Color has 3 elements:

a)    Lightness

b)   A= red and green

c)   B= blue and yellow

All the image retail is stored in the first channel, so you can apply a lot of Gaussian Blur to the other two channels.

Step 2 Apply Gaussian Blur

Go to the channels palette and select the A channel. Apply Gaussian Blur

Repeat with the B channel

Step 3 Convert to RGB

Image > Mode > RGB

Now in the new composite image all the color Noise has gone.