Thanks 
I always use a prompt to properly direct the details to be added. 
Hello Harald. It has been good fun but I think next time it would be better to create a thread in the General forum section and then post a link or invite to members in the current forum. We were getting a few complaints and arguments between other members.
Best regards Robert. 
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That is certainly an argument against paying for a 1 year subscription. Just buy the annual new version only if it looks interesting. I suspect that would be a slower, smaller revenue stream for Topaz though, but you are right that it appears where they are going.
All right, I’ll do that next time.
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So, I’ve linked to a new post I just created. For now, it’s named after the subject of my photos.
Roe photo enhancement - Topaz Gigapixel AI / General - Topaz Community
https://community.topazlabs.com/invites/8w52iaGxji
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Hello Robert et al,
My OP wasn’t intended as a complaint in any way about advanced techniques - merely a question and suggestion for perhaps posting them outside the “pure” GPAI topics.
As you seem to agree with the example of the Bowler Boys and now Harald.de.luca’s
roe deer as a new topic in GPAI > General works very well.
Others have done the same thing including yourself, plugnpixels, Fotomaker etc etc.
Most of the responses to my request for “other opinions” have been eminently sensible and useful. The Topaz Community has to cover several products and so many topics !!!
It’s far from being my favourite forum in regard to its structure - I prefer threaded layouts such as DPReview.
But Topaz Community is my first port of call every morning after the BBC News, Thailand news and the weather so I am certainly a fan !
Updates used to be on a weekly/biweekly schedule as many users were purchasing licenses. and now? 2.5 months and no updates. This leads to an impression that GAI and TPAI are destined to become discontinued as all previous TopazLabs products…
As Michael pointed out updates used tobe weekly and in addition, I Remember as well, people complaining constantly about the amount of updates and why so many.
Now, people are complaining constantly about the lack of updates and why few and far between.
When in actuality, there’s only a few people complaining and many, many others who haven’t got any complaints and are just happy to get on with it
TOPAZ
A precious stone, typically colourless yellow, or pale blue, consisting of an aluminium silicate that contains fluorine.
That’s TOPAZ Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Both Topaz Personnel and Beta Testers have said there’s new Models coming and even more features on the horizon
Topaz, Dammed if you do Dammed if you don’t
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Hello Zed1
I think I said in my post 366 that “We were getting a few complaints and arguments between other members.” I think I was careless in saying that and should have written something like, “discord or a lack of harmony between members.” So my apologies for writing that.
Other than that I go with what I mentioned in my posts 351 and 366. Something along the lines of. Example: Plugsnpixels posts his “Bowler boys” picture and ask members if they are interested in working on it. If two or three members are, he creates a thread in the General Section of the forum and posts a link to it and then they can go there and just get on with it and not affect uninterested members in the main forum.
But in saying all the above, I hope it doesn’t dissuade other members from posting their pictures and describing the methods they used on them in the main forum. Otherwise it will become a very quiet and boring forum.
Best Regards Robert. 
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I don’t think you need to apologise - what you said was OK in my opinion.
For use in our garden we have my Grandfather’s old Spear & Jackson spade - it works much better than “A 2025 vintage manual, human-operated, soil-displacing apparatus, meticulously designed for the purposeful and methodical relocation of terrestrial substrates and other granular materials from one geographical point to another.”
Plus it doesn’t need gender specific pronouns !
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Some may be interested in this interview. About an hour.
# Topaz Labs’ CEO Eric Yang on AI’s next big act
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I’m currently teaching a class on Technical Photography For Litigation Related Failure Analysis. One of my cautions it that “Pictures Never Lie, Except For When They Deceive”. In some cases protecting the fidelity of the information being presented in the image precludes the use of any AI tools. We are rapidly approaching a time where that will essentially be impossible to avoid.
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I mean at this point you’re basically generating an entirely new image, why even bother with the original?
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Hi, have just received an email with the heading “The move to subscription”.
Does it mean that new customers will no longer enjoy perpetual licenses?
The doubt comes from this text:
“[…] But each new release came with an asterisk: some customers benefited and others didn’t, depending on the individual product purchased. This didn’t sit right — we’d much rather that more people have access to all our models.”
and that on the founder page, I get this text:
“You’ll maintain access to the non-subscription version of these products forever.”
Also, if we Founders would stop our subscription, and re-subscribe again at a later date, would the perpetuals be lost?
And also, will the “As long as you maintain 2+ active upgrade licenses: You’ll receive Topaz Studio at no additional cost” apply also if we resubscribe after let’s say 10 years? Or would we have to subscribe to the Studio service as a whole?
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The move to subscription — email — Eric Yang CEO — 5 September 2025
Does that mean we will never see the GPAI 8.5.0 perpetual (non subscription) version
- which was forecast by esther.huynh on 11 Aug 2025 ???
.
.
. quote =
esther.huynh esther.h
Topaz Labs Staff 11 August 2025
zelenooki87glad to hear our Face Recovery is much better!
We are working to release 8.5.0 soon - please hold out just a little more.
Support for Standard max on blackwell will be ready with the release too.
appreciate your patience!
- = unquote
Maybe we need a new cloud app “Unravelling Smoke and Mirrors Promotions”
I’m confused and disappointed to say the least.
Looks as if my premonitions of doom were not entirely unwarranted paranoia?
Zed1 Beta Tester Review - Premonitions — Jun 9
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Ohh, man!
Thanks for posting this - I completely missed the email, so I really appreciate the reminder.
First read of that email left me with the same impressions as it did to you.
Confused and disappointed.
Confused mostly because the email doesn’t even get close to actually presenting any solid info apart from me being upgraded to something I don’t yet fully understand.
Disappointed because one of the reasons I got into Topaz again a couple of years ago was because once bought it was mine. No monthly subscription fees, no “if you stop paying you lose it all” (looking at you Adobe) and I’ve followed the progress of both PAI and GAI as well as the demise of Sharpen AI and Denoise AI since then.
Then came the half-baked “subscribe if you want, stop paying and keep what you currently have”-thing which actually made me put a pause on my upcoming renewal of PAI (I’m a Black Friday customer of PAI so I still have some time there) followed by the updated T&C and all the hoopla around that.
Now I see the same “since you already have two of our products” arguments as I got offered when I got into PAI being mentioned (slightly different wording, but the essence seems to be the same) and with it a number of new applications and services being being hinted at.
My first thought go to Video AI and it’s current single license price. If I’m gonna be getting access to that one as well as part of being a “founding customer” (nice pitch there, Eric), there’s gotta be quite a price bumb on the total considering that TVAI was more than double the price of GAI and PAI together the last time I looked?
Will I be able to afford joining the ride long term, or did I just get left in the dust?
I’m gonna go back and read the email again, perhaps this time I I’ll even pull my head out of the sand and click the “view my free upgrade”-link.
Meanwhile I suppose the forum will kind of explode with questions the next couple of days, and I suppose this post might even be moved to a more suitable place… Not gonna make any rushed decisions yet, but depending on how things get clarified I already feel halfway out the door.
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It would be interesting (to say the least) how Topaz would justify that step to those who have a running subscription, entitling them to owned versions until the subscription expires.
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“Nice” stuff. Assume someone paid or extended his/her subscription to the owned GPAI, say, some days ago, only to learn that he/she will get nothing but legacy versions without additional annual payment.
If so, Topaz should be sued to keep up owned updates for at least a year, until the last subscription to paid products runs out.
I would have loved to check out the features of GPAI 8.5 but for the price of an annual fee, I shall certainly look into what the competition offers.
I guess the next step will be the withdrawal of the permanent versions from the download pages. It might be wise to dl a full installer for those who have not already done so.
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