I primarily like to work in batch, but each and every update since mid 2022, has decreased the ability to do that. The reason is the programmers seem to have backed away from the original goal of auto correcting photos and switched to a photo by photo, hands on system, so batch editing no longer works at all. Now Autopilot seems to be completely ignoring noise. I’ve been trying many noisy, artifacty photos and it just doesn’t seem to detect the noise or artifacts on anything but the face. Here’s a comparison from a photo taken back in 2009 with a bridge cam that had trouble handling bright light and shadows at the same time. Here Autopilot did ok on the face, but simply isn’t smart enough to clear up the body skin.
Noise reduction wasn’t even considered by Autopilot, which seems utterly ridiculous.
Sure I can turn on noise reduction and and get this:
The problem is Autopilot doesn’t work, and consequently batch editing doesn’t work! It did back in mid 2022 but since then all the ‘fixes’ have just added more and more manual work. In Lightroom I can select facial skin and body skin as separate masks and that is working better than this is. I wish Topaz’s management team would spend a few days trying to edit several thousand OLDER photos taken on equipment that isn’t up to today’s standards. Honestly, with NEW cameras this isn’t even needed because they solve all the problems automatically. If I didn’t have half a million old photos I want to edit in batches I never would have purchased the program! Topaz presented it as a ONE STEP photo improvement tool and they have now broken it down into MULTIPLE STEPS for each photograph and DESTROYED their MISSION STATEMENT!
C’mon guys. Please wake up and stop making it worse and more laborious with every update!!!
