Luminar NEO: How to use the Denoise Tool

Photography noise is a natural part of photography, and it's often caused by shooting at a high ISO or in low-light situations. That is why a robust noise reduction tool is now a must for every photo editing software. Luminar NEO offers a simple yet powerful noise reduction tool that you can use to get rid of both grain and colour noise with only a few sliders. Learn more about how to remove noise from your photos with the use of the Denoise Tool in our latest blog post.

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In this article:

• What is the Denoise Tool
• Introducing the Denoise Tool sliders
• Getting started with the Denoise Tool
• Video tutorial
• Luminar NEO

What is the Denoise Tool

You may notice unwanted and distracting noise or grain in your image. This is typically caused by shooting photos with a high ISO setting on a digital camera, but it can also be caused by underexposure or a long shutter speed. An entry-level consumer camera is more likely to exhibit noise problems than a professional camera. Fortunately, Luminar NEO offers an easy tool to reduce or remove unwanted noise - The Denoise Tool. This tool is easy to use and allows you to remove the noise from the whole image or from selected areas.

Introducing the Denoise Tool sliders

Luminosity Slider

This slider removes grayscale noise from an image.

Color Slider

This slider removes color noise from an image.

Advanced Settings Section

Boost

This slider increases the strength of the Denoise tool.

Getting started with the Denoise Tool

The Denoise tool is a powerful tool, and most of the time, you can use it wherever you want in your workflow. It will work fine, but in some cases, if you edit the noise too much, or if the noise is not recognized by the tool, the noise reduction might fail. Therefore, our recommendation would be to add the process of removing the noise to the early development part of your editing.

 Denoise Tool: 

1. Open the image in Luminar NEO using the Add Photos button (Cmd/Ctrl + O) in the Catalog module (L).
2. Move to the Edit module (E).
3. Zoom In to at least 100% percent (Cmd/Ctrl + 1).
4. Move to the corners of your photos or the darker areas where the noise is more visible.
5. Then, navigate to the Denoise Tool.
6. Depending on the type of noise (Grain/Color), use the tool's sliders to remove as much noise as possible.
7. Zoom Out regularly during this process to see the overall effect of the tool on your image.
8. Use the masking tab to use this tool locally and avoid affecting the entire image.

Denoise Tool video tutorial

Watch the full video tutorial covering all sliders in this tool.

Luminar NEO

Luminar Neo is the latest editing software from Skylum. It was announced back in September 2021 and has been highly anticipated.

Luminar Neo is an AI-powered photo editing software. Skylum has said that Neo isn't replacing their previous release—Luminar AI. But Neo sets out to fix some of the issues users faced with Luminar AI.

We were impressed with the AI tools in Luminar AI. But like many others, we encountered performance issues. Luminar Neo uses the same AI tools, but the new high-speed core engine improves speed and performance.

Luminar Neo isn't just more of the same. We're happy to see Skylum has taken Neo differently, adding layer and mask AI tools to the program. This broadens Neo's appeal, taking it in an Adobe Photoshop direction.

Learn more about Luminar NEO here.

Use one of our discount codes: CPNEO10 will give you a 10% discount - CP10 will give you a $10 discount.