Neat Image is a digital filter application designed to reduce visible noise in digital photographic images.
Noise is a serious problem that hinders high quality digital image processing. In digital photography, the consumer- and prosumer-level cameras produce images with an easily noticeable noise component. This component is especially strong in images taken at high ISO rates. The noise reduces the visual quality of digital images and resulting printouts. Some image processing operations, like sharpening, make quality of noisy images even worse.
Neat Image detects, analyzes, and reduces image noise. The filtration quality is higher than that of other methods because Neat Image takes into account specific characteristics of particular image acquisition devices, making the filtration more accurate. You can adapt the program to almost any input device - digital camera, scanner, etc. Access to the rich control set allows you to easily achieve the desired level of noise reduction.
In addition, Neat Image can make images look sharper without any degradation of image quality (which is usually inevitable with noisy images). The combination of the sharpening and noise filter makes such an effect possible.
See some examples of Neat Image noise reduction.
Neat Image is currently produced in five editions: Demo, Home, Home+, Pro and Pro+. Demo is a free edition of the software with slightly-limited functionality. Home is the edition of Neat Image for home users who only have small amounts of images to process. Pro is the edition of Neat Image providing professional users with 16-bit image processing and unlimited queuing / batching capabilities. In addition to the standalone application in the Home and Pro editions, the Home+ and Pro+ editions include the Photoshop-compatible plug-in version of the filter.