NL means “Non Linear”. Derived from the Unix pnmnlfilt program, it joins smoothing, despeckle and sharpen enhancement functions. It works on the whole layer, not on the selection.
Es un filtro multiuso. Tiene 3 modos distintos de operación. En todos los modos se examina cada píxel de la imagen y se procesan controlando el valor del píxel. Utiliza bloques hexagonales, en lugar de 3x3, cuyo tamaño se puede seleccionar con la opción radio.
You can find this filter through
→ → .The filter does not work if the active layer has an alpha channel. Then the menu entry is insensitive and grayed out.
When checked, parameter setting results are interactively displayed in preview.
The Operating Mode is described below.
Controls the amount of the filter to apply. Valid range is
0.00-1.00. The exact meaning of this value depends on the selected
operating mode. Note that this parameter is related to but not
the same as the alpha
parameter used in the
pnmnlfilt program.
Controls the size of the effective sampling region around each pixel. The range of this value is 0.33-1.00, where 0.33 means just the pixel itself (and thus the filter will have no effect), and 1.00 means all pixels in the 3x3 grid are sampled.
This filter can perform several distinct functions:
The value of the center pixel will be replaced by the mean of
the 7 hexagon values, but the 7 values are sorted by size and
the top and bottom Alpha
portion of the 7
are excluded from the mean. This implies that an
Alpha
value of 0.0 gives the same sort of
output as a normal convolution (i.e. averaging or smoothing
filter), where Radius
will determine the
“strength” of the filter. A good value to start from
for subtle filtering is
Alpha
= 0.0,
Radius
= 0.55.
For a more blatant effect, try
Alpha
= 0.0 and
Radius
= 1.0.
An Alpha
value of 1.0 will cause the
median value of the 7 hexagons to be used to replace the center
pixel value. This sort of filter is good for eliminating
“pop” or single pixel noise from an image without
spreading the noise out or smudging features on the image.
Judicious use of the Radius
parameter will
fine tune the filtering.
Intermediate values of Alpha
give effects
somewhere between smoothing and "pop" noise reduction. For subtle
filtering try starting with values of
Alpha
= 0.8,
Radius
= 0.6.
For a more blatant effect try
Alpha
= 1.0,
Radius
= 1.0 .
This type of filter applies a smoothing filter adaptively over
the image. For each pixel the variance of the surrounding
hexagon values is calculated, and the amount of smoothing is
made inversely proportional to it. The idea is that if the
variance is small then it is due to noise in the image, while if
the variance is large, it is because of “wanted”
image features.
As usual the Radius
parameter controls
the effective radius, but it probably advisable to leave the
radius between 0.8 and 1.0 for the variance calculation to be
meaningful. The Alpha
parameter sets the
noise threshold, over which less smoothing will be done. This
means that small values of Alpha
will
give the most subtle filtering effect, while large values will
tend to smooth all parts of the image. You could start with
values like
Alpha
= 0.2,
Radius
= 1.0,
and try increasing or decreasing the
Alpha
parameter to get the desired
effect. This type of filter is best for filtering out dithering
noise in both bitmap and color images.
This is the opposite type of filter to the smoothing filter. It
enhances edges. The Alpha
parameter
controls the amount of edge enhancement, from subtle (0.1) to
blatant (0.9). The Radius
parameter
controls the effective radius as usual, but useful values are
between 0.5 and 0.9. Try starting with values of
Alpha
= 0.3,
Radius
= 0.8.
Los variados modos de operación se pueden usar uno detrás de otro para obtener el resultado deseado. Por ejemplo, para convertir una imagen monocromática difuminada en una imagen a escala de grises, podría intentar una o dos pasadasdel filtro de suavizado, seguido de un pase de estimación óptima, entonces un leve realce de bordes. Notese que el uso de realce de bordes solo es útil después de uno de los filtros no lineales (media limitada o estimación óptima), dado que realce de bordes es directamente opuesto la de suavizado.
For reducing color quantization noise in images (i.e. turning .gif
files back into 24 bit files) you could try a pass of the optimal
estimation filter (Alpha
= 0.2,
Radius
= 1.0), a pass of the median filter
(Alpha
= 1.0, Radius
=
0.55), and possibly a pass of the edge enhancement filter. Several
passes of the optimal estimation filter with declining
Alpha
values are more effective than a single
pass with a large Alpha
value. As usual, there
is a trade-off between filtering effectiveness and losing detail.
Experimentation is encouraged.