Neat Image 8.2.0

Low-light conditions, long-distance shots, photos taken indoors, and a number of other circumstances may add an excessive amount of grain or noise to your best pictures. Neat Image offers you a versatile solution to this problem, with noise profiles for all known camera makes and models, one-click noise removal capabilities, and advanced settings for more experienced users.

Neat Image comes in various editions. There’s a Windows standalone edition (the one used for this review), and two plug-in versions, one for Photoshop and another one for Aperture. The demo version of the standalone edition comes with all the features and functions available in the registered version, which will allow you to test the app’s comprehensive capabilities in full. The only limitation is in the output format supported – while the full version will let you save your filtered images in high-quality BMP, TIFF, or JPEG images, the demo edition offers low-quality JPEG as the only output option.

Neat Image can be as simple or as sophisticated as you wish. It comes with noise profiles devised for a wide variety of camera makes which will allow you to clean up your pictures in no time. For other cameras, scanned images, or for photos with a particular level of digital noise, Neat Image will let you build your own custom noise profiles. It will analyze a fragment of the picture and will create the best profile possible for the specific noise levels of that image, a profile that you can then save for later use. Besides, the app’s Calibration Target can perform a similar profiling operation to a whole set of images for batch processing purposes. Those who know more about digital noise editing can turn to the advanced settings directly and make their own adjustments in a truly professional way.

Neat Image not only will remove as much noise as possible from your best pictures, but will also sharpen your images in the process to produce crisp and clean images. It works equally well with standard-quality images (8-bit JPEGs) and high-quality 32-bit HDR workflows, both in the standalone and the plug-in versions of the program. Neat Image is a noise reduction tool that is certainly worth trying – make the most of its full-featured demo version and check its many possibilities. Its high level of flexibility is capable of dealing either with images taken with the most modern DSLR cameras or your old scanned negatives.