Cut to the Chase: I have been fortunate enough to find a new method for reducing noise through Median Blending in Photoshop.  Quite frankly, this is amazing.  Though the application of this not going to be common, it certainly has its place.

One of the difficulties of digital photography is noise.  Sure, film had grain, but noise is different and, in my opinion, ugly.  As I was reading some articles on Friday, I stumbled across a headline that caught my eye on reducing noise: A Look at Reducing Noise in Photographs Using Median Blending.  I honestly had no idea what median blending was, but I was determined to test this myself.  Following the directions at that link, here are my samples of 100% crop images shot at 12,800 ISO on a Canon 5D Mark II.  The first in each set is the original image, and the second is the image produced using median blending.  There was no other noise reduction applied.

Original:

IMG_9881-Test With Median Blending:

Stack2-Test

Original:

IMG_9886-Test With Median Blending:

Stack1-Test

Original:

IMG_9891-Test With Median Blending:

Stack3-Test

No, these images aren't noise free, but WOW, the are so much better than the originals, and there was NO NOISE REDUCTION APPLIED!  This is, quite frankly, hard to believe.

Just for the curious - I found no benefit to using Median Blending on copies of the same image (i.e., all IMG_8049).

There are really limited applications of this, but for those cases where it would come in handy, it is very handy.  One can presume that had this been done with 10 images, or perhaps 20, the noise would have been reduced more.  This calls for further experimentation.

So, you can't close a post with a comment like that, can you?  Here is a comparison of 20 images, all shot at 12,800 ISO.

Original:

IMG_9915-Test4

With Median Blending:

Stack4-Test

Though is still considerably better, it might not be worth taking 20 images in every case; however, there are situations the noise reduction would be worth it.

The final experiment is to blend 20 images shot at 25,600 ISO.  In the original 100% crop these images are almost totally unusable:

Original:

IMG_9935-Test

With Median Blending:

Stack5-Test

And as you can see, with Median Blending, this very high ISO image is totally usable.  

Like I said earlier, the application of this is limited, but I fully expect to get an opportunity to use it in real life.