i’m sad 
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OUCH!!! This hurts their argument a lot.
Eric, I understand your reasoning behind this, but are users able to test the upgrade before they purchase it? Or do you refund our purchase if we are not satisfied? Also, are you suggesting that we pay for upgrades in order for you to repair bugs in the product that are the result of inadequate testing? I trust that all these things will be worked out befor you market your upgrades.
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Eric, thank you for your note and the years of “free” upgrades. I own every Topaz product and enjoy them.
I well appreciate this may well be a “do-or-die” solution for Topaz where the “die-outcome” is bad for all. There’s just no point in crying about the disappearance of unlimited, free upgrades: ergo, I support your decision.
Permit me, please to make a few observations:
- I wish there was some “grandfathering” plan for long-time owners and also those who bought a product within recent weeks.
- I hope that buyers of a product(s) will be able to download that version later even if they don’t upgrade.
3.(a) Speaking of upgrades; these have been incredibly sloppy starting with Studio 2 and show evidence of little or no testing, turning the entire user community into a large and unannounced beta test. Where are the promised enhancements to Studio 2 which, after a dozen or so “upgrades” still lacks the functionality of Studio 1? And, please don’t count 40 new Looks as an upgrade to v2.2. I’d be really annoyed if that was an example of what I’d have to pay for as an upgrade for another year.
3.(b) I hope that between now and August that we continue to see evidence of serious upgrades. This applies especially to Studio 2. - You need to focus on QUALITY and RELIABILITY in the upgrades.
- You need to focus on product SPEED which has degraded across several of the Topaz products in recent months.
Thank you for this opportunity to contribute. I wish you and Topaz every success.
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This is more than disappointing. Topaz built its business on bringing to the photo market innovative products based on a standard of “buy once - get updates free for life”. I understand the changing market. I understand the cost of groundbreaking research. But I can’t help to feel a bit betrayed by a company with whom I have been a loyal customer of since its inception 11 years ago. I am a recently retired hobbyist photographer who loves Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI, DeNoise AI, and Mask AI. I own them all. But now, to keep then current, your new policy will cause me to add an annual cost of $99.99 to my already stretched, fixed income. Is it not possible to lower that price in half for a customer that has been with you for so long. If you could do that for long-time customers, it sure would help my budget and your goodwill.
Mark DeMarte
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Agreed - major bug fixes should be made for the current version. There’s always gonna be niggles that get resolved over time. Software developers classify bugs along the lines of critical, serious, medium, minor and so forth. Critical and serious bugs interfere with the proper working of the software and so need to be fixed in the current release.
Re QC - ideally software would be released with no major bugs. The reality is some always get through as us users 1) find ways to use the software they didn’t anticipate and 2) have a hardware configuration they didn’t test and 3) software testers are human and make mistakes.
I’ve experienced some bugs with DeNoise not saving exif info into the output file. And Gigapixel didn’t like my (not officially supported) graphics card. After I changed to a supported card I’ve not experienced anything bad with any of the AI software or Studio 2.
I wish DeNoise and Sharpen were faster but I’ve learned to live with it as I’m so happy with the results. My tests on my blog show DeNoise to be superior to DXO and Photo Ninja (both of which I own) although Ninja is blindingly fast in comparison.
After August I’ll be evaluating the upgrades to see if I need them. If I do then I’ll pay for them. If I don’t then I may skip a release or two.
Charge if you must but upgrade pricing too high for a plug-in.
Quality control before release- the latest Denoise Ai update doesn’t even install properly and I’m not doing work a rounds- you fix it!
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With this statement from JohnDavid everything is said, that is also my opinion about it.
The business need is obvious, and I have been wondering about Topaz’s finances since they seem now to be unable to produce bug-free installers for their products. However, by not exempting your existing customers from the new upgrade scheme (at least initially), by not addressing the bug-fix release question (after putting out some very buggy software), and by asking a rather high price for programs that are really add-ons to a workflow rather than core components, you are obviously managing to antagonize many of your most loyal customers. I trust you do realize that, at the upgrade price you are charging henceforth, Topaz will be expected to be releasing finished software, not beta-level releases with buggy installers. Personally, I am still running Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 5.7 because I am a serious amateur who can only spend so much on photography and these two programs are plenty good enough for most of my work. At the same time, I am learning RawTherapee, Gimp, and G’Mic because I expect my Adobe products to eventually fail and am not moving to Adobe’s licensing model to upgrade them. And of course the open-source products I mentioned actually are better in certain respects than their commercial competitors. I fear that even with the new upgrade policy Topaz will struggle to produce upgrades that will keep up with the inevitable down-the-road competition. I will pay for exciting enough upgrades as my budget permits, but these upgrades had better be significant, stable, and reasonably close to bug-free or else I too will be gone as a customer. Good luck Topaz, but treat your loyal customers right.
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Quoting you Eric, “One of the ways we did this was by offering free major upgrades for all of our products.”
Quoting you Eric, “We haven’t listed free upgrades on our website or communications for the past year, and we’ve never had it in our actual product license agreements.”
Eric, to paraphrase an old Yiddish saying, “Don’t piss on me and tell me that it’s raining.”
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I own all Topaz Labs software, one of the original attractions was your statement of “free upgrades”. I have been exposed to some of your best software and some others that even you gave up on such as PFXL. I do think that Topaz will continue to challenge PS. A promise is a promise and now you say we will make no more changes_____ so you say…
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So, are you saying that to continue using the products I already own, that I’ll have to pay a yearly fee to keep them functional? I certainly hope that is not the case, and that I misunderstood your message. Please clarify. Thank You.
It’s in the announcement in the first post:
Upgrade license renewals
- After buying a product for the first time, you’ll receive 1 year of free major + minor upgrades from your date of purchase.
- After your first year of free upgrades is complete, you can buy another year at any time in the future - for any single product for $49.99. If you own multiple products, you can activate a year of account-wide upgrades for $99.99.
- Only DeNoise, Sharpen, Gigapixel, and Mask will require an upgrade license in 2020. Other products remain under the old policy.
No, they said the exact opposite. You can keep using them even if you decide not to upgrade.
Man you guys are nuts. If you want to just keep what you’ve got and are happy with it fine. If a company makes a promise and then explains why they can’t keep that promise and it makes total sense for them to stay in business, then I am okay with that. If you can’t afford to pay $49/year for something as good as denoise, sharpen, etc., then you need to just keep what you have. Or better yet, since Eric “broke” his promise, then throw a tantrum and delete it off your computer forever! I can’t believe all of you who insist not to understand why Eric has to do what he did. I bet I know what party you are affiliated with!
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I understand this and will decide as updates arrive. I also think the price is pretty high. However, when updates do occur they are often buggy (like the recent DeNoise AI update), especially when used as plug-ins on smart objects. I am still waiting for bug fixes in DeNoise AI and Topaz Studio 2 losing adjustments after use on a smart object. I think a better plan would be to include major “feature” updates under the category of paid upgrades and “bug fix” updates don’t count. This is similar to the Microsoft model (although, there’s no yearly fee for major feature updates). I don’t think the customer should pay for an update that has bugs and then possibly only getting the bug fixes during another paid period. I mostly like the new AI type products, but I still often use the old, reliable DeNoise and Detail products. Also how will a customer know if an update is worth the fee. Will the updates delineate between features and bug fixes. And also, if a customer gets an update during a paid period and chooses not to pay the next time, how will support tickets be handled. I’m not sure this plan has been fully thought out. Again, there’s a big difference between feature updates and bug updates.
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Eric -
Your existing customers are what has helped make Topaz what it is. If it wasn’t for us buying your software in the first place and recommending it to friends and coworkers, Topaz would not exist.
You can stick to your proposed plan and take the chance that it may alienate enough of your customer base that Topaz can’t survive, which hurts everyone. Or you can strike a compromise in the form of a significant, long-term discount for existing customers. From the current feedback, it seems like that could be acceptable to most (although not all) people and it would still provide Topaz with a noticable increase in revenue.
You’ve seen the feedback - it’s your move.
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Good day Topaz and CEO Eric!
First, my hope is that this comes across as constructive and thoughtful, because some of your products are my goto’s. They have been for years!
I can see where you’re coming from, because new products shouldn’t be the only revenue source. I will say that (I believe), loyal customers like myself have new customers on your products... Maybe more than some advertising? Hopefully there will be more incentives and upgrade pricing breaks for previous product owners, especially those owning suites or certain levels of products (not just one or two).
Now, as a path forward, I for one would like to see improvements in current applications/ plugins like DeNoise AI; Sharpen AI (the AI Clear portion); Adjust AI; and ReMask. As an example; AI Clear was like getting sliced bread for the first time when I first purchased it and Studio on 2016-2017 as conference in Chicago. I had already owned the suite for years, but had to get it. Since then, AI Clear took a left turn somewhere along the road and now over sharpens, with artifacts, and fur /fine hair is crunchy and weird. It also adds weird patterns that aren’t in the original. The same happens within Sharpen AI. Sharpen AI is one of my goto’s, but I steer clear of the AI Clear. As a landscape and animal photographer, it’s disheartening to a product that can’t use on photos that may be in printed on a large format.
DeNoise AI is another goto, but it also needs work. The previous version sometimes added weird color noises to Black & White photos and on the newest version the Chromo Reduction tool sometimes fades weird colored blocks of pixels to an otherwise clear sky. Before you ask; Yes, I have submitted the problems to support. The support team was responsive during the submission process On the DeNoise, but I haven’t had feedback about fixes to date.
My sincere hope is that with these changes for 2020 forward is that more will go into revisions toward updating current products, with fixes and intuitive interfaces. As a side-note; One click AI without advanced options for creativity is not where I’d like to see you go.
As perspective; I don’t see the efforts that are likely going on at Topaz Labs, but it would be more than helpful to improve communications and feedback channels. Many of us customers are also invested in your success, as Topaz has given us tools to improve our work and creativity.
One more thing! I would be happy to provide more feedback to improve applications.
Sincerely, Dale Mellor
No, but they never stated they did and then reneged either.
This is quite upsetting to me. Our original contract on these products was lifetime upgrades. I don’t use these products often enough to continue to pay for the upgrades that were promised to me to be free. I too will be looking into this legally to see if this is something you can actually do to our agreements!!
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