My findings - Topaz and Topaz Ai - not great🤔

I frequently read here how good topaz Denoise Ai and Sharpen Ai is for improving or rescuing images. Yet my experience with these 2 products is very different.

I use Topaz Adjust with my own presets and think it's generally wonderful. But I find there Denoise Ai and Sharpen mostly unusable - but with a caveat.

... They can both work well on photos of simple subjects (cars, buildings, trains) and taken with poor lenses. Which in truth is probably what they were designed for.

However i find both these programs useless for most of my work especially when I use a Pro lens. I most frequently photograph nature and landscape.

Denoise Ai actually adds very obvious horrid speckled artifacts (noise?) to random often plane areas. And these are far worse than any original noise that was in that area!

Plus they both over-sharpen any already sharp edges. And although the strength of sharpening can be controlled, to a large extent the fine-ness or delicassy of the edge just isn't there. In Sharpen Ai there is crude control of radius but only down to a certain level. Both these programs prevent me from achieving a realistic edge to for instance leaves on a tree or grass.

I would be interested to know how do others - who think these two programs are wonderful - actually use them. When and for what ?

Thank you.

Adrian Harris said:

I frequently read here how good topaz Denoise Ai and Sharpen Ai is for improving or rescuing images. Yet my experience with these 2 products is very different.

I use Topaz Adjust with my own presets and think it's generally wonderful. But I find there Denoise Ai and Sharpen mostly unusable - but with a caveat.

... They can both work well on photos of simple subjects (cars, buildings, trains) and taken with poor lenses. Which in truth is probably what they were designed for.

However i find both these programs useless for most of my work especially when I use a Pro lens. I most frequently photograph nature and landscape.

Denoise Ai actually adds very obvious horrid speckled artifacts (noise?) to random often plane areas. And these are far worse than any original noise that was in that area!

Plus they both over-sharpen any already sharp edges. And although the strength of sharpening can be controlled, to a large extent the fine-ness or delicassy of the edge just isn't there. In Sharpen Ai there is crude control of radius but only down to a certain level. Both these programs prevent me from achieving a realistic edge to for instance leaves on a tree or grass.

I would be interested to know how do others - who think these two programs are wonderful - actually use them. When and for what ?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

My experience is mostly very positive with them. And most recently, with Photo AI which combines the 3 products.

But I do find that you have to watch how agressive you use the sliders as you can introduce halos and artifacts. The idea being to use just enough, but not too much. And I do monitor an enlarged image while doing it.

Adrian Harris said:

I frequently read here how good topaz Denoise Ai and Sharpen Ai is for improving or rescuing images. Yet my experience with these 2 products is very different.

I use Topaz Adjust with my own presets and think it's generally wonderful. But I find there Denoise Ai and Sharpen mostly unusable - but with a caveat.

... They can both work well on photos of simple subjects (cars, buildings, trains) and taken with poor lenses. Which in truth is probably what they were designed for.

However i find both these programs useless for most of my work especially when I use a Pro lens. I most frequently photograph nature and landscape.

Denoise Ai actually adds very obvious horrid speckled artifacts (noise?) to random often plane areas. And these are far worse than any original noise that was in that area!

Plus they both over-sharpen any already sharp edges. And although the strength of sharpening can be controlled, to a large extent the fine-ness or delicassy of the edge just isn't there. In Sharpen Ai there is crude control of radius but only down to a certain level. Both these programs prevent me from achieving a realistic edge to for instance leaves on a tree or grass.

I would be interested to know how do others - who think these two programs are wonderful - actually use them. When and for what ?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

You are right.

Currently AI is not at the level to produce free-artifacts images. I have tried intensively both Topaz Denoise AI and DxO PL6. In all the cases I have found many problems, which are related not only to that you mentioned. Often due to specific AI sharpening algorithm (even when sharpening is turned off; otherwise, for example in DXO, the results are simply terrible) people faces I know very well became very different from those in life and on on the original no-denoise image. Fine noise after removing the color noise is more acceptable for me. I am surprised, why so many photographers do not see this and produce so much hype around current AI denoise...

And yes, the background, which is free of details, is indeed perfect after AI denoise .

Didn't tried the Adobe AI implementation. Hope there is some progress, but I do not have too much optimism...

Serguei Palto said:

Adrian Harris said:

I frequently read here how good topaz Denoise Ai and Sharpen Ai is for improving or rescuing images. Yet my experience with these 2 products is very different.

I use Topaz Adjust with my own presets and think it's generally wonderful. But I find there Denoise Ai and Sharpen mostly unusable - but with a caveat.

... They can both work well on photos of simple subjects (cars, buildings, trains) and taken with poor lenses. Which in truth is probably what they were designed for.

However i find both these programs useless for most of my work especially when I use a Pro lens. I most frequently photograph nature and landscape.

Denoise Ai actually adds very obvious horrid speckled artifacts (noise?) to random often plane areas. And these are far worse than any original noise that was in that area!

Plus they both over-sharpen any already sharp edges. And although the strength of sharpening can be controlled, to a large extent the fine-ness or delicassy of the edge just isn't there. In Sharpen Ai there is crude control of radius but only down to a certain level. Both these programs prevent me from achieving a realistic edge to for instance leaves on a tree or grass.

I would be interested to know how do others - who think these two programs are wonderful - actually use them. When and for what ?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

You are right.

Currently AI is not at the level to produce free-artifacts images. I have tried intensively both Topaz Denoise AI and DxO PL6. In all the cases I have found many problems, which are related not only to that you mentioned. Often due to specific AI sharpening algorithm (even when sharpening is turned off; otherwise, for example in DXO, the results are simply terrible) people faces I know very well became very different from those in life and on on the original no-denoise image. Fine noise after removing the color noise is more acceptable for me. I am surprised, why so many photographers do not see this and produce so much hype around current AI denoise...

And yes, the background, which is free of details, is indeed perfect after AI denoise .

Didn't tried the Adobe AI implementation. Hope there is some progress, but I do not have too much optimism...

Click to expand...

lve noticed some issues too and these need to be sent as feedback to topaz. I recently noticed a bug and posted it a few days ago, has to do with the enhanced resolution module. If it is on, it compounds the effects of denoise and sharpen. That may be why you see effects after noise and sharpen are off. Turn off all and there is no change to the image. Turn off noise and sharpen leaving enhance on and it does things to the image. Topaz advised that this effect cannot be disabled. So keeping enhance off may improve the sharpen / denoise results.

And I agree with the the OP, the results were not good on many images but they were very good on others. I am sending feedback to Topaz on issues I find and they have been responsive. The updates have improved results.

Adrian Harris said:

I would be interested to know how do others - who think these two programs are wonderful - actually use them. When and for what ?

Click to expand...

Including Gigapixel I have three. I don't believe Adjust runs on M1/M2 Macbook. Thanks for your comments, Adrian.

Sharpen is good for improving scans from old photo prints. It would be nice if could also correct color and contrast. Sharpen is good for correcting camera shake (motion blur) but usually I discard such photos anyway.

Denoise is good for high ISO noise reduction in JPEG images. If you shoot Raw, results from DxO PhotoLab, or new Lightroom, look far more natural.

Gigapixel is good for making photos bigger if you shot them too small. Surprisingly it is also good for reducing photo size 0.5x when you have cellphone images with too many pixels.

All these are relatively arcane use cases. In other words, I hardly ever use Topaz AI.

I am very pleased with Topaz Labs Denoise. However, I have had to make a few changes to my workflow to get optimal response and not get the softening/ smearing of details or artifacts.

I use Denoise as a Lightroom plugin and I have learned to export images to it with an absolute minimum of processing. I now only set the camera profile, color balance, white and black points, set the Lightroom sharpening to 0 and export without any cropping.

Once in Denoise I compare the various models of sharpening and choose. I also allow Denoise to apply the sharpening and noise removal automatically and adjust from there. I often find myself reducing the noise and sharpening values by at least 50%.

Granted there are a lot of other factors and variables at play here so your mileage will vary. I have not found a product that works better than Topaz.

Adrian Harris said:

I frequently read here how good topaz Denoise Ai and Sharpen Ai is for improving or rescuing images. Yet my experience with these 2 products is very different.

I use Topaz Adjust with my own presets and think it's generally wonderful. But I find there Denoise Ai and Sharpen mostly unusable - but with a caveat.

... They can both work well on photos of simple subjects (cars, buildings, trains) and taken with poor lenses. Which in truth is probably what they were designed for.

However i find both these programs useless for most of my work especially when I use a Pro lens. I most frequently photograph nature and landscape.

Denoise Ai actually adds very obvious horrid speckled artifacts (noise?) to random often plane areas. And these are far worse than any original noise that was in that area!

Plus they both over-sharpen any already sharp edges. And although the strength of sharpening can be controlled, to a large extent the fine-ness or delicassy of the edge just isn't there. In Sharpen Ai there is crude control of radius but only down to a certain level. Both these programs prevent me from achieving a realistic edge to for instance leaves on a tree or grass.

I would be interested to know how do others - who think these two programs are wonderful - actually use them. When and for what ?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

I have several Topaz products, but currently use two only. Regular DeNoise, and Sharpen AI.

Sharpen AI is my go to sharpening tool, with Photoshop High Pass second.

I agree that Sharpen AI can indeed over sharpen and add artifacts, so I usually work on a duplicated layer and adjust accordingly. But, many times, it does a fantastic job. You just have to keep an eye out on it, because it does tend to over sharpen sometimes.

I have all three of the Topaz AI apps. but I've removed all of them in favour of Topaz Photo AI which, as you're all aware, kind of, replaces all three.

Personally, I find its denoise capability excellent, certainly on a par with DxO's (in my opinion) overrated alternative.

I rarely use it to sharpen anything as I take care of that in Photoshop and Photo AI's 'Enhance resolution' feature takes over from Gigapixel. Not that I have any real use for either.

Also, don't forget the 'Enhance' feature in Camera Raw.

It's worth bearing in mind, when you're evaluating these Topaz products, that they're all supposedly at end of life. I don't think any of them have had an update for ages; probably not this year and I can't see one arriving any time in the future.


"It's good to be . . . . . . . . . Me!"

Maybe a highly experienced photographer would have little use for the Topaz products.

I presume that even such a person would need to use some sort of tool to reduce noise in high-ISO RAW images.

As a very amateurish amateur, I've improved my images with Sharpen. I've had to choose a sharpening model and judiciously set the slider to avoid excessive artifacts.

More recent versions can do a pretty good job of ameliorating small motion blur. (At the cost of processing time.)

Denoise gives me a speckle-free image on an interior painted wall. That's not a major test of it, though.

If you're skilled enough to avoid noise, sharpness, or motion blur issues, then AI tools to correct those may be worse than useless.

Adrian Harris said:

I frequently read here how good topaz Denoise Ai and Sharpen Ai is for improving or rescuing images.

Click to expand...

I haven't used either one, so can't comment.

Adrian Harris said:

Denoise Ai actually adds very obvious horrid speckled artifacts (noise?) to random often plane areas. And these are far worse than any original noise that was in that area!

Click to expand...

Intriguing. I'd like to see a before-and-after demonstration of that.

Jestertheclown said:

I have all three of the Topaz AI apps. but I've removed all of them in favour of Topaz Photo AI which, as you're all aware, kind of, replaces all three.

Personally, I find its denoise capability excellent, certainly on a par with DxO's (in my opinion) overrated alternative.

I rarely use it to sharpen anything as I take care of that in Photoshop and Photo AI's 'Enhance resolution' feature takes over from Gigapixel. Not that I have any real use for either.

Also, don't forget the 'Enhance' feature in Camera Raw.

It's worth bearing in mind, when you're evaluating these Topaz products, that they're all supposedly at end of life. I don't think any of them have had an update for ages; probably not this year and I can't see one arriving any time in the future.

Click to expand...

Current releases:

• DeNoise AI 3.7.2: February 22, 2023.
• Gigapixel AI 6.3.3: January 24, 2023
• Sharpen AI 4.1.0: March 24th, 2022

I agree that no significant enhancements can be expected in any of them. But Topaz doesn't yet offer the option of only buying maintenance on Photo AI but not its three predecessors.

Jestertheclown said:

I have all three of the Topaz AI apps. but I've removed all of them in favour of Topaz Photo AI which, as you're all aware, kind of, replaces all three.

Personally, I find its denoise capability excellent, certainly on a par with DxO's (in my opinion) overrated alternative.

I rarely use it to sharpen anything as I take care of that in Photoshop and Photo AI's 'Enhance resolution' feature takes over from Gigapixel.

Click to expand...

Photo AI sharpens as part of the noise reduction process even when 'Sharpen' is disabled. That's usually plenty for me.

I must admit I'm somewhat conflicted about the Topaz products. Are they suitable for production usage on all images? No, definitely not. As you mention, they tend to introduce unpredictable artifacts. The red speckles on blue skies are particularly bizarre and frustrating.

I do use them for problem images though, where they can be really helpful. Sharpen AI can fix motion blur better than anything else I've encountered, and DeNoise AI is often good at cleaning up scanned images. I use Gigapixel/Photo AI to enlarge my old 6MP EOS 10D images, and it can do a good job there too - but the key is to keep a careful eye on all of these tools.

Personally I use DxO PhotoLab's DeepPRIME (not XD) as it can remove noise reliably without adding artifacts, and I know I can trust it for batch processing of my raw files.

I have yet to use the new AI noise reduction in Photoshop significantly yet, but that looks interesting too.

I get MUCH better results by using it as a plug-in with ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2023. I let ACDSee (or on occasion, OM Workspace) do the "DeMosaic-ing", the lens correction, the exposure/lighting control, and color control directly to the OrF file.

Then I send it to the ACDSee layered edit module for denoising and sharpening and any presentation level 'tweaking' based on how I choose to display them.

The Topaz tools were originally designed to work on bit mapped images, and I believe they still work best on them.

I also own ON1 Photo Raw 2023, and I like Photo AI for DeNoise and Sharpening much better with ON1. Don't get me wrong, On1 is good enough for most work especially at presentation viewing sizes. But I do think On1 is a bit too aggressive especially with sharpening.

Lan said:

Personally I use DxO PhotoLab's DeepPRIME (not XD) as it can remove noise reliably without adding artifacts, and I know I can trust it for batch processing of my raw files.

Click to expand...

Why not the XD, DxO advertises it to be better.

From the DxO website:

DeepPRIME XD: Another level

There are two levels of DeepPRIME processing available in the latest versions of DxO PhotoLab 6 and DxO PureRAW 3: DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD (which stands for eXtra Details). Both will reduce noise, increase clarity and purify results from your camera’s sensor, but the newer DeepPRIME XD mode uses an even more intensive approach.

With its more exhaustive and effective processing, DeepPRIME XD delivers even finer detail and contrast in both high or low ISO images. Expect photos free from noise, with smoother bokeh, finer textures, and more realistic and natural color.

Both DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD are compatible with all major manufacturers’ cameras, including Canon, DJI, Fujifilm, Hasselblad, Nikon, Panasonic, Pentax, Olympus/OM System, Sony, Leica, and more.
Learn more

Noise reduction has never been better.

I'm very happy with Topaz DeNoise. These two examples were shot at 1/4000" by mistake at ISO 2500 and ISO 4000 respectively with an APS-C camera and they look relatively decent to me. I don't see egregious artifacts or detail smearing here. Yes, they'd look better at base ISO, but these absolutely look better with Topaz DeNoise than without - pretty much the same, but with less noise.




ISO 2500




ISO 4000



--
Going forward, you can find me as ErikWithaK over at the new DPRevived, DPRFORUM, and FUIX forums, but DPRevived seems to be the place to be.

TomV1 said:

Lan said:

Personally I use DxO PhotoLab's DeepPRIME (not XD) as it can remove noise reliably without adding artifacts, and I know I can trust it for batch processing of my raw files.

Click to expand...

Why not the XD, DxO advertises it to be better.

Click to expand...

You're much more likely to get artefacts with XD, particularly if you use the default settings. Even if you turn down the Noise Model, artefacts are still possible. So it should only be used sparingly, not by default on every image. DeepPRIME is much better for that role.

TomV1 said:

From the DxO website:

DeepPRIME XD: Another level

There are two levels of DeepPRIME processing available in the latest versions of DxO PhotoLab 6 and DxO PureRAW 3: DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD (which stands for eXtra Details). Both will reduce noise, increase clarity and purify results from your camera’s sensor, but the newer DeepPRIME XD mode uses an even more intensive approach.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, sometimes that extra detail that it finds is fake (ie, artefacts). You need to check every image you process with DeepPRIME XD; that's not necessary with the original DeepPRIME, which I use, by default, on every raw image I process. Only exceptionally do I invoke XD.

TomV1 said:

With its more exhaustive and effective processing, DeepPRIME XD delivers even finer detail and contrast in both high or low ISO images. Expect photos free from noise, with smoother bokeh, finer textures, and more realistic and natural color.

Click to expand...

TomV1 said:

Both DeepPRIME and DeepPRIME XD are compatible with all major manufacturers’ cameras, including Canon, DJI, Fujifilm, Hasselblad, Nikon, Panasonic, Pentax, Olympus/OM System, Sony, Leica, and more.

Click to expand...

But not most phone cameras.

TomV1 said:

Learn more

Noise reduction has never been better.

Click to expand...

True

Serguei Palto said:

Adrian Harris said:

I frequently read here how good topaz Denoise Ai and Sharpen Ai is for improving or rescuing images. Yet my experience with these 2 products is very different.

I use Topaz Adjust with my own presets and think it's generally wonderful. But I find there Denoise Ai and Sharpen mostly unusable - but with a caveat.

... They can both work well on photos of simple subjects (cars, buildings, trains) and taken with poor lenses. Which in truth is probably what they were designed for.

However i find both these programs useless for most of my work especially when I use a Pro lens. I most frequently photograph nature and landscape.

Denoise Ai actually adds very obvious horrid speckled artifacts (noise?) to random often plane areas. And these are far worse than any original noise that was in that area!

Plus they both over-sharpen any already sharp edges. And although the strength of sharpening can be controlled, to a large extent the fine-ness or delicassy of the edge just isn't there. In Sharpen Ai there is crude control of radius but only down to a certain level. Both these programs prevent me from achieving a realistic edge to for instance leaves on a tree or grass.

I would be interested to know how do others - who think these two programs are wonderful - actually use them. When and for what ?

Thank you.

Click to expand...

You are right.

Currently AI is not at the level to produce free-artifacts images. I have tried intensively both Topaz Denoise AI and DxO PL6. In all the cases I have found many problems, which are related not only to that you mentioned. Often due to specific AI sharpening algorithm (even when sharpening is turned off; otherwise, for example in DXO, the results are simply terrible) people faces I know very well became very different from those in life and on on the original no-denoise image. Fine noise after removing the color noise is more acceptable for me. I am surprised, why so many photographers do not see this and produce so much hype around current AI denoise...

And yes, the background, which is free of details, is indeed perfect after AI denoise .

Didn't tried the Adobe AI implementation. Hope there is some progress, but I do not have too much optimism...

Click to expand...

I have a very positive experience with DXO PL DeepPrime, but if you use the XD variation of DeepPrime you have to tune down the noise reduction model in some cases.

In fact my experience is so positive that I normally use it on all my photos, high or low ISO.

Last time I tested Topaz sharpen AI it gave me exactly nothing I could not achieve with som local sharpening.

Erik Baumgartner said:

I'm very happy with Topaz DeNoise. These two examples were shot at 1/4000" by mistake at ISO 2500 and ISO 4000 respectively with an APS-C camera and they look relatively decent to me. I don't see egregious artifacts or detail smearing here.

Click to expand...

Both your examples show things you need to be careful with using Topaz AI. Noise and Sharpen work a little differently, but the bottom line is that Noise tends to produce areas of "inconsistency" whereas Sharpen will tend to produce areas that are sharpened that shouldn't be.

Noise inconsistency tends to have to do with detail. On the second image, the ridgetop at the left is sharp and detailed, but the area below it is a messy blur. In the first image, I see inconsistencies in the shoreline where in some cases AI Noise had enough detail to produce detail, but in others it didn't so smeared.

Our eye/brain is very good at picking out inconsistencies. Near-to-far needs to be handled correctly, or else we'll at least subconsciously say something is wrong.

This is the reason why most Topaz AI users tend to do so on a layer in PS. With an f/2.8 telephoto on the camera, I have to watch very closely to the out of focus (OOF) area. OOF can't have "spontaneous details" in spots. So I'm often masking out the Sharpen AI impacts except for subject. Indeed, I use Sharpen AI essentially as Fraser's "Third Sharpening" step (selective/creative sharpening).

One thing I've learned in using Topaz AI since available is that you have to consider your ACR settings carefully if you're going to use the plug-ins downstream. It's easy to trigger issues if you use certain sliders on areas that Topaz will eventually struggle with. Thankfully, with Adobe's new masking abilities in ACR, you can do things to mitigate the downstream issues. For instance, in terms of noise, an out-of-focus background should get negative Clarity values in ACR. Topaz will handle that far better than if you goosed Clarity/Texture in the raw processing.

sybersitizen said:

Adrian Harris said:

I frequently read here how good topaz Denoise Ai and Sharpen Ai is for improving or rescuing images.

Click to expand...

I haven't used either one, so can't comment.

sybersitizen said:

Denoise Ai actually adds very obvious horrid speckled artifacts (noise?) to random often plane areas. And these are far worse than any original noise that was in that area!

Click to expand...

Intriguing. I'd like to see a before-and-after demonstration of that.

Click to expand...

I wi get around to posting some examples, but it may be a while due to other tasks