I’ve pointed PL8 to a folder of images that it hasn’t seen before. I’m in the “Customize” tab. When I click on a thumbnail in the ribbon along the bottom, after a moment the photo appears in the main part of the window. When it first appears, the colours all look smooth (without noise). About half a second later the image goes all grainy. This happens whether the main image panel is set to fill the frame with the whole image or set to show the image at 100% - hence viewing only a portion of the image. It’s easier to see the effect when zoomed to 100%. I’ve taken video of it (using my phone camera, pointed at the monitor) and could add “before” and “after” examples if needed.
In the Advanced History palette, the only history listed is “Imported on Sun, 23 Feb 2025 6:20PM” and then “Applied default presets 6 - No correction”.
Is there something in the “No correction” preset that is actually making the image noisier?
If I go back to an image where this process has already happened, then the quality is immediately noisy - this drop in quality seems to happen only on first viewing the image.
UPDATE - while exploring something else, I just went to my File Explorer (Win 11) and navigated to the NEF (Nikon raw) file. I right-clicked and chose “open with… > photos”. This is Windows’ native photo viewer … and the same thing happened!
So clearly this is not a PL8 issue … I wonder if it’s a Windows 11 issue?
I closed the Photos app and repeated the process … and it did the same thing - went from smooth quality to grainy.
I wonder if Windows has created a cached “thumbnail” of the image and displays that first, then after a moment has generated a full size version of the image to be displayed, and that’s when I get to see all the grainy glory?
If this is now too far off topic for PL8, happy to close this question. (Newbie here … not sure where “off topic” stands in these forums…)
The initial display is from the jpg embedded in the raw.
After that PL processes the raw according to your preset and then render it.
Noise reductions are applied but not visible unless zoomed in a bit.
Thanks. It didn’t occur to me that there was a jpeg in the raw file, but of course: the camera shows the image on “back of cam” … and images there can look good, only to turn out grainy when reviewing in image editor later. It’s making sense.
@Required I believe it is correct to state that at 75% those edits marked with the symbol shown in the snapshot below will be rendered except for the Noise reduction!
To see the image with noise reduction applied you need to export or use the Loupe, please note in the following snapshot (only) the Loupe shows the image with NR applied, the indicators on LS and CR have been removed at 75% but it remains on for NR.
The image was in a dimly lit Brighton Pavilion to protect the colours of the wallpaper and artefacts on display, Taken with my G9 and the ISO was 25600.
Yes - with the No Correction preset, no noise reduction was applied to the raw file.
To see the result of the noise reduction, you need to use the magnifying glass as @BHAYT showed you (2nd screenshot) or export.
as a tip
Make a virtual copy of the raw file, apply NR to one of it, and then compare both versions with the magnifying glass instantly. – Switch between them and allow PL to render both previews (takes more or less depending on GPU).
@Wolfgang as an interesting(?) experiment export and alternative to your strategy, my RTX3060 introduces too much of a lag to render the NR image quickly enough and it needs a video to show the difference.
Export the image with all the chosen options including NR. Set DxPL to 75% or above and use the exported image as the ‘Reference image’ and you can get something like this
after PL has rendered both previews, you can compare instantly (both previews are cached). – Hmmm, maybe there is a difference when you use a common platter, while I’ve checked with pics, database and cache on NVMe.M2.
When PL8 came to the market, I tested that scenario and still use it to compare different NR settings.
BTW, just now this month I exchanged my GTX 1060 6 GB for an → RTX 4070 12 GB.
@Wolfgang My cache is also on an NVME(4K/5K) and my RTX 3060 is also 12GB but the size of memory seems to be largely irrelevant as long as it is above a certain size.
I have other edits being applied as well as NR and although when Beta Testing PL8 I felt that flicking between images was near instantaneous it was some way short of that just now
So what am I doing wrong or is it just the other edits?
While there may be speed differences, I just wanted to make the OP, who appears to be new to PhotoLab, aware of the possibilities when using noise reduction.
