Education | How To Avoid Over Processed Look

I used Topaz on a photo of leafs in front of the moon. I got huge artefacts whatever model I use. No idea what I could do. In this state I would prefer the blurry but natural original photo.

I would probably use the natural model with a relatively low strength.

Thank you for your advice. I went down to 10% but even that didn’t help:

The issue here is the original has a lot of compression artifacts, and this is not noise. Also, you are using Sharpen as a first step, which will only enhance these.

For best results, remove Denoise altogether, there is no noise on this image. The enhancement order is from bottom to top, so make sure if you really want to use Denoise, that it’s below Sharpen. For this image, test only Upscale. Then test Sharpen with upscale on top!

Hi.

Your example shows that, you applied Upscale, Denoise and Sharpening which doesn’t bode well for your image as, all three of these Enhancements apply a certain amount of Sharpening to the image for example, Denoise and Upscale both have a feature called Minor Deblur and because this is a high contrast image basically, two colours Black on Orange and you’re trying to apply three lots of sharpening to a relatively simple image then, you will tend to get Halos appear between the two high contrasting colours.

In this instance, I would suggest removing the Sharpening Enhancement all together and either apply Denoise and increasing the Minor Deblur which will apply a subtle sharpening because, that’s all this image needs just enough to make it pop.

Alternatively, only select the Upscale for this image and choose either Standard v2 or High Fidelity v2 because, both of theses have Minor Deblur for the same reason as above but also, they both feature Fix Compression which may help you achieve the results you’re require.

Besides, just because, you can Upscale and Denoise doesn’t mean you have to and simply Sharpening the image will suffice.

Hello,

This image has a lot of compression. Can you try to use upscale on this image and fix the compression? You don’t necessarily need to enlarge the image, but this could help with the edges.

After that, I suggest to use the Standard model for Sharpen and keep the strength to a lower amount, like 5 to 10.

Here is an example with one of our sample image:

If you need more help, please contact us at support@topazlabs.com and we will have a look with you :slight_smile:

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Amendment, obviously, Ange, Alexandre and I were replying at the same time as always both Ange and Alexandre has given an excellent replies please follow that first then secondly follow my advice

Hope you’re able to get the results you require

Ahah, I see we all replied at same time, he got the triple replies! At least all ours answers align to same result on how to avoid a over processed look! :slight_smile:

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Ange, Alexandre and Andy you can’t ask for more

Triple AAA service

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First of all: Thank you all very much for your support. You are great!

I would like to give some additional infos (that I should have supplied from the beginning, sorry!):

The picture isn’t compressed at all. It is a RAW-File (Sony ARW converted lossless to DNG) which is then transferred via lightroom to Topaz as a TIFF. Maybe I sent you on the wrong path since I uploaded a Screenshot with the idea I could include the parameters I choose. Sorry if this was a stupid idea.

There shouldn’t be any ISO-Noise in the picture since it was shot with a fullframe Sony A7 iv at 400 ISO.

Therefore I didn’t use anythin except sharpening, specially no denoise.

Upscaling? Might be an idea. The pic was cropped quite a lot (from 7.000 px to 1.200 px) but since the scale was fine for me, I didn’t do any upscaling.

Considering your advice I did a lot more testing. Now this is my final result. I didn’t do any sharpening. Just upscaling using the graphic-model with the suggested values for denois etc.

I think the achieved quality-level is best what is possible. But since I can’t get rid of the halos I will stick with the original. It looks better for me. A little bit blurry but natural.

Thank you all for helping me!!!


Here’s a shot I took in 2014 using Gigapixel AI to post process in a similar way as your example. Pretty decent result from not much to start with.

Original

Cropped then Redefine Creative Low with prompt “Amber Moon rising behind black, out of focus, tree leaves” 4x Enlargement

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I see, it’s very zoomed in the area sent and TIFF version of your RAW file! The artifacts seen are then RAW noise. The main issue I see is that you are converting mid workflow the file to non-RAW. Any reason on this? Converting to TIFF will create compression and you lose access to the very important RAW Denoise enhancement. It will be best results to retain RAW format through all edits of Photo AI and LR/PS/etc. Then once all edits done, that is when you want to save to a non-RAW format.

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The reason for “converting mid workflow” ist that there are only three options to pass a picture from lightroom to topaz: TIF, PSD, JPG. I chose TIF-non compressed because that seemed the best option. If I chose PSD I get an error from Topaz. Message unsupported file type. :frowning:

So the only way is: opening the picture directly in Topaz, edit it, save it as DNG, reimport to lightroom. Possible but not an elegant workflow and I’m wondering: if Topaz is capable to work with DNG, why isn’t it possible to pass a DNG directly from lightroom.
Second problem: Topaz changend the colors quite heavily during the direct-DNG-edit. Although I did only raw denoise - sharpening - upscaling, the moon is now light yellow instead of the original dark orange.

Topaz Photo AI is compatible with the DNG file format both as a standalone application and as a plugin within Lightroom.

Simply, select the image then, goto the File Menu then, down to Plugin Extras and select Topaz Photo AI as your application of choice

Lightroom will create a DNG copy of your original DNG and send it to Photo AI which will automatically open with your image next, apply any Enhancements and once you’ve done Click on the Blue button that says Save Back to Lightroom.

Here’s some information from Topaz about Lightroom

Hope this helps

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Since AND-E deleted his/her post - I don’t know why, because the answer was the perfect solution to my problem:

Don’t send DNG to Topaz via rightclick-TIF. Send them via /File/Plugin Extras. Here you can send DNG’s directly. And that worked much better. So thank you very much triple-A - problem solved.

Help(ful)-text is found here: Lightroom Classic | Topaz Photo AI

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@mfunke - Great yes, Edit in os only for non-RAW files and File path will be for RAW workflow and keep your file as DNG! Will give better results!

Apologies for deleting my reply to be honest I miss read your post and thought you were already doing that therefore, I was just repeating a similar message

If there’s anything you think I can help with in the future please don’t hesitate to ask.

By the way, AND-E is my tag for Andy

Andy

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Quick amendment I have restored my previous deleted reply for you and anyone else who is unaware of DNG completely

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