Topaz AI products

[alphaomega]

A Web site for Sony users Sonyalpharumors has an article about Topaz AI software. https://www.sonyalpharumors.com/150-off-on-the-topaz-ai-software-superbundle/

 

'Now you can get all of the best-selling Topaz AI Products for one low price. Get DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI, and JPEG to RAW AI for just $199 for a limited time! Get the superbundle here at TopazLabs.'

 

Sounds expensive to me and I doubt the need of it for my purposes. I am quite happy with Adobe Cloud with LR and PS. Anyone with experience in using this software? Looks to me they are reducing the price because of a lack of customers.

 

 

[sb photos]

I've never used any Topaz software, but only last week I was asked for advice by someone using Topaz Gigapixel AI to resize iPhone photo's, as he knew I used Mac's, and said it ran dreadfully slow on his 27" iMac. He contacted Topaz, and told me they gave him a spec for a suitable iMac that seemed way over the top. Only the iMac Pro, with the GPU upgraded to 16GB, met that spec, and would have cost him over £5.5K. I advised him to buy a decent DSLR rather than that iMac just to run Gigapixel AI.

[Sami Hurmerinta]

I've tried out the new AI plugins, and found them brilliant (except maybe for JPEG to RAW AI, which doesn't seem to do much). When I started photography, I bought a used lens that was broken (I didn't realize that until much later). The lens was misaligned, and because of that about 1/4 of every photo taken with it was really soft in the upper left corner. The lens ruined most of the photos I took during my first year, including most of the photos I took on my trip to Japan. I've tried all kinds of tools to fix those images, but Sharpen AI has been the first one that actually works. It's pretty uncanny to see the lost detail again. I know this isn't a problem that affects many people, but for me salvaging those memories is valuable. I have to admit though, that one reason I'm so happy with the tools is that I got DeNoise and Sharpen for free since I'd bought the previous Topaz tools years ago. So I can't honestly say if they are worth the price. 

 

I've also found that DeNoise AI can improve my old images taken in low light with compact cameras and mobile phones, because it recreates details lost in the noise and shadows. Compared to noise reduction in Lightroom, for example, the difference is staggering. That said, I wouldn't recommend the AI tools to photo journalists, because these tools actually create new content to the images.

 

I haven't done an extensive comparison between AI Gigapixel and other resizing tools, but based on a couple of tests, Gigapixel seems to produce more detailed images when enlarging images that Photoshop. Topaz has a 30-day free trial, so you could just try them out to see for yourself.

The AI tools are slow on my old desktop (and old i5 processor + 16 GB RAM, and an Nvidia GTX680 graphics card with 2GB RAM), so I don't use them for all images. But the sharpening plugin, for example, produces sharper images with less artifacts than Lightroom, even when used on technically good images, so I've started applying it before printing.

 

So basically, if you're happy with the technical quality of your images, I think you'd do just fine without these tools. But if asked, do they produce better results than competitors, I'd have to say they do.