How to Quickly Reduce Noise in Adobe Photoshop CC

Noise and grain in photos is one of the most common issues photographers deal with. It usually shows up when shooting in low light or at high ISO settings. Those random colored dots reduce the clarity and overall quality of an image. Photoshop has several tools to help reduce noise, and when used together in a two-pass approach, you can clean up a photo significantly without losing too much detail.

Today I will show you how to quickly reduce noise in Adobe Photoshop CC.

How to Reduce Noise in Photoshop

First Pass: Reduce Noise Filter

1. Open your image in Photoshop.
2. Zoom in to an area where the noise is clearly visible. Use the Zoom Tool or press Ctrl+Plus (Cmd+Plus) to get a close look at the grain.
3. Click on your image layer in the Layers panel and press Ctrl+J (Cmd+J) to duplicate it. We always work on a copy so the original stays untouched.
4. With the duplicate layer selected, go to Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise.
5. In the dialog box, adjust the Strength slider. Increase it until you see the image start to soften and the grain diminish. Higher values reduce more noise but also reduce detail, so find a balance.
6. Increase Reduce Color Noise as well. This targets the colored speckles specifically, which are usually the most distracting part of the noise.
7. Adjust Preserve Details to keep edges and fine textures from getting too soft. A value around 50-60% is a good starting point.
8. Click OK.

Second Pass: Surface Blur and Sharpen

The first pass gets the bulk of the noise, but there may still be some texture left. This second pass smooths it further and then sharpens the important details back.

9. Select the duplicate layer and press Ctrl+J (Cmd+J) again to create another copy.
10. Go to Filter > Blur > Surface Blur. Set the Radius to about 5 and the Threshold to about 10. Surface Blur smooths flat areas (like skin and sky) while preserving edges.
11. Click OK.
12. Now go to Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen.
13. Make sure Basic is selected. Set the Amount to about 90% and the Radius to 1 pixel. Set the Remove dropdown to Gaussian Blur.
14. Click OK. This brings back the sharpness on edges and details that the blur passes softened.
15. Lower the opacity of this second pass layer to about 70%. This blends the noise-reduced version with the previous layer for a more natural result.

Grouping

16. Select both duplicate layers and press Ctrl+G (Cmd+G) to group them together. This keeps your Layers panel organized and makes it easy to toggle the noise reduction on and off by toggling the group visibility.

Tips

• Work selectively. If the noise is only in certain areas (like shadows), use a layer mask to apply the noise reduction only where it is needed. This preserves detail in areas that are already clean.
• Don’t eliminate all noise. A small amount of grain can look natural and cinematic. Over-processing makes images look plastic.
• Camera Raw Filter is another option. Go to Filter > Camera Raw Filter and use the Detail panel. It has excellent noise reduction controls that some photographers prefer.
• For video noise reduction, check out how to reduce grain in Premiere Pro.

That is how you reduce noise in Photoshop. A two-pass approach gives you cleaner results than a single aggressive filter, and keeping everything on duplicate layers means you can always go back and adjust.