I found something weird that is happening with at least DeNoise AI 3.0.3 and Sharpen AI 3.0.3. Gigapixel 5.5.1 has the save options in the preferences but does not apply them, it again overwrites the original .jpg.
If I open a picture by right clicking a photo in Windows Explorer and selecting open with, the picture opens in the programs but there are no save options at all. I opened a .jpg and it overwrote my original photo. I opened a .ARW RAW and it saved it somewhere, I cannot find where it put it. There are also no save as option (except in Gigapixel and no default where to save option, only to add suffix etc which does not work) and nothing ion the preferences for saving. If I open the program and then load the picture, everything is working as expected except still no preference on a folder on where to save unless I go into the menu and click save as but that option is not there when I click on photo and use open with.
If you open any of the AI apps with right click > open with then they open in plugin mode. The same happens if you drag an image onto the app’s icon. In plugin mode saving will overwrite the original. You must open the app and then drag an image into the main window or click on browse and navigate to your image(s) or go to File>Open. That way when you click on save image in the bottom right corner you’ll be given an option of where to save it to.
That is maybe all well and good for JPG’s and TIFF’s but they are “saving” to God only knows where when the source file is a raw file (.ARW, .CR3, .NEF etc). They certainly are NOT overwriting the original.
And I emphasize the “maybe”. Open with from Windows File explorer should NOT be acting as a plugin, it should be acting as a freestanding application, and it should have a save option.
You are right Greyfox. For the raw file, I did a search on my complete drive C and the drive the original RAW was on and that file name does not show up anywhere. No idea where it even caved that RAW conversion.
Understood, but it is a pity the developers don’t seem to understand. Plugins return the altered image to the host program, they don’t overwrite the source file.
In my view no software should overwrite the source file without first warning and giving the user the option to not proceed.
They do overwrite the source file when using as a plugin. Lightroom as an example creates a TIF of your current photo and sends that TIF to the application which then overwrites that file because that is what the host program expects. I fully understand that. IMO though, the save as options should still be there no matter what. The option should at least be there to give the user a choice. The program should also differentiate between the O/S sending the file by a right click over a program like Photoshop doing it.
I would still love to know what Topaz did with my RAW loaded photo where it saved it but no where to be found. It should have been either a TIF or a DNG saved in the same folder as the original with the same name.
When I refer to “source” I mean the original file.
A typical work flow for instance for an ex camera JPG would be:-
Open the ex camera JPG in the host editor
Duplicate the background layer (optional)
Send either the duplicated layer (preferred) or the background layer to the plugin
Plugin returns the processed image to which ever of the above layers it was sent
Do any further processing to taste in the host editor
Save the file (either as a project file, or to a new image file)
A user might elect in the last step above to force an overwrite of the source image from the host editor. In my view that is generally poor practice.
Yes the plugin “overwrites” the image it was sent, but that is NOT the actual source file, and in the example you quoted, the generated TIF is what is overwritten, not the original source file.
A different situation occurs in the case of an image sent to an “external editor”, but most applications that are used as “external editors” will have (or in the case of Topaz should have) proper save as options to avoid having the “source” file overwritten.
In the case of the RAW files, .ARW, .NEF etc I don’t believe Topaz actually saves anything. I suspect it makes like it is, and the process quietly fails. That may not of course be the case if the source RAW file was a true ex camera DNG, then it might overwrite it.
