Photo AI vs DeNoise, Sharpen, and Gigapixel

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

The individual apps have a lot more options, and so are more capable with difficult images. They're also better if you only need one function, such as sharpening. But Photo AI is simpler and quicker if you would have used two or three of the original apps on a fairly straightforward image.

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

Not yet.

Effectiveness. Pretty darn good for the 1st release. It has done a great job of motion blur but I have not tested it on a tough NR job yet. I don't often need to for what I shoot.

Speed. Not too bad. Reasonable. It appears it has to process each part separately. IMO it would take longer to open each app separately.

Ease of Use. Very easy.

It still needs work but Topaz says on their site that the intent is to one day get Photo AI to a level where it can replace the 3 individual apps.

FYI you can use it as a plug-in and edit it as a RAW. When the DNG comes back to LrC all the colour profiles and lens corrections are available. A game changer.

From their info that comes with Photo AI. I don't know how this works with other developers.

Lightroom Classic comes with two workflows, one that supports RAW editing to output a DNG and another that will create a TIFF or JPG copy of the original image.

The plug-in that supports RAW editing is accessible from the File > Plug-in Extras > Process in Topaz Photo AI menu and will send any image directly to Topaz Photo AI, then import the processed image back into Lightroom Classic. We highly recommend using this workflow with your RAW files for the best image quality results.

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Don't Look Up! The very fabric of captured light is noise.

Raw file via plug-in. After opening in Photo AI.

13 seconds to scan and apply NR

3 seconds to apply sharpening - standard setting. Which I activated manually.

49 seconds to process and open back in LrC.

This is my system. 500GB SSD. I beefed up the VRAM for the new AI apps.











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Don't Look Up! The very fabric of captured light is noise.

I ran this through. Plane was pretty blurry. It automatically selected the subject. I set sharpening to motion blur and it also took 3 seconds.











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Don't Look Up! The very fabric of captured light is noise.

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

All the Topaz tools are available free to test.

Your question is a bit hard to answer as 'it depends'.

If most of your pictures need ONLY noise removal, using Denoise may prove faster.

I had mixed results on face recognition and 'fixing' using Photo AI.

As others posted, Photo AI is 'simpler' to use (you can tweak it, for sure).

I try the RAW (Canon RP) workflow. Not impressed. Using Capture One, I can edit a TIFF conversion from the RAW after adjustments. Works fine.

As you remove the noise, the final image may need some adjustments as the noise may have introduced some color balance issues or lead to a brighter image than was intended.

Photo AI is being upgraded regularly on two fronts: the actual 'engines' and the AI models. Today, we expect most software to be upgraded, somehow, be your phone or your PC. As the number of users of Photo AI increase, so are the 'complaints' and requests for a better app. Thus, the never-ending version upgrades,

Enjoy AI technology.

Thank you all for responding. I do mostly landscapes and almost always on a tripod and at ISO 100 as much as possible. I use DeNoise AI on those occasion when I've had to shoot with a faster shutter speed and a higher ISO because of wind. Occasionally I'll use Sharpen AI because it can do wonders with motion blur when my shutter speed wasn't quite fast enough. Normally I'll use the high pass filter in Photoshop for sharpening, but I always go to DeNoise for any noise. Luckily I don't have to use either one too often because the models are soooo slow to load and update. (I'm running Windows 10 on a 4th generation Core i7 with 24 GB of memory, a Radeon RX 570 Armor 8G OC, and a 256 GB SSD solely dedicated to use as a scratch disk for Photoshop, so upgrading my system would help somewhat but not a lot)

I ignored Photo AI when it first came out because I knew that the standalones did a better job, but I also knew development was continuing and that Topaz releases updates quite frequently so I wondered if it had caught up with the standalones yet. If I download Photo AI for the trial period I'll want to test it thoroughly before the trial period expires and that will be time consuming so the real question was "is it worth the effort?". It sounds to me, given how I work, that I shouldn't bother with Photo AI for now though I may well want to switch within a year or less.

Thank you all again.
Peter

ppage said:

Thank you all for responding. I do mostly landscapes and almost always on a tripod and at ISO 100 as much as possible. I use DeNoise AI on those occasion when I've had to shoot with a faster shutter speed and a higher ISO because of wind. Occasionally I'll use Sharpen AI because it can do wonders with motion blur when my shutter speed wasn't quite fast enough. Normally I'll use the high pass filter in Photoshop for sharpening, but I always go to DeNoise for any noise. Luckily I don't have to use either one too often because the models are soooo slow to load and update. (I'm running Windows 10 on a 4th generation Core i7 with 24 GB of memory, a Radeon RX 570 Armor 8G OC, and a 256 GB SSD solely dedicated to use as a scratch disk for Photoshop, so upgrading my system would help somewhat but not a lot)

I ignored Photo AI when it first came out because I knew that the standalones did a better job, but I also knew development was continuing and that Topaz releases updates quite frequently so I wondered if it had caught up with the standalones yet. If I download Photo AI for the trial period I'll want to test it thoroughly before the trial period expires and that will be time consuming so the real question was "is it worth the effort?". It sounds to me, given how I work, that I shouldn't bother with Photo AI for now though I may well want to switch within a year or less.

Click to expand...

Do you ever use Gigapixel AI? If not, I'd stick to just Sharpen and DeNoise AI.

Digital Nigel said:

Do you ever use Gigapixel AI? If not, I'd stick to just Sharpen and DeNoise AI.

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Thank you for that insight. I have used it a couple of times. I have a few photographs taken with an 8MB Canon Rebel camera that I wanted to enlarge for printing purposes. It worked very well, but as I said, I don't use it very often. I wouldn't consider a factor in my decision to move to Photo AI or not.

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

I find I use a mixture of both the standalone versions, and Photo AI.

The individual applications have more control, which is helpful with difficult images.

When I want a "one click" option for a quick fix, I'd use Photo AI, but there are some images I can't seem to get a decent output from using Photo AI.

At the moment I plan to keep both the individual apps and Photo AI installed.

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Lan said:

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

I find I use a mixture of both the standalone versions, and Photo AI.

The individual applications have more control, which is helpful with difficult images.

When I want a "one click" option for a quick fix, I'd use Photo AI, but there are some images I can't seem to get a decent output from using Photo AI.

At the moment I plan to keep both the individual apps and Photo AI installed.

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Click to expand...

I also find images look different.

Sagittarius said:

Lan said:

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

I find I use a mixture of both the standalone versions, and Photo AI.

The individual applications have more control, which is helpful with difficult images.

When I want a "one click" option for a quick fix, I'd use Photo AI, but there are some images I can't seem to get a decent output from using Photo AI.

At the moment I plan to keep both the individual apps and Photo AI installed.

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Click to expand...

I also find images look different.

Click to expand...

Both to you and Lan. In which way? Have you tried doing this as a plug-in and editing in PAI as a RAW?

Zeee said:

Sagittarius said:

Lan said:

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

I find I use a mixture of both the standalone versions, and Photo AI.

The individual applications have more control, which is helpful with difficult images.

When I want a "one click" option for a quick fix, I'd use Photo AI, but there are some images I can't seem to get a decent output from using Photo AI.

At the moment I plan to keep both the individual apps and Photo AI installed.

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Click to expand...

I also find images look different.

Click to expand...

Both to you and Lan. In which way? Have you tried doing this as a plug-in and editing in PAI as a RAW?

Click to expand...

I am using all Topaz apps as plug ins to Lr Classic. Some images are sharpened differently. Some images after allpying NR in Photo AI look somewhat more plasticy. Some images proccesed in Photo AI look quite good. Apparently different algorithms are being applied.

Sagittarius said:

Zeee said:

Sagittarius said:

Lan said:

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Click to expand...

I also find images look different.

Click to expand...

Both to you and Lan. In which way? Have you tried doing this as a plug-in and editing in PAI as a RAW?

Click to expand...

I am using all Topaz apps as plug ins to Lr Classic. Some images are sharpened differently. Some images after allpying NR in Photo AI look somewhat more plasticy. Some images proccesed in Photo AI look quite good. Apparently different algorithms are being applied.

Click to expand...

My experience is similiar to Sagittarius's. NR when combined with uprezzing tends to result in very plasticky and detail free images. That's not the case if I use Gigapixel and DeNoise separately. I'm almost wondering whether it's applying the operations in wrong order?

FWIW I don't directly process raw images with any of the Topaz tools routinely. I tend to use GP/Sh/DN as PS plugins, and Photo AI standalone. I always process my raws with DxO PhotoLab.

Sagittarius said:

Zeee said:

Sagittarius said:

Lan said:

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

I find I use a mixture of both the standalone versions, and Photo AI.

The individual applications have more control, which is helpful with difficult images.

When I want a "one click" option for a quick fix, I'd use Photo AI, but there are some images I can't seem to get a decent output from using Photo AI.

At the moment I plan to keep both the individual apps and Photo AI installed.

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Click to expand...

I also find images look different.

Click to expand...

Both to you and Lan. In which way? Have you tried doing this as a plug-in and editing in PAI as a RAW?

Click to expand...

I am using all Topaz apps as plug ins to Lr Classic. Some images are sharpened differently. Some images after allpying NR in Photo AI look somewhat more plasticy. Some images proccesed in Photo AI look quite good. Apparently different algorithms are being applied.

Click to expand...

As for a plug-in how are you doing this? Dragging the file from LrC into Sharpen AI? I don’t see the option in plug-in extras for that. I tried the dragging a file into Sharpen/DeNoise but I didn’t like the process.

Sagittarius said:

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Best regards

Click to expand...

--
Don't Look Up! The very fabric of captured light is noise.

Lan said:

Sagittarius said:

Zeee said:

Sagittarius said:

Lan said:

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Click to expand...

I also find images look different.

Click to expand...

Both to you and Lan. In which way? Have you tried doing this as a plug-in and editing in PAI as a RAW?

Click to expand...

I am using all Topaz apps as plug ins to Lr Classic. Some images are sharpened differently. Some images after allpying NR in Photo AI look somewhat more plasticy. Some images proccesed in Photo AI look quite good. Apparently different algorithms are being applied.

Click to expand...

My experience is similiar to Sagittarius's. NR when combined with uprezzing tends to result in very plasticky and detail free images. That's not the case if I use Gigapixel and DeNoise separately. I'm almost wondering whether it's applying the operations in wrong order?

FWIW I don't directly process raw images with any of the Topaz tools routinely. I tend to use GP/Sh/DN as PS plugins, and Photo AI standalone. I always process my raws with DxO PhotoLab.

Click to expand...

I’ve never even tried Gigapixel, I never had it until a few weeks ago. Adding it to the other 2 apps gave me Photo AI for free. I guess I’ll have to try it. What order do you do it in when using them individually.

Zeee said:

Sagittarius said:

Zeee said:

Sagittarius said:

Lan said:

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

I find I use a mixture of both the standalone versions, and Photo AI.

The individual applications have more control, which is helpful with difficult images.

When I want a "one click" option for a quick fix, I'd use Photo AI, but there are some images I can't seem to get a decent output from using Photo AI.

At the moment I plan to keep both the individual apps and Photo AI installed.

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Click to expand...

I also find images look different.

Click to expand...

Both to you and Lan. In which way? Have you tried doing this as a plug-in and editing in PAI as a RAW?

Click to expand...

I am using all Topaz apps as plug ins to Lr Classic. Some images are sharpened differently. Some images after allpying NR in Photo AI look somewhat more plasticy. Some images proccesed in Photo AI look quite good. Apparently different algorithms are being applied.

Click to expand...

As for a plug-in how are you doing this? Dragging the file from LrC into Sharpen AI? I don’t see the option in plug-in extras for that. I tried the dragging a file into Sharpen/DeNoise but I didn’t like the process.

Click to expand...

Edit in. Plug-in extras is a different story.

Sagittarius said:

Zeee said:

Sagittarius said:

Zeee said:

Sagittarius said:

Lan said:

ppage said:

I was wondering if those of you who have been using Photo AI for awhile and have also used the individual Topaz AI products prefer Photo AI to the other three. How would you compare then in terms of effectiveness, speed, and ease of use?

Click to expand...

I find I use a mixture of both the standalone versions, and Photo AI.

The individual applications have more control, which is helpful with difficult images.

When I want a "one click" option for a quick fix, I'd use Photo AI, but there are some images I can't seem to get a decent output from using Photo AI.

At the moment I plan to keep both the individual apps and Photo AI installed.

I feel the image quality is different, but that could be entirely my imagination...

Click to expand...

I also find images look different.

Click to expand...

Both to you and Lan. In which way? Have you tried doing this as a plug-in and editing in PAI as a RAW?

Click to expand...

I am using all Topaz apps as plug ins to Lr Classic. Some images are sharpened differently. Some images after allpying NR in Photo AI look somewhat more plasticy. Some images proccesed in Photo AI look quite good. Apparently different algorithms are being applied.

Click to expand...

As for a plug-in how are you doing this? Dragging the file from LrC into Sharpen AI? I don’t see the option in plug-in extras for that. I tried the dragging a file into Sharpen/DeNoise but I didn’t like the process.

Click to expand...

Edit in. Plug-in extras is a different story.

Click to expand...

Right.I do that as well. You can drag the file into Sharpen or DeNoise and it will open as a RAW. However when you save it back at LrC, in the Library page you have to select the folder and use the Sync folder command. You lose the colour profiles and lens corrections for Canon. I think Sony works OK. At the end he only shows Sony in LrC and you can see it will have the profiles. For Canon it just says Color when I've done it. I've tried this a dozen times.

Zeee said:

I’ve never even tried Gigapixel, I never had it until a few weeks ago. Adding it to the other 2 apps gave me Photo AI for free. I guess I’ll have to try it. What order do you do it in when using them individually.

Click to expand...

It depends on the image. Typically I'd run Gigapixel first, but if the source image is really noisy I might try DeNoise first.

Lan said:

Zeee said:

I’ve never even tried Gigapixel, I never had it until a few weeks ago. Adding it to the other 2 apps gave me Photo AI for free. I guess I’ll have to try it. What order do you do it in when using them individually.

Click to expand...

It depends on the image. Typically I'd run Gigapixel first, but if the source image is really noisy I might try DeNoise first.

Click to expand...

Thanks