Topaz AI Tools

First off... I have no affiliation with this company or their products... Secondly, I am an average (at best) picture taker who refuses to call himself a "photographer." I am lucky to have some quality gear but unlucky that I am not more skilled at using it... That said, I acquired Topaz Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI yesterday and I wanted to give them a go. Sharpen is on sale and I got a coupon code for DeNoise which, surprisingly, worked for both (thanks Facebook! [never thought I'd type that...])... Anyway, this all sounds like a grand and glorious advertisement (see first statement please) but the heart of the matter is that I need all the help I can get... I am sure many of you could use LR or PS much better than I can to coax out usable pictures from sub par images but I am not that blessed (see second point). So, that is why I bought these tools. Plus, I was curious.. AI is getting big in my "workspace" since I am a computer nerd.

Image #1 was the first one that I tried. It has both DeNoise and Sharpen and it's a 200% zoom on the bird and was processed and published to Flickr back in 2016 (was proud of it back then) using my 7D and Sigma 150-600C.. Note the noise at ISO 800 even tho some was removed with LR. Since this was my first go, I didn't use the masking features or object detection... I just made the changes wholesale... Left is the processed image, right is the original edit.

The second image was of an unpublished image of the very young snow leopard at the MKE Zoo with my 5D4 and 100-400L II. The lighting conditions were grey and dull on an overcast day in a shaded enclosure. The camera focused on the mother's body instead of the cub's face and therefore the image was "unacceptably" soft if the cub was the subject. In that image, which is still unprocessed, I only applied Sharpen to it but I used masking to only bring out the face. The rest of the hairs did start to get a little "crunchy" with more than 60% sharpening around the edges of the cat - hence the masking. It's a 100% zoom on the face. In this case, left is the original and right is the processed image with Sharpen. Sorry for the lack of consistency.

That said, I have found the tools to be able to take "just" unacceptable images to acceptable sharpness and noise removal. Large scale motion blur or OOF is just not going to come back with these tools (at least) at this juncture. I have tried. I am not certain of all use cases... YMMV...

Moonshiner wrote in post #19214960
First off... I have no affiliation with this company or their products... Secondly, I am an average (at best) picture taker who refuses to call himself a "photographer." I am lucky to have some quality gear but unlucky that I am not more skilled at using it... That said, I acquired Topaz Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI yesterday and I wanted to give them a go. Sharpen is on sale and I got a coupon code for DeNoise which, surprisingly, worked for both (thanks Facebook! [never thought I'd type that...])... Anyway, this all sounds like a grand and glorious advertisement (see first statement please) but the heart of the matter is that I need all the help I can get... I am sure many of you could use LR or PS much better than I can to coax out usable pictures from sub par images but I am not that blessed (see second point). So, that is why I bought these tools. Plus, I was curious.. AI is getting big in my "workspace" since I am a computer nerd.

Image #1 was the first one that I tried. It has both DeNoise and Sharpen and it's a 200% zoom on the bird and was processed and published to Flickr back in 2016 (was proud of it back then) using my 7D and Sigma 150-600C.. Note the noise at ISO 800 even tho some was removed with LR. Since this was my first go, I didn't use the masking features or object detection... I just made the changes wholesale... Left is the processed image, right is the original edit.

The second image was of an unpublished image of the very young snow leopard at the MKE Zoo with my 5D4 and 100-400L II. The lighting conditions were grey and dull on an overcast day in a shaded enclosure. The camera focused on the mother's body instead of the cub's face and therefore the image was "unacceptably" soft if the cub was the subject. In that image, which is still unprocessed, I only applied Sharpen to it but I used masking to only bring out the face. The rest of the hairs did start to get a little "crunchy" with more than 60% sharpening around the edges of the cat - hence the masking. It's a 100% zoom on the face. In this case, left is the original and right is the processed image with Sharpen. Sorry for the lack of consistency.

That said, I have found the tools to be able to take "just" unacceptable images to acceptable sharpness and noise removal. Large scale motion blur or OOF is just not going to come back with these tools (at least) at this juncture. I have tried. I am not certain of all use cases... YMMV...

Hosted photo: posted by Moonshiner in
./showthread.php?p=192​14960&i=i246456215
forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

Hosted photo: posted by Moonshiner in
./showthread.php?p=192​14960&i=i120102004
forum: RAW, Post Processing & Printing

Denoise is Great! I do not have Sharpen because it did not get great reviews at the time I looked at it. The most recent version, from what I've read, has been improved and is supposed to be pretty good. Your images show how good these programs are. Especially the bird. Of course no program so far can fix motion blur or OOF.

Denoise is back on sale for $59. And the trio with gigapixel/sharpen for $149. May get it this time. The trio that is. There is a 15% coupon from a YouTuber i subscribe to. Making it $40 per.