[Feedback] Marketing & Communication

Topaz Gigapixel AI General
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I purchased but rarely used Denoise. Nonetheless, after being inundated with ads about the wonderfulness of Topaz products (I kinda hate the marketing department), I decided to try Gigapixel to go along with the new hand-me-down printer I recently received. The good news is that I am able to produce improved results, so that makes me a happy customer. The bad news are these:

The free trial of Gigapixel disables the Save function. Huh, what? How exactly are photographers meant to assess this product? By looking on screen of an on-going session? Yeah, at just $69 on sale it isn’t too much of an investment, so I bit the bullet and bought the thing but my attitude toward Topaz was and remains deeply wounded. The free trial ought to be fully functional and time-delimited. I definitely hate the marketing department.

There was a sale prior to the sale when I bought Gigapixel for a reduced price. In that earlier sale, the product was HALF OFF!!! Except you paid the full price anyway. Topaz just said it was 50% off. The difference was made up in cloud credits. Without ever using AI upsizing, I assumed that I’d never use it much and, in fact, I don’t intend to use it. The discount that Topaz advertised as half off was, in reality, full price. This is the marketing department again. What is up with the marketing department?

When I bought Gigapixel, it seems that I also signed up for an auto-renewing subscription. That is a pretty sweet deal for a company that sold me a perpetual license. Yes, I own Gigapixel but, lurking in the depth of my account, I also gave them permission to charge me again in a years time. That is deceptive and the charge will NOT happen. Again, the marketing department is taking a hit on this one.

Last but not least, I have a blurry photo that I would love to improve. It is an ideal candidate so I decided to test AI upscale. The upscaling is happening as I type this post. I started it sometime yesterday. According to the progress bar, it is almost 40% complete. I will let it do its thing today and, hopefully, it’ll be done sometime tomorrow. That will be over 36 hours of processing. Is this a shippable feature? I can actually imagine that the marketing department suggested to slow it down to force purchase of cloud credits. Well guess what, marketeers? I’m not gonna buy cloud credits. Never. Not one. But I do have a suggestion: if you had given a few away with the initial purchase so I could experience their effectiveness, then I could imagine finding AI Upsizing useful or perhaps even indispensable. Let the customer experience the (assumed) delights of using a feature rather than torturing them into considering a purchase for something that haven’t experienced, cannot give a test drive, and can only determine its valuable by conducting a thought experiment.

So my gripe session is over. I will continue to use Gigapixel but continue to look for alternatives. Someday, I’ll move on to something else, delete Gigapixel from my computer, take a shower, and move on.

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Hmm, then you must have a really old and slow computer - and you could’ve easily tested this before with the unregistered version which is (besides the missing save dialog) functionally exactly the same as the version you buy.
So you should have been able to get an educated impression of the rendering speed of the different models and the quality of the results (and also the quirks).

And, of course the save dialog has to be disabled in a demo - or you’d have to apply a watermark. Here I strongly do prefer the disabled save dialog as with that I can fully access the result in the monitor at 100% size or any zoom I desire, even easily pixel-peeping. A watermark there would be disturbing (often the watermark overlays exactly the critical part of the image…).

You surely can say some negative things about the marketing dept. of Topaz but really not that you have to buy a pig in a poke but really WYSIWYPF (what you see is what you pay for) :blush:

P.S.: Maybe you could upload the respective photo and likely someone here on this forum with a fast machine would be kind enough to render it for you.

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I, too, find your long processing time odd. Something seems to be amiss. I bought Gigapixel in late November (outright, not subscription, for $99 plus a slew of credits), while I was still using my older computer which had only 8GB of RAM and a really dinky graphics card. Using the standard model of upscaling on Gigapixel took a matter of seconds even with that. Definitely less than a minute.

My current computer has 32 GB system RAM and a better graphics card (but still not enough VRAM for Topaz Video AI, unfortunately, so I don’t have that as well). I just upscaled a really small low-res image by 4X yesterday with the onboard GP and it took about 10 seconds. Wasn’t quite good enough IMHO (the first time I’d not been 100% happy with GP’s work), so I then tried the cloud Low-Res Restore which took about 5 seconds and cost 7 credits. Exported it, and I will say that “Processing” did take the longest that I’d run into thus far which was about 10-12 minutes. Fabulous result (close up face and there is also a cat in the photo so a great mix of things for the AI to work on.)

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Also, can you share the part of your account agreement that says Topaz can charge you again on a yearly basis? I don’t recall seeing that but perhaps I was not looking in the right place.

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Hi Mnemosyne.

Mark said
“When I bought Gigapixel, it seems that I also signed up for an auto-renewing subscription” and “I also gave them permission to charge me again in a years time”

Topaz will not charge you the Full Price again in a year’s time. It’s the Upgrade Price only.

The Auto Renewing
Subscription isn’t applied automatically you have to select that option.

So, no they won’t renew automatically unless you signed up for a Subscription please check your account

The Auto Renewal Subscription is a convenient way of updating your software automatically once your year-long licence has expired.

This has an advantage for you because, you won’t have to wait for a Black Friday deal to get the best price.

Topaz will offer in return a better than Black Friday discount for your loyalty.

You can cancel at anytime although, your current license will run until it expires.

This is still an advantage for you because, unlike other software companies subscription services where the software will stop working.

Topaz will allow you to continue using the latest version from the date your licence expired.

Hope this clarifies your query

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I must have checked a box during purchase, which occurred well earlier than my 30 minute window for remembering things. I’ve been reluctant to unsubscribe but I will go ahead and do it. I wish I could remember what, during the purchase, made me think that I should subscribe to updates. I don’t buy extended warranties, I don’t buy subscriptions, I don’t typically yield control over my purchases to a company.

I do tend to renew licenses for software I purchase but I want to do it on my terms, in my timeframe.

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Truth be told, I am using a computer with on board graphics from a few years ago. This is an underpowered configuration but I expected that the AI Upsize would work, given enough time. It did not. I went to an appt today and, when I returned, the Gigapixel process had crashed about twenty hours into the upsizing process. I was intending to cancel it so I wasn’t terribly upset. I am not planning to use the “feature”, so I only have to overlook the options in the sidebar panel of Gigapixel.

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Hi Mark.

The Topaz Auto Renewal is a Subscription in name only

What do I mean by that, it means the only difference is instead of you renewing your Licence they’ll do it for you and Topaz will give you a Discount for doing so

Besides, you’re not obligated to anything you can Leave at anytime and not be penalised for Canceling your Subscription and you get to keep the software it’s yours no one will take it away from you

Hope this helps

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Hi again Mark.

Gigapixel has three main categories:

Here are the links which explains in more detail how they work

The Basic and Legacy Models are very powerful and should work fine with your system

It’s only the Generative Models you’ll have an issue with

Hopefully this will help

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Many thanks, And-E! I had not selected auto-renewal because I figured I’d check to see what kind of/how many updates would come down the pike during the initial 12 months. Normally if a program is working well for me during its first 11 months, I tend to just leave it as-is except for whatever critical updates the vendor may push out. :slight_smile:

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I have to agree with the original gripes made here. The marketing page of Topaz makes it seem as though you pay one $99 fee for life and then immediately you see the upcoming yearly $68 fee.

I also have not yet upscaled a full image as just the previews take about 5-10 min depending on the upscaled size (2x about 2min 4x about 10min) so I can imagine trying to do the full image at 4x would take about 36 hours. Just the 4x preview sends my Mac into a fan whirling frenzy.

I also did not fully review the system requirements but assumed that my Linux machine with my 4090 RTX card would be great for this program only to find that Linux is not supported. Why? anyone that is seriously working in the generative AI space is using a linux build and I can’t see why Topaz wouldn’t support that.

On top of all that, the first image I’m attempting to upscale has a man with a mustache and after trying the preview function with numerous different settings, I am unable to get an upscaled preview where this man’s mustache has any degree of detail in the hair.

So far, very displeased with my purchase.

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Well, years ago Gigapixel was advertised with lifetime free upgrades and updates. In my case these lifetime free updates and upgrades did last for around three months. Anyway I do not regret purchasing it.

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