New tool — Topaz Sharpen AI

Jerry, thanks for posting this. I had no idea that this exists. Have not tried this yet and not at all sure that my old Win 8.1 machine with an old graphics card will be able to handle this. But I did watch a couple of youtube presentations and this one caught my attention:


At 2:50 min there is a shot captured with an X-Pro2 with a high ISO. The Topaz surely gets rid of the noise but it comes at a price - this picture reminds me the "plasticy" looking skin images that we had in the early days of the X-E2, I believe. So the lesson may be: the defaults (in Auto) got to be pretty aggressive! Have to use the sliders to find a decent compromise between noise reduction and detail retention. For those comfortable with Photoshop there may be a good alternative to use the Topaz in a plug-in mode and perform the noise reduction selectively on a separate layer.

jacob

Thanks. Good to know.

chaimav said:

Personally, AI details make me uneasy. Basically, its just an educated guess but has no real basis in reality. Not really different that Photoshoping in details.

Click to expand...

I don't know why. Most of the "deep learning" applications are nothing more than efficient implementations of pretty standard statistical procedures. No AI application is going to produce more "information" or reduce the entropy of a source. However, with nodes of a neural network continually sniffing for patterns the applications can enhance what is there and minimize the noise while mitigating unwanted artifacts.

The whole concept of an CFA sensor Bayer or X Trans is to estimate and interpolate color information to produce a full color image. The "AI" based tools are just an extension of that process. For the most part the "AI" label is I expect more for marketing hype than anything else. The real AI will come in the computer vision subsystem of a robot being above to recognize obstacles and navigate around them or to assemble parts in a factory.

Like this dude here.


However, there is a finite set of information in any image as defined by the two dimensional sampling theorem of Middleton and Peterson where each of the primary colors is sampled at different rates. Everything after that is to make the results look like what we would expect.

Truman Prevatt said:

chaimav said:

Personally, AI details make me uneasy. Basically, its just an educated guess but has no real basis in reality. Not really different that Photoshoping in details.

Click to expand...

I don't know why. Most of the "deep learning" applications are nothing more than efficient implementations of pretty standard statistical procedures. No AI application is going to produce more "information" or reduce the entropy of a source. However, with nodes of a neural network continually sniffing for patterns the applications can enhance what is there and minimize the noise while mitigating unwanted artifacts.

The whole concept of an CFA sensor Bayer or X Trans is to estimate and interpolate color information to produce a full color image. The "AI" based tools are just an extension of that process. For the most part the "AI" label is I expect more for marketing hype than anything else. The real AI will come in the computer vision subsystem of a robot being above to recognize obstacles and navigate around them or to assemble parts in a factory.

Like this dude here.

However, there is a finite set of information in any image as defined by the two dimensional sampling theorem of Middleton and Peterson where each of the primary colors is sampled at different rates. Everything after that is to make the results look like what we would expect.

Click to expand...

The way Topaz describes it is:

"This is what makes Topaz Sharpen AI truly unique – it actually synthesizes convincing details even if the blurred image does not have any through the power of AI."

It seems to me to be saying that the detail it produces is truly synthetic and not based on any mathematical function.

I was intrigued enough when I first heard about it in January that I've gotten it, but really haven't tried it out yet.

The Topaz software just appears to be the only one not to be fast (actually it takes several minutes per photo...) on this computer. PS is fast as a F1 so it has nothing to do with hardware or OS.

I am wondering if the WIN version is the only one to be desperatly sluggish, just unusable

chaimav said:

Truman Prevatt said:

chaimav said:

Personally, AI details make me uneasy. Basically, its just an educated guess but has no real basis in reality. Not really different that Photoshoping in details.

Click to expand...

I don't know why. Most of the "deep learning" applications are nothing more than efficient implementations of pretty standard statistical procedures. No AI application is going to produce more "information" or reduce the entropy of a source. However, with nodes of a neural network continually sniffing for patterns the applications can enhance what is there and minimize the noise while mitigating unwanted artifacts.

The whole concept of an CFA sensor Bayer or X Trans is to estimate and interpolate color information to produce a full color image. The "AI" based tools are just an extension of that process. For the most part the "AI" label is I expect more for marketing hype than anything else. The real AI will come in the computer vision subsystem of a robot being above to recognize obstacles and navigate around them or to assemble parts in a factory.

Like this dude here.

However, there is a finite set of information in any image as defined by the two dimensional sampling theorem of Middleton and Peterson where each of the primary colors is sampled at different rates. Everything after that is to make the results look like what we would expect.

Click to expand...

The way Topaz describes it is:

"This is what makes Topaz Sharpen AI truly unique – it actually synthesizes convincing details even if the blurred image does not have any through the power of AI."

It seems to me to be saying that the detail it produces is truly synthetic and not based on any mathematical function.

Click to expand...

Marketing.

baobob said:

jerry

I tried

Unfortunately despite my Dell XPS Pentium I7 and 16 Gb RAM, Win 10 Pro last version, it takes ages to process making it unusable for me

i just removed immediately may be it is better on a Mac

Just sad

Bob

Click to expand...

Bob,

All these applications have really been around starting in the 1980's. They were required for airborne imagery reconnaissance and for the Hubble and other space satellites. They came out of the radio and optical astronomy world and are essential for high altitude and space based imagery. However, the computational horsepower required is enormous. In In the mid 1980's super computers were required - versions of the Cray - to apply these techniques. But that was 30 years ago and our compute horse power has gone up by about a million times since then for the same dollar and todays high end PC's are more powerful than a super computer in 1989.

As our PC's get better these techniques can start to migrate their way into commercial image processing applications by using the GPU (which is nothing more than a large parallel processing engine). I expect some will have to upgrade their PC's to get the throughput they want. However, given Moore's law seems to still be holding - that is only a temporary impediment.

I am going to try it on my Mac. Unix is a more efficient OS for such processing than Windows since Unix has evolved over the last 50 years in a signal/image processing environment. I'll download it and report back.

This is an old photo I keep around and always use to test against new shake reduction tools.


original


photoshops shake reduction at default


Ai Sharpen at 80%


AI Sharpen at default (50%)


AI Sharpen at default (50%) then AI Clear left in auto

I think that the combination of Sharpen and Clear is intriguing and I will try playing with the settings, but I wanted to try both on total defaults to see what I'd get.

EDIT: I just realized it never occurred to me to try Photoshop Shake Reduction plus AI Clear before. At first glance I like the results... Will explore further




photoshop shake reduction at default and ai clear in auto



--
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mr.kelly.graham/

Man..this gets better all the time. Software can really make a difference.

chaimav said:

Truman Prevatt said:

chaimav said:

Personally, AI details make me uneasy. Basically, its just an educated guess but has no real basis in reality. Not really different that Photoshoping in details.

Click to expand...

I don't know why. Most of the "deep learning" applications are nothing more than efficient implementations of pretty standard statistical procedures. No AI application is going to produce more "information" or reduce the entropy of a source. However, with nodes of a neural network continually sniffing for patterns the applications can enhance what is there and minimize the noise while mitigating unwanted artifacts.

The whole concept of an CFA sensor Bayer or X Trans is to estimate and interpolate color information to produce a full color image. The "AI" based tools are just an extension of that process. For the most part the "AI" label is I expect more for marketing hype than anything else. The real AI will come in the computer vision subsystem of a robot being above to recognize obstacles and navigate around them or to assemble parts in a factory.

Like this dude here.

However, there is a finite set of information in any image as defined by the two dimensional sampling theorem of Middleton and Peterson where each of the primary colors is sampled at different rates. Everything after that is to make the results look like what we would expect.

Click to expand...

The way Topaz describes it is:

"This is what makes Topaz Sharpen AI truly unique – it actually synthesizes convincing details even if the blurred image does not have any through the power of AI."

It seems to me to be saying that the detail it produces is truly synthetic and not based on any mathematical function.

Click to expand...

So artificial intelligence creates synthetic detail?

I tried this with a studio scene and it add this detail, but what does it mean?

Thx truman for these infos

As I posted elsewhere in the thread, it is the only software to behave like this My computer is very fast for all my softwares PS is like a F1. RFC EX3 also very fast.

I just do not want to use in my WF a program that takes 3 to 4 min to process 1 file (same with the Adobe detail enhancement 3mn per file ..)

Thx again for explanations

Bob

Jerry-astro said:

Just got a notice in the mail about a new tool for sharpening by Topaz called Sharpen AI. I’ll start by saying that I have no commercial interest in this at all, but have enjoyed using a variety of their tools in the past. As you might expect, the examples they’re posting are pretty impressive (but as with most such examples, should be taken with a grain of salt):

https://topazlabs.com/let-ai-sharpen-your-photos/

I’d be really curious to hear reactions from folks about this, both in terms of the announcement itself and perhaps any experience that people might have with the tool once they try it out... pro and con. At first glance, it seems as if it might be a nice tool to have, but I’d be really interested in hearing some opinions from the real experts we have in the forum.

Click to expand...

win 10 laptop with gtx1050 gpu

rotating image 24mp around and rendering sharpened 100%view 3-4secs

save as around <30 secs

Output from C1, which I thought was sharp


C1, no nr std sharp, default profile

output from topaz sharpen ai




sharpen 0.7, reduce noise 0.5

Jerry-astro said:

Just got a notice in the mail about a new tool for sharpening by Topaz called Sharpen AI. I’ll start by saying that I have no commercial interest in this at all, but have enjoyed using a variety of their tools in the past. As you might expect, the examples they’re posting are pretty impressive (but as with most such examples, should be taken with a grain of salt):

https://topazlabs.com/let-ai-sharpen-your-photos/

I’d be really curious to hear reactions from folks about this, both in terms of the announcement itself and perhaps any experience that people might have with the tool once they try it out... pro and con. At first glance, it seems as if it might be a nice tool to have, but I’d be really interested in hearing some opinions from the real experts we have in the forum.

Click to expand...

Doesn't seem to work with fuji files. Did you try them?

Yes, not only is the Topaz AI sharpen sharper, but there's less noise in the shadows. Thanks!

I'm surprised that sharpening took longer than SaveAs, and why did you rotate?

Advent1sam said:

win 10 laptop with gtx1050 gpu

rotating image 24mp around and rendering sharpened 100%view 3-4secs

save as around <30 secs

Output from C1, which I thought was sharp


C1, no nr std sharp, default profile

output from topaz sharpen ai


sharpen 0.7, reduce noise 0.5

Click to expand...

stevo23 said:

Jerry-astro said:

Just got a notice in the mail about a new tool for sharpening by Topaz called Sharpen AI. I’ll start by saying that I have no commercial interest in this at all, but have enjoyed using a variety of their tools in the past. As you might expect, the examples they’re posting are pretty impressive (but as with most such examples, should be taken with a grain of salt):

https://topazlabs.com/let-ai-sharpen-your-photos/

I’d be really curious to hear reactions from folks about this, both in terms of the announcement itself and perhaps any experience that people might have with the tool once they try it out... pro and con. At first glance, it seems as if it might be a nice tool to have, but I’d be really interested in hearing some opinions from the real experts we have in the forum.

Click to expand...

Doesn't seem to work with fuji files. Did you try them?

Click to expand...

Not yet... been crazy busy. On the docket for this evening. I'll post something once I can give it a run.

Jerry-astro said:

Just got a notice in the mail about a new tool for sharpening by Topaz called Sharpen AI. I’ll start by saying that I have no commercial interest in this at all, but have enjoyed using a variety of their tools in the past. As you might expect, the examples they’re posting are pretty impressive (but as with most such examples, should be taken with a grain of salt):

https://topazlabs.com/let-ai-sharpen-your-photos/

I’d be really curious to hear reactions from folks about this, both in terms of the announcement itself and perhaps any experience that people might have with the tool once they try it out... pro and con. At first glance, it seems as if it might be a nice tool to have, but I’d be really interested in hearing some opinions from the real experts we have in the forum.

Click to expand...

I downloaded the trial version, yesterday, and it didn't work for me.

I couldn't get the program to open an image file.

There are only certain graphics cards that work with the program and evidently the one in my Dell isn't compatible.

I deleted the trial program because I don't have many blurred photos, anyway.

I'd definitely recommend downloading the trial version before committing to the paid version.

stevo23 said:

Jerry-astro said:

Just got a notice in the mail about a new tool for sharpening by Topaz called Sharpen AI. I’ll start by saying that I have no commercial interest in this at all, but have enjoyed using a variety of their tools in the past. As you might expect, the examples they’re posting are pretty impressive (but as with most such examples, should be taken with a grain of salt):

https://topazlabs.com/let-ai-sharpen-your-photos/

I’d be really curious to hear reactions from folks about this, both in terms of the announcement itself and perhaps any experience that people might have with the tool once they try it out... pro and con. At first glance, it seems as if it might be a nice tool to have, but I’d be really interested in hearing some opinions from the real experts we have in the forum.

Click to expand...

Doesn't seem to work with fuji files. Did you try them?

Click to expand...

It works with any tiff or jpeg. I haven’t had any trouble running tiff’s from Fuji files through.

HatWearingFool said:

stevo23 said:

Jerry-astro said:

Just got a notice in the mail about a new tool for sharpening by Topaz called Sharpen AI. I’ll start by saying that I have no commercial interest in this at all, but have enjoyed using a variety of their tools in the past. As you might expect, the examples they’re posting are pretty impressive (but as with most such examples, should be taken with a grain of salt):

https://topazlabs.com/let-ai-sharpen-your-photos/

I’d be really curious to hear reactions from folks about this, both in terms of the announcement itself and perhaps any experience that people might have with the tool once they try it out... pro and con. At first glance, it seems as if it might be a nice tool to have, but I’d be really interested in hearing some opinions from the real experts we have in the forum.

Click to expand...

Doesn't seem to work with fuji files. Did you try them?

Click to expand...

It works with any tiff or jpeg. I haven’t had any trouble running tiff’s from Fuji files through.

Click to expand...

Yea, I guess if it's really doing a great job. But not much interested otherwise.

Just went and tried it on tiffs - it's producing about the worst thing I've seen yet. Might run a file through the enhance details and export as tiff and see what happens.

It does work with my files, BUT....takes ages and ages to process one file.........

On my computer ( WIN 10 Pro 1809, I7 16Gb) all softwares are fast as a F1, but Topaz is just awfully sluggish.. i uninstalled the trial, unusable for me...