Send an ordinary RAW image to Photo AI from Lightroom.
In Photo AI crop the image to get rid of the unneeded areas. But, the image isn’t perfectly straight, so I CAN’T crop as I want because I can’t straighten it. If I’m going to CROP in Photo AI, I need to be able to straighten the image. Right now, I have to crop huge so I KNOW I have enough pixels when I straighten the image. Makes the crop far less effective than it could be.
AND, now that I’ve cropped the image, HOW LARGE IS IT? Have I cropped it so small I can’t use it as needed to make the print I want? I have no idea because I can’t SEE the cropped dimensions in pixels. Same problem as the straighten - if I can’t SEE the dimensions of my crop, I have to crop huge so I’m sure I have enough pixels.
Cropping is nice, but right now it’s marginally effective and blind.
I definitely agree with the above poster. Need a real time view of the crop box size without have to click apply and then go back and repeat multiple, multiple, times.
The other problem is the “custom” function in “crop” (not “resize”) is barely functional at best. If I want to crop a photo at a 4x5 aspect for an 8x10 photo at 300ppi and I enter 2400 x 3000, I always get some other pixel count. At it’s best it is always off by a few pixels under or over, and at it’s worst it is no where in the ball park and is off by 100’s sometimes, 1000’s of pixels. I have yet to get a simple accurate 2400x3000 crop.
Resetting the crop and starting over results in the same endless loop of frustrating attempts. For a powerful “stand alone” desktop program it ends up being like a pinch and squeeze crop on a tiny smart phone screen.
I think cropping is one of the most basic functions in photo editing. Therefore, this tool should be mandatory in Topaz Photo AI, and not only in a primitive and not always fully functional version. A rotation function should also be available for this — manual (using the mouse) or by entering the number of degrees. For this I have to (often only) first crop and/or rotate the image in another tool (e.g. and not only ACDSee Photo Studio works for me without problems – I can apply standard, or constant proportions as well as arbitrary pixels x pixels, or shifting the crop boundaries using the mouse), save the result and then drag it into TPAI for further editing. That’s bad, just because of such a “little thing” as an initial step. It doesn’t even require artificial intelligence. Cropping, rotation, and then denoise/sharpen/resize functions in the appropriate order (determined by me as needed). And of course, the respective UI should be simple and clear.
I can easily make changes to contrast, brightness, color shades, etc., etc. in another software — TPAI doesn’t have to be able to do everything. I chose it precisely because of Sharpen and Denoise (often a blown-up crop via Gigapixel), but before applying them I usually need to “geometrically” edit the original photo, which I will then edit with various more complex tools.
