Topaz AI with darktable anyone?

[Rightsaidfred]

Dear forum

Always trying to improve, constantly thinking about options, no pressure

But I just saw Topaz DeNoise AI is on sale until July 8.

Well, I am on Linux with my photo stuff, and I am a darktable user.

But Topaz runs only on Windows and Mac.

So I'd need to covert into DNG on a Windows machine and then import the DNG into darktable, quite a bit of a hassle. Never tried it.

My question, does anyone do that, how does it work? Does it work, at all?

Other options

• Sluggy warrior who is very helpful - thank you - made me aware of nind denoise, a natural image noise removal using convolutional neural networks (https://github.com/trougnouf/nind-denoise).
• DxO
• Invest into a Windows machine for my photo work. This would also for example enable me to use XRaw Studio. The more I do the more I like the Fujifilm OOC colors. I mostly find myself trying to emulate them with darktable.
• Keep my machine, keep my workflow, take photos, and be happy

Regards,

Martin

--
SmugMug - https://martinlang.smugmug.com
500px - https://500px.com/martinlangphotography
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/martin.lang.photography

 

[a_c_skinner]

IF you have enough memory (8Gb will be enough, though not generous) you can install, free, VMWare player and run Windows as a virtual machine. You can download a W10 iso here and it seems to run for what you'd want to do without activation. Think of it as a very long period of evaluation. I've run W10 VMs on a 4Gb machine but it is a bit slow. VMWare deals with USB connections easily so Xraw studio should run perfectly well.

Denoise AI is a very effective program, it has nice sharpening too. Personally I'd continue your current workflow and only sharpen/denoise images you want to show as it will be a slow solution. As this is a sharpen/denoise solution I think it should be the last step and I'd use tiff as the input and output.

You may find Topaz stuff runs under Wine. Some of their programs seem to.

--
Andrew Skinner

 

[Rightsaidfred]

Many thanks Andrew.

These are two excellent advices.

IF you have enough memory (8Gb will be enough, though not generous) you can install, free, VMWare player and run Windows as a virtual machine. You can download a W10 iso here and it seems to run for what you'd want to do without activation. Think of it as a very long period of evaluation. I've run W10 VMs on a 4Gb machine but it is a bit slow. VMWare deals with USB connections easily so Xraw studio should run perfectly well.

So you mean boot from an USB stick right?

There are instructions such as this one: How to create a bootable Windows 10 USB on Linux

Denoise AI is a very effective program, it has nice sharpening too. Personally I'd continue your current workflow and only sharpen/denoise images you want to show as it will be a slow solution. As this is a sharpen/denoise solution I think it should be the last step and I'd use tiff as the input and output.

Makes a lot of sense.

You may find Topaz stuff runs under Wine. Some of their programs seem to.

Yes looks like. I may try that first and report back.

XRaw Studio does not run under Wine. At least not when I tried last time.

Thank you very much.

Regards,

Martin

 

[a_c_skinner]

No, VMWare won't boot from a USB IIRC but you connect its virtual optical drive to an ISO of a bootable disk. Topaz evaluation copies are 30 days fully functional, so you get a while to make sure it works for free.

--
Andrew Skinner

 

[Rightsaidfred]

Denoise AI is a very effective program, it has nice sharpening too. Personally I'd continue your current workflow and only sharpen/denoise images you want to show as it will be a slow solution. As this is a sharpen/denoise solution I think it should be the last step and I'd use tiff as the input and output.

Makes a lot of sense.

To avoid any hassle, I did a simple try.

• Do not apply sharpening and denoise with darktable.
• Export TIFF from darktable (USB stick).
• Install Topaz AI DeNoise trial on Windows machine
• Aply settings to taste
• Export TIFF (Topaz does not seem to convert into jpeg)

Denoising an 8000 ISO TIFF exported from darktable. Left: no denoising. Right: denoised.

I am impressed.

It's actually a simple procedure to denoise it as the final step after darktable editing.

I know the image is not tack sharp. The conditions were difficult. The image shows Alex Stengl, the drummer of the Munich City Knights. See Shooting a gig (80s rock band - X-T4, X-T20, Viltrox 85 Mk II).

Regards,

Martin

--
SmugMug - https://martinlang.smugmug.com
500px - https://500px.com/martinlangphotography
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/martin.lang.photography

 

[Samuraidog]

I'm wondering if you've tried "Smart Image Denoiser" program for Linux. I'm curious about it as well. I imagine it will only be a matter of time until there are several free options available for us Linux users.

 

[Bast Hotep]

P.S. Topaz definitely converts to JPG if you uncheck the "Preserve Input settings" toggle in "Save as"...you can save it in practically any format...unless it's a limitation of the trial.

 

[Oldposter]

If not yet Darktable will probably be able to do it soon.

I just down loaded the linux binary of, and tried out upscayl.

It works. It seems to fill in details that are not in the original image. The number of pixels are doubled in each direction. If you have an image that looks OK, but as you increase the size it starts getting fuzzy, upscayl will give you an image you can increase the size of more before you get to the same level of fuzziness.

I have not tried running upscayl on an upscayl-ed image.

I guess upscayl will get ignored like Darktable is, because it is free (even though Darktable is better than anything else on this planet).

 

[Rightsaidfred]

If not yet Darktable will probably be able to do it soon.

I just down loaded the linux binary of, and tried out upscayl.

It works. It seems to fill in details that are not in the original image. The number of pixels are doubled in each direction. If you have an image that looks OK, but as you increase the size it starts getting fuzzy, upscayl will give you an image you can increase the size of more before you get to the same level of fuzziness.

I have not tried running upscayl on an upscayl-ed image.

I guess upscayl will get ignored like Darktable is, because it is free (even though Darktable is better than anything else on this planet).

Thank you for this infomation. Very interesting. Hadn't heard about it.

You know that sluggy_warrior mentioned Nind Denoise, a free tool for denoising that uses a convolutional neuronal network?

I agree with you that darktable is incredibly capable. I love it, and I still discover new possibilities. Lensfun is a bit limiting. But it is absolutely great that skilled enthusiasts invest such a lot of time to bring the system further.

Regards,

Martin

--
SmugMug - https://martinlang.smugmug.com
500px - https://500px.com/martinlangphotography
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/martin.lang.photography

 

[wevdap]

I've been using Topaz DeNoise and Sharpen in a VMware VM over Ubuntu for about a year, feeding the results as DNGs into Darktable for processing. This has been useful for me, even though rather slow without an underlying GPU. Yesterday, however, I noticed the Topaz offer for their new integrated Photo AI package. I find that it installs and runs successfully, but Darktable rejects its generated DNG with a message about unsupported camera type. Has anyone else tried this yet, with success or resolution?

 

[a_c_skinner]

I too have been trying the new Topaz Photo AI. Seems to do OK on auto.

I use tif files as the intermediates.

 

[Kameratrollet]

I've been using Topaz DeNoise and Sharpen in a VMware VM over Ubuntu for about a year, feeding the results as DNGs into Darktable for processing. This has been useful for me, even though rather slow without an underlying GPU. Yesterday, however, I noticed the Topaz offer for their new integrated Photo AI package. I find that it installs and runs successfully, but Darktable rejects its generated DNG with a message about unsupported camera type. Has anyone else tried this yet, with success or resolution?

If you run

exiv2 -pv yourfile.dng

What do you get?

 

[wevdap]

I've been using Topaz DeNoise and Sharpen in a VMware VM over Ubuntu for about a year, feeding the results as DNGs into Darktable for processing. This has been useful for me, even though rather slow without an underlying GPU. Yesterday, however, I noticed the Topaz offer for their new integrated Photo AI package. I find that it installs and runs successfully, but Darktable rejects its generated DNG with a message about unsupported camera type. Has anyone else tried this yet, with success or resolution?

If you run

exiv2 -pv yourfile.dng

What do you get?

Here's the result, thanks. I've elided the binary content dumps of five tags: an XMLPacket, a MakerNote, a Canon AFInfo, a Canon DustRemovalData, and a Canon CustomFunctions in the interests of conciseness. If you need any/all of these for effective analysis, let me know. Thanks for looking at this.

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[Kameratrollet]

Couldn't find anything wrong. You can upload the affected dng at discuss.pixls.us and ask. If you don't want to use your own raw file you can use the one from 90D at raw.pixls.us.

 

[wevdap]

TIFF also works for me to transfer from PhotoAI output into Darktable, even though DNGs from PhotoAI 1.0.0 and 1.0.1 don't. Thanks for that.

 

[Kameratrollet]

How it went at pixls.us https://discuss.pixls.us/t/darktable-and-topaz-photo-ai-dng-incompatibility/32900/10

The solution is to fill a bug report at Topaz.

 

[a_c_skinner]

I think you've replied to the wrong person. If not I'm flattered that you think I'm au fait enough to understand that!

 

[wevdap]

I've reported it to Topaz. I don't think they consider Darktable as a supported application for compatibiity assurance purposes, but will watch to see whether/what happens next.