Hi,
First want to say, I love gigapixel and video ai. They’ve both become part of my workflow. I’m disabled, so use a little sporadically, but have been important for projects when I can take them in.
My licenses are about a year old. Of course, the programs keep reminding me I can upgrade, which I’ll do at some point. I’m disabled, can’t work often, and also have to be cost-conscious.
But I am very familiar with the results of many models, in both programs. And I am starting to feel certain that Topaz is degrading the quality and functioning as a way to encourage the upgrade.
In Gigapixel, I’m getting straight-out pixelization that I never had before unless, say, I had low resolution, a huge enlarge and cranking up denoise and sharpen. But I’m getting it ALL THE TIME now. This did not happen before. Similar with gigapixel.
I can’t know for sure, and I’m thinking they’d never admit this, but it’s also a fairly common practice with tech. Apple pretty notoriously has been caught and fined numerous times using this as tactic for phone and device upgrades.
But it’s also incredibly unethical, and I’m not sure about the legality. I started wondering about this months ago, and as I was prepping a portfolio this last month—over and over, I just am not getting the same quality as prior to the license-upgrade thing. I really wanted to wait until I felt more confident about this, but I am now and would like to start a discussion on this, and hopefully get some legitimate response from Topaz.
Thanks,
Michael Van Huffel
