This was getting way off topic in the other thread about issues with Detail/OS-X please all note that RAW conversions are NOT supported but you can import a RAW image as they are working on the conversion issues.
I wrote all these comments in a different thread and responding to different issues.
My tested images were all JPGs. I don’t know how the heck my comments ended up over here on an irrelevant thread! They were in a thread that flowed logically from an original post to various replies by various users about the Auto Standard function in Adjust AI 1.0.3.
How did my comments end up in some unrelated raw discussion thread?
Here’s a sample of a Before/After using a shot of mine of an old Ford truck.
The After used Adjust AI 1.0.3 - Auto Standard option w/no other controls (AAI as plugin to Ps CC 2019 on Win 7 PC).
While there are clearly blue tones in the background on the original image, this AI interp has not done justice to the image or produced what I’d like & think was an ‘intelligent’ photo manipulation; it has just ‘gone nuts’ amping up the blue tones.
I agree that an AI engine should do better and not intro/make major color shifts. What would be ‘intelligent’ about a photo processing program producing a ‘standard’ image would include:
- No color shifts
- Recognizing a need for and adding a just right (Goldilocks-like) amount of contrast, exposure, opening of darker shadows, toning down of bright highlights, perhaps a touch of spreading out a ‘clumped up’ histogram
- Perhaps adding a hint of Vibrance (not saturation)
Then if a user wants to get creative they can take that base, intelligently improved still straight image to the next level. Or, stop there with it as a “better” standard photo that makes the person who shot it look like they’re a really savvy photog. I’m sure the moral equivalent would hold for an illustrator or painter - but, selfishly, I’m a photog and am thinking about using the program for photographs.
I’ve seen this consistently with the Auto Standard button applied in AAI. It is jacking up blues as if on steroids and introducing blues (in other shots where there aren’t even any visible to most eyes) where they don’t exist.
Something is skewed blue in the program’s algorithm. Perhaps it is sad… 
Original Image:
Adjust AI v. 1.0.3 (commercial rel.) - AUTO Standard (no controls, no opacity reduction)
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I think there is nothing wrong the software seems to perform a white balance adjustment based on areas the software identifies as neutral or close to neutral so the slight blue shift in your sample images is a correct logical adjustment.
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The Adjust AI color temp needs correcting, the blue cast is not good. JLG, I choose the one on the right and I have excellent color vision (and a calibrated monitor).
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The time between the third beta version and production release of TAI was less than one week (v.0.1,v.0.2 was not much longer). Compared to the beta release cycle of (eg) Affinity Photo they are light years apart.
feed the software with an image where close to neutral colors have a blue tint and you will get the opposite results… nothing wrong here.
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It does seem to over compensate when using the Auto Adjust AI almost as though anything that is close to neutral colors is treated as a ‘sky’ scene and it is trying to extract detail and color from the ‘white’ areas. For the first screenshot it is the Standard process, which is acceptable but the second using the HDR Style process is unacceptable as you can see from the white areas:
Standard
HDR Style
Also found that looking at a landscape style image, in this case a waterfall shot, it seems to improve the ‘warm’ colors correctly but struggles with larger areas of unbroken green. This particular image, using Standard, is acceptable as it brings out a blueish tinge in the deeper water areas (the water is actually cloudy green) but with the HDR Style it is way off but the warm tones are not excessive:
Standard
HDR Style
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well seems I was wrong. I have not played with auto adjustments for many years for a good reason and as it seems adding AI does not really improve things. AAI does wired and undesired things to colors far beyond color shifts which are also not correctible inside the plugin. the HDR setting more than the standard but both alter the color checker shot as your real world samples in an undesired direction. white balance did not influence the outcome very much btw.
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CS, using a color checker is a good idea. To me the most noticeable difference is with the case which has a blue tint (though I can see it some in the white). I assume that the top picture is original vs Standard auto AI and the second one is original vs auto HDR AI? Also no other adjustment was made ti either?
artisan-west - right, the first is std. the other HDR. did play with some real images too all show the same strange color shifts shift. only when an image is already very warm the software emphasis the warm tones otherwise everything is shifted to blue…
Ditto. Me too.
I calibrate my monitor every 2 weeks with a Spyder calibration device in a darkened room with a warmed up monitor. That is what I’m seeing photo colors on. I’m not in a pitch black room when photo processing but I definitely don’t have any serious ambient light and I have an ambient light-blocking screen around my monitor.
Yes.
I find the color shifts considerably more off in Auto Standard than in Auto HDR on my Win 7 system (regardless of standalone or plugin program - but I mostly use as plugin to Ps CC 2019). I’ve had overall flesh-hued images (like in a deserted Phila jail hallway, so not skintones per se) turn a muddy seafoam blue using the Auto Standard setting in AAI 1.0.3 (and earlier beta versions… reported at the time).
AAI Auto Standard:
The other day when someone (Rondo?) initiated a discussion thread on AAI v. 1.0.3 Color Shifts and several of us commented/added our own observations after taking time to test on different images… what a number of us found - independently (e.g., not looking at the way the others tried to fix the color shifts until after we’d done our own tests) was that at least on Win PCs for the images we worked with using Auto Standard our images were skewed in their blueness by right around .45 (45%); when we moved the warmth (yellow) slider up to about the .45 mark the image started approaching more the warmth of the original.
Even during the beta stage - some users were seeing more blue tinge-ing in the HDR Auto whereas others of us - myself included - consistently were experiencing the opposite and only (or, mostly) seeing it in Auto Standard and not so in Auto HDR.
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contrast changes almost always introduce some kind of hue shifts depending on the algorithm the software uses but AAI seems to add some (ugly) creative decisions for us not only colouring neutral areas blue. the tonality improvements with AAI are not bad so maybe they add a tool to get some control over color .
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Since my last post, I thought I would at least try to work with Adjust AI a bit more. However, Adjust AI was just creating too many uncorrectable color shifts in most all images that simply shifting hue and temp did not solve. Also more often than not, it would simply increase exposure by sometimes almost a full stop and often increase saturation way too much.
Hue shifts are one thing, but complete color changes are something different. The thing that was the last draw that made me decide to scrap trying to use this “alpha” version app was a scene that took a red clay dirt road, changed its color to gray, took some yellowish foliage and totally blew it out in high saturated yellow and turned green trees and grass blue. Basically it seemed like the Ai was suffering from some psychosis in this not so unusual image.
Unlike some of the other AI products, I. think Topaz is trying to get AI Adjust to just do too much if it is trying to enhance contrast, detail, clarity and color balance.
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totally agree ! the software seem to analyse image areas / content and than shifts the colors to the dominate color with some really funky results it also removes colors in this process too. to better see the effect of this AI image destruction set saturation to 100% and than turn AI on…
Interesting, will have to look at it again… I didn’t think the Raw → Noiseware softened that much. They looked fairly comparable. But what I did see (to my eyes) was that the post-Noiseware image had a slightly more Cyan/Greenish tinge to the sky. The High Pass appln. in Ps seemed to restore more of the richer, true blue of the Raw capture.
Color shifts are tough, since everyone sees colors slightly differently. But w/in the AAI product there are significant shifts (pre-manual correction) that go beyond the subtleties of individual eyes picking up nuances of hue shifts.
Makes me wonder if the “Auto” functions in AAI should just be dropped - b/c once someone has to start fixing them they aren’t “Auto” anymore. My suggestions:
1- Drop the “Auto” buttons for Standard & HDR Style
2- Take whatever algorithm/formula is being used for them and move them to Presets categories. “Standard” can become a “Basic Settings” preset (but likely will need a +1.45 yellow color boost for Win PCs (Program code = If PC then add 1.45 Yellow) to be effective in that way too. And the Auto HDR Style can become one of the HDR category presets - “HDR Basic”.
What that does is manage users’ expectations. If you think a button is supposed to produce - automatically (auto) - an acceptable direct output then one is frustrated when it doesn’t. If that same (or, a slightly tweaked code-wise alternative to it) is in the Presets catalog then it’s okay b/c (at least to me) I expect to tinker with presets to customize them (as starting points) to my taste.
Anyway, that’s my personal opinion of how I’d handle it if it were my product to adapt…
Either that or remedy the “Auto” code quirks across computing platforms
There are a lot of cool features in AAI. Not sure they’re more valuable than some of the classic Topaz plugins. But if someone didn’t have the former products for comparison I can see where some less discriminating, casual photog users (vs pro photogs or retouchers) might be pleased to have a virtually all-in-one, non-subscription-requiring digital processing product to add a bit of punch to their images.
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Adjust 5 is much better because you can control the whole image. I would prefer to see Adjust 5 updated, then to continue with Adjust AI. Just because it is AI which is the new catch thing, does not mean it is better. In the case of Adjust, it is not, I don’t think and not from other comments I have read.
Or perhaps rename Adjust AI to something else like AI Color Clarity or something. Because it is nothing like the original Adjust.
I still have Adjust 5 installed, but it is not behaving. Since installing Adjust AI, Adjust 5 will not reset after adjusting sliders. It completely changes the image after pressing reset. What should take my changes from adjusting adaptive exposure, regions and contrast, after pressing reset back to my original image, does not. It actually changes the colour to much more vibrant and quite horrible. Not my original image at all.
Seems to be a conflict between Adjust 5 and Adjust AI, I think, somewhere in the naming of the two in the software algorithm, perhaps? Anyway, Adjust 5 is being affected. And that is the software I prefer over Adjust AI.
Windows 10.
PS - Uninstalled Adjust AI and Adjust 5.2. Reinstalled Adjust 5.2 without reinstalling Adjust AI and the same problem. It seems that the reset button is changing the whole color of the image in Adjust 5.2. Pressing the reset button after I have made however many sliders changes - 1 or many, changes the whole image to bright and horrible, after pressing the reset button - not the original image as it is supposed to do.
If I CTRL Z each time I have made any change/s, the image will eventually be returned to the original.
Since what I know from experience and I have read that Adjust 5.2 is a very successful and popular product, and you are not updating this anymore, could you please change your minds and do so please? At least until you can show that your AI range is as good? Unfortunately, I believe that AI for Adjust will never achieve the results we as users of Adjust want. It is a very individual, artistic plugin that can never be achievable with AI, simply because of the individual use.
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