Digital+High ISO+Low Light = :/

[Jerome Love]

When shooting this I was quickly running out of available light and had to bump up the ISO a bit. The result is what you see. Any suggestions? I've done a little digital airbrushing and some dodge/burning to lighten up the shadows. But what can I do about the grain and and tone? Suggestions or links?http://www.onelovephotography.net/photos/OPFRetouchRequest%20(1%20of%201).jpg

[Michael Fontana]

No image visible...

[Daniel Buck]

I don't see the image, but for the most part probably all you can do to a noisy image is run it through a noise reduction software. Ones like Noise Ninja seem to work pretty good, better than most RAW conversion software can do. If the noise is heavy in the shadows, you can run the noise reduction on the entire image (duplicate layer) and then select just the shadow tones and use that as your mask, so the noise reduction is only in the shadow areas. I try not to use much noise reduction, because unfortunately it takes out some detail too. If I have to use noise reduction, I will do it more sparingly on the luminance, and heavier in the chrominance. (ones like noise ninja can do them in different amounts) so that there is at least some crisp detail in the luminance, luminance noise (to me) is more tolerable than chrominance noise.

Unfortunately, if there just isn't any light, there isn't a whole lot you can do unless you can put the camera on a tripod with lower ISO (for stills) or use a flash/strobe setup with lower ISO.

[Sean DeMerchant]

When shooting this I was quickly running out of available light and had to bump up the ISO a bit. The result is what you see. Any suggestions? I've done a little digital airbrushing and some dodge/burning to lighten up the shadows. But what can I do about the grain and and tone? Suggestions or links?

Do you shoot RAW? A better rendering of the RAW data is the place to start. Pulling a bit more out of the shadows to separate the hair from the background. I guess you could dodge it, but your blacks are too deep here according to the histogram (lots of shadow and highlight clipping in the histogram).

some thoughts,

Sean

[Jerome Love]

Yes I do, the clients liked the dark tones, but I'm more worried about the grain than anything else.

[JohanElzenga]

Don't judge images like this on the screen. The noise will be exaggerated because you look at the image in too low a resolution. Print the image and you will be pleasantly surprised (and so will your client). The noise is not that bad at all.