More AI Sharpen Feedback

It took AI Sharpen more than 7 minutes to save a tif file back to my ssd on my MacBook Pro. 7 minutes and about 8 seconds. The MBP is a 2018, 15" with a 6 core i9 chip, so it is not noticeably slow, but the save time for an uncompressed tif is ridiculously long and much too long to fit into a normal workflow.

I will check with compressed tifs and jpgs, but AI Sharpen needs to be speeded up somehow. I have thread indicators on my machine and I did not see multiple threads active during the save processing or, for that matter, during the sharpening.

Same problem. Unusable

AI products will really test your hardware.
We are moving into a new age with digital photography
and its products. Long story short - add patience
to your processing mix if not upgraded hardware!

Personally, I have abandoned the 4Gb VRAM, 16Gb mem, i7 chip
for something much much more powerful, and it really
tells when using AI products.

But that’s just me :slight_smile:
AI+patience is the affordable option.

Hi there,
I am still trying the program, and I have noticed the following:

My original photo edited and saved as JPG was 52 mb weight, after processing in Ai Sharpen , which took 5 minutes to do it, the final photo is 35 Mb. Why did it changed ? On the other hand, and having a very closer look at the photo, I noticed that it worked sharpening, but at the same time kind of inventing unexistent pixels… The photo ended looking well on a smaller size, on a big size, it doesn’t.
These are my machine specs:

Imac (retina 5k, 27 inch, 2017)
Processor is: 4,2 GZ Intel Core i7
Memory: 64Gb 2400 MHZ DDR4
Graphics: Radeon Pro 580 8192 mb.

My Imac was imported into my country with own specifications.
I can’t change them, cause I live in southamerica, Uruguay, and there is no chance of improving this machine more than it is. I can use a lot of programs together, BUT, when I am using AI Sharpen, all the rest of the apps, kind of freeze.

Using the program as a standalone for now.
Thank you !

Sharpen AI is totally unusable. Takes about 5 minutes to load a file, another 5 minutes to see results when sliders are moved. THEN TO SAVE THE FILE- IT JUST DOESN’T. 5 attempts with 5 different photos, not a one will save. No problems with any other processing software in this Windows 10, i7, 16GB desktop.

1 Like

plug-in hangs photoshop CC 2019

iMacPro Mojave 10.14.3.

AI Clear plug-in hangs photoshop CC 2019

iMacPro Mojave 10.14.3.

AI Clear standalone strips EXIF information on save as

Personally, I have abandoned the 4Gb VRAM, 16Gb mem, i7 chip

As did I. My MacBook Pro is 32GB RAM i9 chip with the best video card Apple offers in the MBP, and it still look more than 7 minutes to save a tif. I will test it to see how long it takes to save a jpg, but when you consider the impact of that time for every image you want to sharpen it quickly becomes clear that it makes processing multiple images impossible in any reasonable time. Who is prepared to wait 700 minutes (that is, almost 12 hours) to process 100 images? It is not a question of patience, but of whether the improvement in sharpening is worth an extra 12 hours of computer time for even small numbers of photos.

If the fastest MacBook Pro is not enough machine to properly use a product like AI Sharpen that I expect that Topaz has gotten ahead of the hardware market. I don’t think I should have to buy a Mac Pro to use sharpening software. But that is just me.

Are you talking about Sharpen AI, because there isn’t a AI Clear plugin?

Please note that there is a Sharpen AI update to 1.0.8 available.

I am sorry… I meant Topaz Sharpen AI…

My apologies for the confusion.

AI Sharpen 1.0.8 still strips EXIF

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Well, I just downloaded and installed the 1.0.8 update and it solved the main issue. I can now call AI Sharpen from Photoshop and process the image. I changed the Preferences setting from GPU to CPU and processing seems a bit faster than before although it is not going to knock your socks off.

A 20 MP raw image from my Olympus camera, loaded into Photoshop and sent to AI Sharpen using the plugin functionality took 5 minutes, 45 seconds to process. Still a long time, but not 7 minutes 8 seconds. I will now test the Stand Alone version time and see if there is an actual speed up or if the difference has to do with the plugin vs the Stand Alone program.

As a note, there is no pop up in the app or plugin telling you there is an update. You have to check. That seems to be consistent with other Topaz apps like Gagapixel but I do wonder why they do not notify you when an update is available.

1 Like

Same with me, Sharpen AI V1.0.8 on Win10 platform (it was also happening with V1.0.7).

Cheers,
Bart

This has been reported to the developers, hopefully we will have a fix soon.

Sharpen AI V1.0.9 on Win10 platform cannot read Zip compressed file output from Capture One Pro V 12.0.2.
It also writes ZIP compressed TIFFs as a completely black file.

The LZW compressed version is rendered as intended.

I also had this issue during Beta testing, and I suspect it has something to do with the implementation of the ZIP compression.

Cheers,
Bart

AI Sharpen - with the latest build 1.0.9 the PS CC plug in only works if you have saved the image as a TIF… using the plug in with a .psb (for example) crashes

iMacPro Mojave, PS CC 2019

Additionally AI Sharpen - the PS CC plug in also changes the RGB Color Profile to sRGB whether you like it or not. (my example was originally Adobe RGB)

I got a popup when opening the app standalone.

I only have 16 Mpx files but loading one into AI Sharpen from Affinity Photo or as a stand alone took 25 to 27 seconds to process when applying (3 seconds for preview). This was using Sharpen setting while the time for Focus was 70 seconds while applying. I’m using a RX580 GPU with 4GB memory on a Windows 10 tower PC. You didn’t specify if you used Sharpen, Stabilize or Focus as the setting but it does make a time difference.