Ongoing product value and paid upgrades

Sorry I personally haven’t seen that particular page but I can’t say it is not true. Many of those statments are on websites such as Northlight, Plugs n Pixels, DP Review etc.

It’s an image cropped out of the original mail I got from Topaz Labs!
If you want I can PM you the original mail.

But that doesn’t say I don’t want to pay a reasonable upgrade fee in the future. (not $ 99.00)

1 Like

As I stated I haven’t seen that,. :slight_smile:

David

I’m thinking this helter-skelter race to produce as many AI products as you can is about to take its toll.

I’m not convinced by Artificial Intelligence photo tools. The clue is in the name. They’re artificial. They are massively bloated programs, downloads are slow and gobble up disc space. They are clumsy and slow in use, they stretch processors to the limit, and the outcome is inconsistent and unpredictable. Real intelligence, the skilful and thoughtful use of traditional tools by an experienced user, will usually produce a far faster and better result and are so much more reliable in use. They are also more attractive to users with slower and older machines, and widen the range of potential custom.

Maybe AI will improve over time, but the most worthwhile improvement surely is to bring the non-AI products up to equal the promises made when they were first introduced. Then, and only then, can you begin to move forward with upgrades. No-one will trust you otherwise and there is no value in that.

4 Likes

Exactly:
https://community.topazlabs.com/t/lets-hope-the-updates-are-worthwhile/13457/4

It makes sense: but I have a complete set of plug-ins for Topaz 1. Will the upgrades be compatible with Topaz 1?

Others have made the point that you are effectively breaking your contract with purchasers who bought into your products on the promise of free upgrades for life. Personally, I think your purchase prices are very high if we subsequently have to pay for upgrades. If you want to change your business model, you should do that for new customers and new products only - not affecting those that bought in on the old basis. This is an unethical business practice where one party to a contract holds all the power and the other party has little or no influence.
I am deeply disappointed with the last upgrade to Denoise Ai and wish I could go back to the previous version. The loss of the swipe functionality is a major deficit and the layout of the controls is disappointing.

3 Likes

If you are talking about Studio, I am not sure because it is no longer supported. But both Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI still can be called at this point in time.

I believe that the Swipe functionality on the split-screen will be restored.

1 Like

One thing we all need to understand is that AI products will always give the best possible results according to the training they have had. For general work it will always be as good as you can do yourself and in most cases more balanced.

My personal thought is that, for example, with DeNoise it now does a very good job on a TIF image. And I must stress a standard TIF image as the TIF standard is clearly defined and many products deviate from that.

Don,

I appreciate the clarity you’ve brought to the incorrect information.

However, I believe you’ve misunderstood the most important piece of the thread: Loyal, long-term customers are unhappy.

Regardless of the fault, only Topaz can choose to remedy that situation. Citing trivial or irrelevant details (like those I posted) does nothing to help loyal customers.

I have very mixed results with Adjust AI and they take a very long time to process. When you start adjusting your self it’s very limited compare to the old version Adjust.

When I compare it to the old Adjust I think the old version is still superior and much more tweak-able
for details and works in seconds instead of minutes.

All the AI plugins take just to much time to process even on a beast of a computer!

Topaz AI is nice when you can spent a Sunday afternoon processing 20 images for fun, but not when you want to process whole series of images, it just takes weeks.

1 Like

I agree with you on that particular product, but it really isn’t concerned with the issue here as it isn’t included. AI does not work on everything.

AiDon - I appreciate your comments; but wish to point out the major question that I have asked is regarding the future beyond 2020 and other products. Your statement below is not reflecting the announcement by Eric:

“The update charges which are $49.99 for one product or $99.98 for 2 or more only apply to GigaPixel AI, DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI or Mask AI. They do not apply to any other products and conjecture is pure myth.”

Eric’s Announcement was:

“Only DeNoise, Sharpen, Gigapixel, and Mask will require an upgrade license in 2020. Other products remain under the old policy.”

There is no commitment indicated that this change in support strategy will only: “apply to GigaPixel AI, DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI or Mask AI”. Given the lack of addressing the compete product offerings: “They do not apply to any other products and conjecture is pure myth.” is the real myth. It is not conjecture to request clarification as I believe this is the purpose of this forum.

As I have stated earlier, I anticipated a change in support strategy over a year ago; and am not opposed; but the price for capability of the announced support costing is not aligned with what I see from other vendors. I believe that is a fair observation to include in this discussion forum.

What other products are you concerned about?

The change does only apply to those 4.

Yes it is!

I have noticed no revolutionary changes in the update results.
*Process time is unacceptable long.
*Results are to unpredictable
*Parts of the app disappear and then suddenly appear again with an update!

Imagine that it happens when your Payed Upgrade Period is over and then you have to pay again to make your favorite app button reappear.

This all makes you think about the coming upgrade policy!

First the basics needs to function proper and fast of all the AI apps otherwise AI means nothing!

3 Likes

The only issue I face with Adjust AI is that previews take a while to generate. But I’m on Windows with a general type PC but old GPU:

Application & Version: Topaz Adjust AI Version 1.0.5

Operating System: Windows 10 (10.0)
Graphics Hardware: GeForce GTX 1050/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL Driver: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 442.19
CPU RAM: 16269 MB
Video RAM: 4096 MB Total, 3953 MB In Use
Preview Limit: 6506 Pixels

My thanks for your quick response:

Original Plugins / Studio 2 / Adjust AI are three that come to mind immediately

Again, the announcement only addresses four products and what will happen in 2020. No commitment is made regarding what will happen to the remaining products beyond 2020.

Your response: “The change does only apply to those 4.” - only applies to 2020; not beyond - just keeping to the facts as stated by Eric in the announcement.

2 Likes

I tested it this morning for a reply to an other post:

A normal procedure with just a jpg of 6000px X 4000px that is processed with:

DeNoise AI > Sharpen AI > Adjust AI
Takes 177 seconds on my iMac i5 3.7 6-cores 64Gb internal memory and a AMD Radion Pro 580X 8Gb
and takes
120 seconds on my Windows 10 i7 3.2 8700 6-cores 16Gb internal memory Nvidia Geforce GTX 1050 (Ti) with what ever adjustment I make in the preferences…

I hope you remember me posting about this about 3/4 of a year ago?

And of course I mailed with support about it, but got no satisfactory answer!

So I’m skeptical about coming upgrades!

What could work is a hybrid plugin based on the old plugins mixed with AI.

1 Like