Configuration and the Preferences dialog

A variety of configuration options are available in the Preferences dialog, which is accessible from the Noise Ninja menu. These options affect the performance, behavior, and appearance of Noise Ninja.

Profiles page

The Startup behavior group controls the automation of profile selection each time the plug-in user interface is launched. The Profile Policy combo box provides the following options:

The Startup behavior policy is overridden in the following situations:

The Location and naming group includes options for the location of noise profiles and automatic profile naming.

Filtering page

The Multiprocessing options allow noise removal to execute on more than one processor to accelerate computation. It requires that you have a computer with two or more processors, or a processor that supports hyperthreading. On a single-processor computer, you should choose "One thread", because extra threads only add overhead. On a dual-processor or hyperthreaded computer, four threads seems to result in the best utilization of the processors.

If you select Set Default Sharpening to Zero, the sharpening amount on the Filter page will be set to zero when the filter settings are reset or loaded from disk. You can still use the sharpening function by moving the slider to a nonzero value.

Preview page

The Preview Window Size option controls the dimensions of the preview window. A smaller preview will tend to update more quickly than a larger one. Also, if you have a low-resolution display, a smaller preview size will allow the plug-in dialog to fit better on the screen. If you try to choose a size that is too large for your screen, the window will be automatically resized to smaller dimensions.

The Update Mode option determines whether the preview is animated. If "Wait for Filter" is selected, the preview is updated all at once after the filter calculations have finished. The other options cause the preview to be updated in strips, with a dashed line indicating the amount of progress. The animation provides more obvious visual feedback, though some users find it distracting.

The Logging option determines where the log file is located. You should choose a location that has both read and write permissions. Each time Noise Ninja is invoked, whether normally or via an action, it writes an entry in the log file that indicates the image file name, what profile policy and filtering policies are in effect, what profile was selected, and other information. This can be useful for sanity-checking the behavior of a new action.