Does it seem like Mask AI development has been abandoned, and is being left to wither and fade? Have Topaz surrendered to Adobe in the intelligent masking arena?
If you land on the main Topaz page and select “All Products” you see Gigapixel, Sharpen, Denoise and Video Enhance. No sign of Mask. Someone unfamiliar with Topaz would not even know that Mask exists.
Then there are updates just from this year so far:
Denoise - Jan, Feb, Mar (New version), April, June, July
Sharpen - Feb, Mar (New version), April, May, June, Aug
Gigapixel - Dec, Jan, Feb, April, May
Mask AI - February.
Then nothing. 6 months, half an “Upgrade Plan” cycle, with no upgrades.
If you dig a bit, you can find the Mask Ai product page, and they are happy to sell you a license. But I thought the new paid upgrade plan was intended to support development with more frequent updates. I upgraded to Mask AI just over a year ago with the understanding that there would be a year of updates. The big development in that past year: Nag Screens about your update plan every time you launch.
I posted a while back about how I’m finding the new Photoshop masking to be much improved to the point I hardly ever (never?) use Mask AI anymore. Which is a shame. Masking is what brought me to Topaz in the first place. Either Topaz coders are locked in a windowless room working on ways to leapfrog Adobe, or they’ve resigned themselves to never being able to catch up.
I’m to have to see a significant feature set improvement before shelling out for another year of (no) updates.
I’m not sure they care what PS does. Mask (either Re- or AI) as a product has always had a long cycle. If your worried there is no need to to pay for updates unless one comes out that you want. You still have use of the current version you have.
I am super bummed this product EOLed. Mask AI is incredible. I haven’t found anything as good for masking tough subjects. The automatic versions are just simply not as good. I really, really hope they integrate this functionality as it was into Photo AI.
I am afraid I am in the same boat as others here. When I signed up with Topaz to get Simplify, we were all told that all updates and upgrades were free. I checked my account and I have 16 of the Classic Apps and both of the Topaz Studio Classic and Studio 2 where I paid again for a lot of the original Classic Apps to work inside them. And now I have 5 Legacy AI apps, plus the new Photo AI app and a $79 yearly update fee. The only thing keeping me tethered to Topaz is the option to send a raw file directly from Lightroom to do noise removal and subject sharpening, then returning a DNG file to Lightroom. I can use the Enhance feature in LR to do a nice job of noise reduction and can sharpen selective areas there, too. Now that Topaz has chosen to discontinue “creative effects” I an questioning why I would ever need them again. Their creative effects originally filled voids left by Adobe, similar to NIK’s Collection of filters. I also have full versions of DXO, Skylum, and On1 accounts. Everyone is pinching my checking account with their constant upgrade, update, and loyalty plans. I can see the day when I cut them all off and settle back in with only Adobe.
