I would like to have the option to adjust lighting and / or color on either the subject only or background only, rather than across the whole photo.
I agree that content-aware needs to improve. I do a lot of wildlife and birds and it misses the legs and beaks. If my camera can subject select then Topaz can. Regarding the beta testers. Sometimes I find that Topaz does a good job on on color and other times I don’t. The same is true with the beta lighting. Another thing I have noticed is that when I use Photo AI it often doesn’t reduce noise automatically or blur. When I go into the Sharp module it works much better and the content-aware is often more precise. This worries me since I have read Topaz is eliminating the Sharp and Denoise app updates along with the Gigapixel app. One final comment is that I start in Lightroom and then edit in Photoshop using Topaz plug in apps. The Beta color tester removes my masking from Lightroom.
Yeah, I’ve had the same problem…the Adjust Lighting is just so slow that it’s useless for me. Very sad about this.
I can’t see why it would be slow unless you don’t meet the minimum technical requirements. They are listed here:
I just tried the AL tool on a mosaic of 6 already wide-field astronomy images. Because of the time required to capture 6 frames (8 minutes each) light pollution can vary from frame to frame creating “seams” in the stitched mosaic (stitched with Photoshop Blend tool). The AL tool set at -10 does a nice job of reducing the light contrasts in the background sky. The slight dimming of the target objects can be easily adjusted using masking and feathering in Photoshop. Very neat … there are other ways of achieving the same result, but this is a neat and handy tool.
I like this feature, but more often than not I can’t use it because I can’t pick just some areas to lighten or darken. The picture I’m including is typical. Dark subject, overly-bright areas in the background. I’d like to lighten one and darken the other, but as-is there’s no way. I’m using version 2.3.1.
Yes, masking to control placement would be a key feature to improving usefulness.
It would be useful to the option of curves for colour balance = for example sometimes and birds beak and feet come out plan when they are quite organs or red - so ability to boost in a colour range would help.
Not impressed. I think that Radiant does a better job color wise.
Changes in opacity (balance color) can take some time. Knowing that ahead of time would help.
I have been very disappointed with both features, but especially adjust lighting. Image files processed with the adjust lighting feature are consistently very underexposed, while files processed with balance color are terribly over-saturated. Problems are particularly pronounced in images taken outdoors on gloomy winter days. The necessary extensive manual corrections post-processing defeat the whole purpose of the program’s autopilot function.
I’m not disagreeing with your observations, but 3 questions:
1- Can you post some Before/After screensnips that visually show what you’re mentioning (it might be helpful re: ops fixes) & include the Settings you used to end up with the results you got. So if you can use a side x side view and include the settings in the snips too, that would be great!
2- Do you just use the Auto settings for the features you’re getting less than optimal results with? Or, do you manually adjust the sliders and still can’t achieve the levels you want? My sense is you want something to make your images perfect automatically (holding “autopilot” to its name/claim).
3- Are you mixing & matching colorspaces? For instance, starting with an sRGB then ending up with an RGB in Photo AI? (Just trying to narrow down the cause suspects, so to speak)l
I have tried the Adjust Lighting on astro-images of intragalactic clouds (nebulosities) … I find it commonly works very well. Not every time, mind you, but then each image is unique !. Suffice it to say that I test it on every image ! My request : could the module please remember the last setting used ? I find that for my work a setting of 10 -12 is perfect, but the module defaults to 25.
Tx
This is the first time that I’ve noticed, and tried to use, Adjust Lighting. I tried it because the predominantly black area in the bottom third of my image (taken at Disneyland’s “Rise of the Resistance” ride) looked pretty bad when I tried to expose it a bit. At first try, the Adjust Lighting filter increased the exposure of the blacks too much, giving it a sort of vertical banding look of shades of muted color, so I lowered the effect with the slider. -15% seemed to look pretty good. Then, back in Lightroom Classic, I selected and further lowered just the black area in the lower third. This photo is the result.
Thank you for continually improving Photo AI. I use it for almost all of my many low light photos.
That looks like a pretty cool, funky place to visit!
In situations like that, with seriously divergent lighting, do you ever try exposure bracketing during capture then combine/mask the exposures (when processing in Lr) to suit the different lighting?
Then use PAI for denoising & sharpening?
I only work in Ps, but that’s what I’d likely try for my own pics in Ps.
Thanks. If you like that one, you probably like this one too (same ride).
Unfortunately my low-light shooting is done hand-held, as I’m moving along. I would have a tough time taking bracketed exposures of most of what I shoot. Besides, I am able to produce acceptable results without doing that. I used to just use Luminance Smoothing in Lightroom Classic. Topaz Photo AI is way better, and is improving all the time.
Oh, I do love that shot. Reminds me, in a way, of photos I’ve seen of sculptures of a whole army of buried Asian warriors.
Ah ha, yeah, no way you could bracket if on a moving ride! It’s actually pretty amazing you stabilized it as well as you did.
I imagine PAI would do a great job on the low light noise for shots in tunnel like, theatrically lit scenes such as that.
Thank you. Yes, they are reminiscent of ancient sculptures of buried Asian warriors. Is anything really new?
If you’d like to see more of my recent low-light photography, I literally just posted dozens of photos that I took at Disneyland recently. Whether I shoot them with a pro camera or my iPhone, I edit almost every photo that I publish. On the first visit, I used a Canon R3 with a 24-105mm F2.8 lens. On my next visit I verified that my iPhone (which is the only ‘camera’ that I took with me on that second visit) was not capable of shooting in-focus photos on a dark ride, such as “Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance.” Most of the shots on moving rides in extremely low-light with my iPhone were hopelessly blurry. However, the videos that I took of the fireworks and the World of Color “ONE” water show provided amazingly good still frames. Of course, for both of those events I was standing still versus being in a moving ride. Here is a direct link to my post/column #830, entitled 'AdventureLand Day & more at Disneyland," on my “AutoMatters & More” website: “AdventureLand Day & more at Disneyland” on the “AutoMatters & More” website
Thx! I’ll check it out.
A photo buddy of mine says he no longer uses his “big boy” camera (pro tier full frame Nikon) regularly - certainly not to carry around (he’s a landscape photog, so if he can drive up close to where he wants to shoot, pull out the tripod and big cam, he’ll do that). He hikes a lot & swears by his Google Pixel phone which is the mobile ‘camera’ he carries everywhere. The detail he gets with it (including for nature photos of birds, etc.) is phenomenal (probably better than - or at least on par with - my Olympus mirrorless cam - I don’t have the new OM-1 series…).
No single camera is good for every situation, and sometimes what was once a great solution gets eclipsed. I shot Nikon for 50 years. My last Nikon pro cameras were a D5 and a D4S, but I wanted to switch to mirrorless. Canon was just a bit quicker than Nikon to come out with a camera that would be good for my specialty, which is auto racing. That is why I no longer shoot Nikon. If they had come out with the Z9 a bit sooner, I’d probably still be a Nikon shooter.
My iPhone 14 Pro Max works well for me when I’m shooting from a static position, but they tend to produce blurry results under dark lighting from a moving vantage point. Also, the camera controls are absolutely terrible, and result in a bunch of missed shots.
In situations that suit their strengths, I think good cellphone cameras are overall better than our heavy pro cameras, but I don’t plan on abandoning mine any time soon.
Jan