Comment on Topaz AI Photo vs AI Sharpen etc

I have a lot of marginal snaps from way back which I found Topaz sharpen ( trial edition ) can turn into pretty acceptable images - these are not portraits BTW.

I thought I would try the 3 in 1 Topaz AI photo since I had a thought about batch processing which it seems almost designed for and so I tried this package which is on offer at the moment. Unfortunately, the "sharpen" part of this is quite a bit limited compared to the AI Sharpen stand alone app and so I cancelled the order ( Topaz were very quick in refunding BTW. ) Basically, I could tweak settings more effectively in the stand alone app.

Just mulling what to do now - I could get the single license for AI Sharpen. The three separate apps are available discounted as a bundle - and you get AI Photo for free but $199 is posssibly more than I want to spend. I use PL6 /DeepPrime XD quite a bit in any case so don't need NR but that app just has the "classic" standard unsharp mask and doesn't do enough of what I want.

The only thing that stops me just getting AI Sharpen alone is that AI Giga ( trial version ) which I have been playing around a bit with does seem to give some improvement in image quality upscaling to 2X even though I am only viewing the image on a small 15 inch laptop. It is possibly because some of the images are at 10 mpx though I am not seeing obvious pixelation at that image scale. There is some "smoothing" going on.

Richard

PS I neither sell nor exhibit my photos so I have no ethical or other issues in using AI even though these add to an image detail that just isn't there on capture.

Richard,

Like you, I use PL6 in my own workflow, with Sharpen to follow as needed. I much prefer the 4-quadrant Sharpen interface to what's in Photo.

Unfortunately, Topaz seems to be leaving Sharpen/Denoise/Giga updates by the wayside and focusing its energies entirely on AI Photo.

My wife likes Denoise as an adjunct to Photoshop, so getting the full package was an easy choice for us.

If it were just me, I'd probably have stayed with just Sharpen. (assuming I could overcome my "more toys are better toys" syndrome)

Thanks for your thoughts:

I have had a quick look at alternatives now but since I know sharpen AI works for me I will just get that module - expensive and slow as it is.

Need to keep some cash back for other tools anyway since my Helicon license and the Zerene trial have just expired.

cheers

richard

I don't know if I have ever posted in the old DPR Retouching forum, but I'm a long-time Topaz products user. This "Threads" view of DPRevived sort of encourages venturing outside your silo which is probably a good thing.

Topaz Labs is pretty good at offering substantial discounts to existing product users. So it could be a good idea to start with Sharpen AI and pick up other products later if they have a sale or something. In past years, Topaz had a 50% sale around Christmas for existing users. Make sure to create a Topaz account - that's the key thing.

I gradually got Sharpen, denoise and gigapix. So I was sent Photo for free.

The difference is pretty marginal between Photo and Sharpen and I'm usually now content with Photo.

Thanks - hadn't realised that the offer applied if you bought in stages.

It is possibly because I am throwing some real garbage at AI Sharpen and Photo that I seem to be squeezing a bit more out of Sharpen. Probably in most sensible useages people would not notice a difference

A final comment on experience so far.

The current project is recovering a collection of pictures mostly taken years ago on an Olympus em5 Mark 1and typically in difficult light with long lenses especially the Pan 100-300. A lot of these were at ISO 3200, slow shutters even 1/15 or below and braced as well as I could since I had no room to take a tripod on that trip.

A lot of noise ( chroma and luminance ) and some motion blur. Focus seemed to be near enough.

The workflow I am trying is PL6 and just adjusting the usual sliders. Also two cases: with and without DeepPrime XD.
Export to TIFF and load into AI Sharpen then try various settings to get the best image possible.
Its difficult not least because my computer is glacial. Just can't tweak things as much as I would like - I need a new computer sometime.

Typically, I am finding that I different settings work best on different images. Sometimes DeepPrime helps and sometimes no visible difference ( I presume thet Sharpen has some elements of AI NR included ? ). In general exporting after DeepPrime XD is working better maybe 80% of the time.

Out of interest, I D/L the demo of Photo AI and ran some sample through it. On my particularly Naff images, AI Sharpen produced a better result - as I had found before.

I stress that I do not usually use any heavy AI - most images I have taken are enough OK for me without - just global classical processing in PL6 or Affinity.

So, I think I have made the right choice in sending back Photo AI. I also tried Giga AI and Photo upscaling but I really am not viewing "large' nor cropping from the 16 Mpx raws so, though there is some smoothing evident if I peek a bit, its not useful for me,

I will maybe post some samples before and after when I have had more time to play.

Thanks

Richard

On the plus side, some of us are saving money because we're satisfied with D G S trio, and never downloaded Photo AI. I've got better things to waste my time doing.

I really like Gigapixel for taking cellphone photos with too many pixels at too low quality, and setting 0.5x resize. Works better than Lanczos or Bicubic! Hardly ever use Denoise.

How does that save you money? And, if Photo AI is doing what it's supposed to (not always the case!), then it should save you time.

I would have to pay for renewal. Seems like Photo AI isn't ready yet, anyway.

It is true that sometimes I can't decide whether Sharpen or Denoise is what's needed. Both have some features from the other.

I plan only to renew Photo AI, if/when that's an option. I don't think the base apps will be getting (m)any more updates.

I used Topaz denoise back in the days, many years back. So with new energy in me, directed at the photography hobby, I installed Topaz tools alongside Lightroom, DXO and Canon DPP. I must say I am quite disappointed. No tools does better than DXO/LR in my case. What a pitty.

Yes, for raw images, PL6 is unbeatable. But DeNoise AI also works with JPEGs.

My Topaz update renewal is in four weeks time. I think I'll hold off doing anything as:

• Photo AI: not yet as good as the constituent apps, and I don't need the weekly updates
• DeNoise AI: not needed for raw, occasionally useful for JPEGs, but the product seems to be at the end of its update life
• Sharpen AI: better than Photo AI, but no major updates expected in the future
• Gigapixel AI: I seldom use it, and I'm not sure if it will get any more updates.

So, I might renew Photo AI when there's a good offer in the future, and if it's overtaken the three separate apps by then.

I also started with the package offer (special sale) of the 3 single Topaz applications and got Photo AI for free on top.
While Photo AI works good in many cases, I have seen still too many where the AI messes up foreground or background when it can not (auto-)detect the main subject.Sometimes the subject shows a halo at the edges.
On one recent occasion, I had a mesh structure in my image which was considered as noise and smoothed completely away. Denoise & Sharpen did not do it.

Transitioning to new products is never easy for a company. I expect Topaz is in the process of merging their products into a consistent Photo AI package that integrates AI across the board of nose reduction and smooth up sampling ( one can never increase the resolution by S/W since it is dictated by the sampling in the camera which locks in the information content of the capture). I tired a few Topaz products a couple years ago and frankly they were a kluge. There was little integration and the UI simply sucked. I tired DXO prime raw but its integration into C1 is poor and I'm not changing to DXO PL or anything Adobe for Prime Raw. I picked up topaz Photo AI a month or so ago and it actually did a better job on my Fuji files than Prime Raw. But it was clear that it was not quite mature. After I installed the latest five updates which mostly seemed to be databases to support the AI engine - Topaz Photo AI is much better. The best part is it is fully integrated in C1 so the workflow using it is straight forward.

Photo AI is the only one of their products that I have. When I first got it I was >>this<< close to returning it because it was just not doing a usable job for me, but I was eventually talked into keeping it---the argument was essentially "it's new, they push out updates quickly, it will get significantly better."

I have found that to be true, at least to enough of an extent that I don't regret keeping it. I find that it works best for images that are already pretty good and it can get that last 5% of polish. It's still pretty unable to fix anything that's too far gone though; the results always look weird and unnatural.

It's interesting that they seem to be moving in the direction of having Photo AI replace the separate standalone apps, and yet the standalone apps appear to do a better job in their respective areas than Photo AI does. Why not take what they've already built for the standalone apps and just pull them all together in the same box? It feels like Photo AI is trying to re-develop something they've already figured out.