Below are several examples of digital images with visible noise of different nature. Generally, noise can be brought in by the camera sensor and signal amplifier, by peculiarity of shooting conditions, by image compression, etc. In many cases, Neat Image can significantly improve the quality of the digital images by reducing the objectionable noise. Please compare some before and after images below to see what Neat Image can do.

Hint: move mouse pointer over the filtered images to temporarily switch to original ones.

A 100%-scale crop from an image produced by a DSLR camera: Canon 10D (ISO 3200)

This shot was made in high ISO mode to catch a crucial moment in the high speed sport action. Shooting in high ISO mode inevitably results in considerable amount of distracting noise in both luminance and chrominance image components. The crop of the original image above is a typical high ISO image as seen on monitor at 100% zoom.

Below is the same shot downsampled to 20% to show the whole image. This view is an indication of how a printout of the image would look like. The noise in the original image is less evident but still considerable as compared with what can be easily achieved using Neat Image.

A 100% crop of a shot produced by the Canon D30 digital camera (ISO 1600)

The original image contains easily visible noise. The source of noise is the camera's image sensor (CMOS) working in high ISO mode.

A 100% crop of a photo taken with the Nikon CoolPix 950 digital camera (ISO 225)

The original image contains strong noise (CCD noise and JPEG compression artifacts) making the sky look very unnatural. The filtered image is completely free of this noise.

A crop of an image from a satellite

Here the noise is caused by peculiarity of shooting conditions - the object is very far and covered by heterogeneous atmosphere.

An image scanned from a magazine page

The image contains moiré patterns typical for photo-offset images. Neat Image works as a descreening tool in this situation.

A scan of a grainy film (2700 dpi)

The scan contains a lot of noise caused by what is often called "grain aliasing". Neat Image efficiently reduces this noise.

A 100% crop of overcompressed digital camera shot

Here, along with the strong CCD noise, significant image degradation is caused by the JPEG compression. Even if Neat Image tries to do its best to clean up such images, avoid using strong JPEG compression if you can.

A crop of a digital image overcompressed by JPEG

The original image suffers from excessive JPEG compression that produces many visible block artifacts. The filtered image looks much more clean in both normal and zoomed view.

A crop of a digital image overcompressed by JPEG

Here the blockiness artifacts and distorted colors introduced by JPEG compression make the image look muddy. Neat Image cleans up colors and removes the artifacts to make the image look nice once again.

A 100% crop of a photo taken with the Nikon CoolPix 950 digital camera

Another example of a noisy image where sky looks abnormally grainy which is caused by both CCD noise and JPEG compression.

A crop of a television frame captured with a computer TV card.

The image has strong color banding visible all across image and caused by the electric interference in the computer circuitry. Neat Image has cleaned up the image: the color bands are removed and all the image details are preserved.

Similar banding is sometimes observed in digital camera images (caused by interference too). It can also be easily cured by Neat Image.