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Topaz Labs photo apps: anyone use them

Kyle76

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Ads keep popping on my Facebook feed and elsewhere for various photo processing apps from Topaz labs for reducing noise, improving focus and creating enlargements, among other things. The examples shown look quite remarkable, but has anyone here actually used any of them?
 
I've got a couple of them and they're actually pretty good - although as with all advertising they show the best examples.
If you've got a grainy photo or a small one you'd like to see upscaled share it here and I'll run it through as an example of what it can do.

It's not perfect and slightly falters on things like human faces but it appears the software is regularly updated.

Oh and if you decide to buy any, make sure to search for discount codes first, I think I got 30% off on top of their advertisied discount ;)
 
The sharpen one does a pretty good job. Gigapixel does an even better job, I'd recommend it. I've used their whole suite and the other topaz apps are meh. Upscaling with Gigapixel or sharpening is where their software shines.
 
I’d love to see some examples, and I might take you up on your offer, Malcx.


Just as a quick and fairly extreme test I ran your profile pic through GigaPixel and photoshop (using default settings on everything,).

Source at: https://mavicpilots.com/data/avatars/m/131/131168.jpg?1595193359

131168.jpg


Scaled in Photoshop to 4x size

131168_photoshop.jpg

Scaled in Gigapixel to 4x size
131168-gigapixel-scale-4_00x.jpg


Obviously far from a perfect image, bit with only 96x96px as an input source not too bad.
 
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Ads keep popping on my Facebook feed and elsewhere for various photo processing apps from Topaz labs for reducing noise, improving focus and creating enlargements, among other things. The examples shown look quite remarkable, but has anyone here actually used any of them?
I have no personal experience with the TOPAZ photo program but I have a very good photographer friend (e.g.: he is a very good photographer) who has been using it for years and he swears by it. The Noise Reduction program does a great job for him. His images are superb. I would not hesitate to recommend Topaz software because of his work.
 
I have the suite as well. Topaz Gigapixel AI is my favorite as well.
 
Check this.

Original Image
Alligator Point FL.jpg

HDR with Topaz Adjust AI
Alligator Point FL-adjust 1.jpg

Processed with Topaz Gigapixel 6X
topaz.jpg
 
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I was looking at the pier in the first two images before I even saw the third image. Not so much difference in the first two, but that last image is, like, wow. Huge improvement. Do you find the alterations to be natural looking and not artificial?
 
I was looking at the pier in the first two images before I even saw the third image. Not so much difference in the first two, but that last image is, like, wow. Huge improvement. Do you find the alterations to be natural looking and not artificial?
What i love is that looks natural but absolutely you can adjust the level of adjustment of you feel is too much.
 
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I've been doing commercial/professional imaging for over 25 years. I've seen what some people do with RAW files and there seems to be a trend of oversaturated colors, oversharpening, and colors breaking harshly. I'm sure some people like it but it's not for me. There is also the problem of the edges. When sharpened too much, they get what we call white line/black line, meaning on the highlight side, you get a glowing halo and the shadow side, the line turns black even though it may have a color to that edge. For my industry, that's a bad thing because the printing process "sharpens" (or adds contrast) by default because of how it puts ink to substrate. Then it really sticks out when it's put on a press. Now for continuous tone prints, it's not as bad but that's how a lot of these programs create detail, by edge sharpening. If it's too much, then combined with oversaturation, it starts to look like a cartoon drawing, especially geometric shapes with high contrast edges and areas with high dynamic range. That's just my personal opinion for what it's worth
 
Noise reduction and upsizing would be my primary interests, given the limitations of the 1/2-inch Air 2 sensor and the fact that its 4K is not true 4K. Thanks.
I didn't buy their video software and while it is good, you should download and try it out...
 
I have a good deal of experience with Topaz Sharpen, Denoise, and Mask, and a little with Gigapixel. I downloaded the first 3 earlier this year and ended up buying Sharpen and Denoise. Mask was ok, but not great - it made things a LITTLE easier than in Ps, but not a whole lot, and didn't seem worth the price. Denoise is great - I strongly recommend it. Sharpen is very good as well, but it is only helpful on 50-60% of my pics (although updates throughout this year have improved it significantly, and they seem to be continually refining it). I'd recommend it as well if you can get it on sale.

But I just downloaded Gigapixel yesterday to try it out (you get 30 days to try it) and I'm hugely impressed. So much so that I went ahead and bought the whole suite on a black Friday sale (ended up around $200 with a coupon and they credited me some since I already had Sharpen and Denoise). Frankly, I'm not sure if I'll use Sharpen that much any more as Gigapixel seems to do a better job of sharpening through upscaling. Fewer artifacts and just seems more natural overall (I need to play with my workflow; Sharpen may be good AFTER upscaling). For those skeptical about upscaling (as I was) I'd recommend checking it out - it's not just pixel interpolation. I did one shot of myself from a fair distance where I was fairly out of focus, and it did an amazing job of producing a natural result.

That said, it's not magic, and I think Topaz sometimes oversells the results. I watched a promo video where they took a horribly out of focus shot where nothing was recognizable and used Sharpen to turn it into a completely focused shot. It was so unbelievable that I took a screenshot and tried it myself, and I didn't get anything remotely close to what they claimed. Granted, they were presumably working from a raw image with more info (vs. a lower res screenshot that I had) but still.

Anyway, I'd highly recommend Denoise and Gigapixel, and Sharpen to a lesser degree. Mask is fine if you can get it at a significant discount. They have been great at improving already decent shots I've done with my Mavic Air (1), given its small, relatively low resolution sensor. For the price, they do great work; this is the sort of thing that would require tens of thousands of dollars in computing power until recently.

I do wish they'd integrate their software. I still am not sure how to use Sharpen or Gigapixel together, or why they're separate programs. Sharpen, Gigapixel, and Denoise would be a blockbuster program if they'd put them all together, but as is, it's somewhat annoying having to use them separately (I use them as Lr and Ps plugins, but that still involved launching each separately within the Adobe software).

Finally, I haven't had a chance to try out the video software, though I bought it as part of the package. It looks promising, but also extremely slow. I saw a report somewhere that someone said it took 8 hours to render a 15 second clip using a pretty powerful computer.
 
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I've been doing commercial/professional imaging for over 25 years. I've seen what some people do with RAW files and there seems to be a trend of oversaturated colors, oversharpening, and colors breaking harshly. I'm sure some people like it but it's not for me. There is also the problem of the edges. When sharpened too much, they get what we call white line/black line, meaning on the highlight side, you get a glowing halo and the shadow side, the line turns black even though it may have a color to that edge.
This is a trend that HAS to stop at some point. I see self-proclaimed “professional“ photographers I know (generally folks trying to make a buck on their hobby, not that there’s anything wrong with that) taking ordinary pictures, saturating the heck out of them, ramming the contrast all the way up, and sharpening them more than a Ginsu knife and posting the, on social media as “art.” It‘s truly awful. It seemed to start around 10-12 years ago when HDR hit the mainstream, and these folks are trying to imitate the most extreme examples using shots taken on their iPhone and tweaked in Elements. Ugh. Sorry for the rant.
 
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What i love is that looks natural but absolutely you can adjust the level of adjustment of you feel is too much.
First of all, having spent a couple of weeks playing around with most of the Topaz software (I don’t care about Mask or JPEG to RAW and haven’t tried Adjust yet), it’s good stuff, not hype like a lot of photo software advertising “AI” these days.

I did find the close-up image of the pier to be somewhat unnatural on close inspection, but as you noted, it’s adjustable (although I’m still playing around with it to figure out how the various models work - it looks like the standard model includes all the base data and the others may only apply, say, the architectural ones). I’d bet a 2-3x upscale would look a bit better, but at the relative size involved even the 6x would look great. It just seems to get a little over aggressive over 4x. I’m still trying to figure out a workflow with Sharpen and Deloise and Gigapixel. I’m still amazed with what Gigapixel can do and am trying to figure out how Sharpen fits into the flow, or if it’s even relevant any more. Really, that should be a single program. My criticism of Topaz is fragmentation and lack of focus. Should I use the sharpen feature in Denoise, or the denoise feature in Sharpen? Or use Gigapixel to upscale with denoising amd then run it through Sharpen?

It’s like the dev teams for these 3 are working for separate companies. They should all have lunch and figure out how to make an integrated product. If they could do that, it would be a blockbuster that could be almost as big as Photoshop (not as a direct competitor, since Ps does much more but for these tasks, it’s both broad and specialized to fill a niche, and frankly hardly any Ps users need all it offers, me included).
 
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I agree that these tools are frequently overused. I did, too, when I first got them. Like nearly everything in today's world, there's a learning curve. I've found that it works best when you dial in some corrections, then walk away. On returning, usually I back off the adjustments considerably.

I find Topaz Clarity particularly useful for still images. It works really well for artistic interpretations as well as for simple technical improvements.

I've not tried Gigapixel, but it shows promise for still images from a tiny sensor like the one in my first drone, a Mini 2.

So far, though, I've got my hands full just learning to fly. :)
 

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