Feedback | Denoise & Sharpen Quality/Speed Trade-off

Topaz Photo AI General
1

HI all, I’ve been big fan of Topaz for years, upgrading my Topaz Denoise, Sharpen and Gigapixel products once every couple years.
Briefly touched early Photo AI but was not very impressed back then, so stick to the individual products.
Recently went to Topaz website to treat myself with renewals after not upgrading for couple years just to find out these products are gone for good (apart of Gigapixel), completely replaced by one stop shop Photo AI.
Assumed if Topaz decided to retire them this probably means they have managed to polish and bring the quality of Topaz Photo AI to match or even exceed denoise AI and sharpen AI.

So went for the big promo bundle, and ended up with very mixed feelings tbh.

Not sure if if this is me (as I noticed some people are experiencing similar issues with some functionalites while other possibly are not ) but I am not impressied with core functionality (denoise, sharpen) and some extra “new” functions are simply almost unusable.

Speaking of denosie and sharpen - I think I sort of undertand what Topaz are trying to achieve there, functional and quick software.
Got a feeling the prority back then was quality followed by speed now it sort have changed with these new models with speed being at the top and quality second. Which is not wrong direction at all unfortunately bringing some compromises.
Yes, the old denoise or sharpen could take minutes each to process the image, but even if it was like 8 minutes toghether the results quite often were worth waiting. However there was price to pay if one wanted to just polish a litte generally good quiality picture in bulks this took forever.

Now PhotoAI does this stuff in seconds which is impressive and quality is not half bad, but nowhere near what the old products were able to do.
This was market best stuff for pros, especially to save the one unique shot that went a bit wrong with focus or noise levels, and then there was still hope having topaz at hand.

Now, I do actually use topaz PhotoAI. I had a bunch of good quality photos for customer that needed just gentle touch with noise and sharpening and was pleased how quick and efortless this was with decent results. However for some of my own projects on valuable for me photos that would need more work and I would happily wait as long as it takes to get the best results its not there, its gone.
I understand UX is very important and these new models deliver decent quality at light speed, the new masking manual or automatic are quite impressive too (the old one was so laggy - still usable tho just not the best experience) but this all seems to be achieved at the cost of potentially best quality.

The question would be why not bring best of both worlds ? and add the time consuming models as options to Photo AI wheter the old models or maybe variation of the new onces if the old ones where abandoned - so pros will have a choice if they want to go quick with decent results or want to wait even minutes to get the best results?
On top of that a question as I have missed some upgrades on my topaz denoise and shapren AI, seems these are not only discontinued but not even available to upgrade older vesrions. Is there a way to get the latests ones ? Unfortunately I am being forced to use these two products even having the newest versions of Photo AI which is a shame.
To be honest If as loyal customer I did not trust Topaz blindly and bought the boundle on the spot but rather test drive the suite first I would probably really consider spending this sort of money.

Speaking of results I have noticed, not sure if this is everyones experience that reglardles of settings denoise adds a lot sharepning and sometimes quite brutal and ugly type you can not disable. Some photos suffer more than other but then if they do you left sort of helpless unless you have old denoise AI handy,

The face recovery model, not sure if I undertand what it supposed to do, for me its just quite simple and primitive blur atm. No correct eye, hair, lips detection, smoothing skin with preserving details etc stuff. Lighthning /color balanicng are usable in some scenarion but not providing much control to end user giving sometimes mixed results, skippingthese most of time for now.
will see how these features will evolve in time for time being it seems like target audience shifted from pros more to general public still at “pro” price tag :slight_smile:

------- TLDR -----

  1. Ideas:
  • Topaz Photo AI denoise and sharpen features seems to be moved to new super quick models at the price of quality offered by older models (from Denoise AI and Sharpen AI) - can we have best of both by adding the “old” models to photo AI providing a choice between speed and quality for more demanding users ?
  • Can you make the lastest versions of Denoise AI and Sharpen AI available (best if free downloads for owners of the latest Photo AI version) even if dscontinued, so they have sort of choice over the models they want to use ?
  1. Issues:
  • Denoise in PhotoAI seems to be introducing a lot of sharpening even if deblur is brought down to 0, can this be looked into ?
  • Face recovery looks more like brutal bloor rather the sofisticated face AI face tool ( no smoothing while retaining skin texture, no eye, lips detection, hair seems hit and miss too)
  • Lighting /color correction seems a bit brute force too without any control.

thanks
Chris

2

Thanks for this great feedback, I’ll be sure to forward this information to the development team for their review. Just to make sure that we are on the same page here are some key points that I noticed:

  1. Speed vs. Quality: We understand your frustration with the trade-off between speed and quality in Photo AI’s current denoise and sharpen models. The goal has been to provide faster processing times while still maintaining solid results. We’ll pass your suggestion to offer both speed and quality options, including possibly integrating older models or variations, for more demanding users.

  2. Denoise Adding Sharpening: This issue with unwanted sharpening when denoising is noted. We’ll look into this behavior and investigate possible improvements to prevent additional sharpening, even when the deblur setting is minimized.

  3. Face Recovery Model: Your feedback on the face recovery model is valuable. Currently, it may not offer the level of refinement you expect. We’re continuously working on improving the model to better detect and recover facial features like eyes, lips, and skin details.

  4. Lighting/Color Correction: We’re aware that the current lighting/color balancing options may feel a bit heavy-handed. More control over this feature could definitely be beneficial, and we’ll look into refining it.

  5. Access to Previous Versions of Denoise AI and Sharpen AI: We understand that having access to the older versions of Denoise AI and Sharpen AI is important. We’re unable to offer them for free, but you can always contact us at help@topazlabs.com with any additional questions regarding those applications.

Your input helps us refine Photo AI. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and we’ll continue to improve based on your feedback.

3

I noticed this too. Fortunately Denoises sharpen feels a bit different than the usual sharpen models. Just in case none of the sharpen models makes me happy I tend to use denoise instead. :smiley:

2 Likes
4

Hi John. I agree with Imo, I to have found the subtle sharpening within Photo AI’s Denoise to be very beneficial in a lot of cases for my own images.

Photo AI’s Denoise has always worked this way why change it

Thanks for your time

3 Likes
5

Hi guys, the ask its not about removing the sharpening bit from denoise, it simply to fix it so if one dont want it and set deblur to 0 it should be not there, which makes perfect sense.
Simple fact that you rely on its shareping model when you not happy with the “proper” models is indicating another problem with the dedicated sharepening models lol.
As I understand the sharpening included in denoise is to aid the process where simple, subtle sharpening is enough and noise is the main issue. Handy and helpfull.
I understand it perfectly, in the past both Denoise IA had some sharpening capablillity and vice versa SharpenAI had some debluring as well. It was more important back then where you had to run two separate programs and each was processing image for minutes this was live saving if you wanted subtle sharpering on denosing, or sublte denoising on shareping in one go.
Now this is all quick and under same interface so not such a big issue anymore from this point of view.
However if you use denoise to sharpen instead because it produces better results then dedicated shareping models or cant eliminate sharepning from denoising at all if you dont want it this imo really needs devs attention.
Saying that I agree withou I found quite often this sharpening from denoise at least very good or not an issue with most of the landscape or architectural shots, however it ruins some of portraits I tried it on and not being able to disable it there is imo a problem.

1 Like
6

Hi Triggus.

I didn’t mean to imply that the sharpening within Photo AI’s Denoise is in anyway better or superior or indeed that I depend on it or use it instead of the Photo AI Sharpen Enhancement.

I was referring to the fact that sometimes the subtle amount of sharpening that is applied when using the Denoise Enhancement will suffice.

Having said that, AI noise reduction and traditional noise reduction will by it’s very nature always induced some kind of softening to an image.

For instance, if Topaz were to remove or reduce the sharpening from Denoise, that softening element I mentioned would rear its ugly head.

Hence, I would have to apply sharpening to the image therefore, adding an extra step to My workflow.

If you want to be able to switch it off after so, you to have that extra step that’s fine l hope Topaz add that option for you

Besides, all AI related noise reduction applications like Adobe, DXO, ON1 and so on… adds some form of sharpening to their software.

1 Like
7

Hi AND-E
My intention is not to remove sharpening from there at all, tbh for most good quality high-resolution shots it works well enough so you don’t have even to run the sharpening separately.
However had a few occasions where this had produced some overdone unexpected results where I wish I could reduce it.
So the idea is maybe to add some more granularity to the deblur slider and even the ability to take it down to 0. Now it defaults to 1 which is I believe the minimal value to compensate for denoise blur. No big deal with that one tbh as I mostly work with quite high-quality photographs that work quite well with what we have there, although had a few lower-quality ones I needed and it did odd things working with this relatively poor material so having ability to “turn it off – slide to 0” of reduce the effect further down would be handy.

I am not so concerned about other extra features like light/colour, face etc - seems they are still a work in progress (especially the face recovery …thing :blush: ) however already been introduced in the commercial version so I thought I share some feedback on those, as this is probably what devs want anyway.

What I would like the most tho is introducing the “old” or equivalent denoising/sharpening models to PhotoAI (some of these maybe not all of them and not replacing the new ones, just addition) regardless of how time-consuming they are, as the results these can produce are far superior to almost anything on the market including the current PhotoAI, so then we have a choice. I bet I would stick to quick models 70% of the time but then if I/we need something at a different level no one else can offer (and something we already had) for the special occasions where you don’t mind waiting 3-5 minutes to get the almost “miracle” results on a single shot … That’s what I wish we still had.

2 Likes