have you ever seen those ugly blocky
pixelated artifacts that completely ruin
your all JPEG images in this video I'm
going to teach you how to use a powerful
Photoshop filter to instantly remove
compression artifacts from your JPEG
images hi I'm mrs. Ramirez from the
Photoshop training channel this is going
to be a fun and informational tutorial
so make sure that you stick around to
the very end so that you catch all the
tips and tricks in this video if you're
new to the channel be sure to click on
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tutorials okay let's get right to it
this is the image that I'm going to work
with it's a photo of free to the cat
everybody say hi to Frida I'm a really
big cat person and you probably have
noticed that I use a lot of cats in my
tutorials but anyway if you want to
follow along with this image I'll place
a link to it right below in the
description first let me just explain
the problem I'm gonna press the Z key on
the keyboard to select the zoom tool and
I'm going to zoom in so that you could
see the artifacts that were created by
the JPEG compression on this image I'm
sure that you can see the blocks that
create the pixelation on this image this
is caused by saving a JPEG with low
quality settings or by saving a JPEG
over and over again since every time you
say with JPEG you compress it just a
little more I'm sure that you have seen
this before and if you want to fix this
in Photoshop let me show you what you do
first go into the background and make
sure you unlock it in right click and
convert it into a smart object we're
going to apply several filters and we
want to have the ability to edit them a
smart object is a container that can
hold one or more layers and it allows
you to apply adjustments distortions
filters and transformations
non-destructively which means you can
always come back and edit them go into
filter and go down into the noise option
and select reduce noise this will bring
up this window where Photoshop will
immediately apply a blur to smooth out
any noise and notice the preview box
here make sure that you enable it so
that you can actually see this happening
on your actual image by the way here's a
quick
or shortcut that you may not know on any
window that has the preview checkbox if
you press the P key on the keyboard you
will enable or disable that checkbox so
that's P for preview so use that
keyboard shortcut and then you can see
like a quick before-and-after as you're
working on any window in Photoshop that
has the preview checkbox you can then
use the sliders found in this window to
control how the algorithm blurs the
image to remove any noise first you have
the strength slider this slider allows
you to control the amount of luminance
noise reduction apply to the image
channels I know that sounds confusing
but basically you're blurring the image
on all the channels at the same time if
you are an advanced user and you want to
use channels you can use the advanced
option and from here you can adjust the
blur per channel basis so it only
blurring the red Channel or only
blurring the green channel or only
blurring the blue Channel and what type
of strength and preserve detail amount
you have but in this case we don't need
to do all of that we're just gonna stick
with the basic so we're only gonna deal
with all the channels at the same time
so you can use this slider to control
the amount of blurriness that happens
with the noise reduction then you have
the preserved detail slider which
controls how much detail you keep
especially in areas that have hair or
texture objects in this case we have fur
so you have to use this slider
accordingly to see how it affects the
rest of the image obviously you can bump
it up too much because you'll actually
make the pixelation stronger and you
can't come down too low because the
image will be very blurry so you have to
play around with the settings and see
what gives you a good result in your
image so in this image maybe a setting
of about 15 will work you could also
zoom in on this window to see different
parts of the image so I'll zoom in more
and I can look at the image and see how
these settings are affecting it another
very common problem with images that
have been compressed too much is that
colors will tend to bleed like you can
see colors bleeding through
the image and actually you can't really
see it now because it's already been
reduced but if you look at the reduced
color noise I have a pretty high setting
but if I bring that down to zero you'll
see that the noise comes back you can
see a lot of noise in these areas see
that so make sure that you adjust a
reduced color noise accordingly to
remove that extra color noise see that
that's before and after it just smooths
out these blotches of color next we have
a sharpening slider to sharpen the
detail let me zoom out a little bit so
that we can see how that works if I
increase it to 100% you'll see that the
image gets much sharper but it creates
other issues and of course if I reduce
it to 0% the image might be a little too
soft so again adjust this slider
accordingly so that you can get a good
result on your image notice that I'm not
really giving you what percentages to
use because it just wouldn't be valuable
to you the values depend on the image
that you have so you can use the values
that I use as a starting point if you
like but at the end you'll have to use
whatever values work best for your image
so this is gonna be a very important
checkbox remove jpg artifact this will
remove these lines that you see here the
algorithm will try to determine what
artifacts were created by the JPEG
compression so watch what happens as
soon as I check this checkbox here see
how it smooths out all those lines so
now we don't really see any of that JPEG
compression which is great and it's
exactly what we want next I'm going to
press ok to apply these adjustments and
I'll pan over to this area in the layers
panel you'll see the Smart Filters if I
click on this eye icon you'll see that
before and I'll click again so you can
see the after so as you can see it's a
massive improvement I'll double click on
a hand tool to fit the image to screen
and now I'm going to apply another
filter to further enhance this image I'm
gonna go into filter Camera Raw filter
with the Camera Raw filter I can do so
many cool things to this photo for
example I can maybe make the shadows a
little bit darker and increase the
contrast just to hide some of those
imperfections I can also increase the
texture to make the first stand out a
little bit
and I can increase clarity which is
contrast on edge pixels and the image is
a little D saturated so I can use either
the saturation slider or the vibrance
slider to add saturation the difference
is that saturation just bumps up the
saturation and all pixels equally while
vibrance only increases the saturation
of pixels that don't have a lot of
saturation and it also protects skin
tones so it's a great slider to use
especially in portraits in this case I
can bump it up I really want these
colors to stand out and I'm not getting
the oranges that I really want behind
the cat so you can do in a situation
like this is go into the HSL tab which
allows you to control the hue saturation
and lightness of individual colors for
example with the oranges you can slide
this lighter to control the luminance
because we're in the luminance tab or
you could switch over into the
saturation tab and control the
saturation of the oranges which will
make the orange behind the cat pop next
I'm gonna go into the detail tab and I'm
going to increase the sharpening when I
sharpen I do an overall sharpen in the
image and usually that's not the best
thing to do that's why we have the
masking slider with the masking slider
Photoshop will find the edges of the
image and only apply the sharpening to
those edges but if I simply drag on the
slider you really can't tell what's
going on if you want a visual
representation of what's going on you
can hold the Alt key on Windows that's
the option key on the Mac and click
everything will turn white so you can
think of this as a layer mask white
reveals black conceals if I drag to the
right you'll notice that Photoshop will
start finding edges and we only get
white on those edges so that means that
the effect will only be on the white
areas that you see so maybe we just want
the effect on the cat not so much on the
background so this might be a good
setting here and I can just release
before and after a subtle effect but I
think it works and finally I'm gonna
zoom in just to show you one other thing
we were blurring the background to try
to remove the pixelation so that means
that we have a lot of soft pixels
I'm gonna go into the effects tab and
just increase the grain just a little
bit it helps the image regain some of
that film quality it doesn't look so
computer generated because of the blur
so I think that adding grain always
helps I'm going to press okay and these
are my results let me zoom in so that
you can see I'm gonna click on this eye
icon to hide the Smart Filters before
notice all the artifacts that are found
in the image tossed by the JPEG
compression and here's the after notice
how they're all gone and you can't even
see them the image looks much much
better so I hope that this techniques
helps you out with your old images let
me know down in the comments below if
you're familiar with this technique and
if you have found some success with it
and of course if you're new to the
Photoshop training channel then don't
forget to click on that subscribe and
notification button so that you don't
miss any new tutorials thank you so much
for watching I'll talk to you again in
the next video