This was far more useful for batch processing than thumbnail film strip hovers that photo AI has where if you want to change something you have to scroll and view and click which is extremely error prone, not to mention waiting for the preview to update (which gigapixel let you turn off)
I can see at a glance what auto prefs picked, and I can easily select rows or all and change the columns to the option I want to use within that selection
I second this for us users who need critically to do pro level batch processing on thousands of photos. It’s the entire reason I have purchased Topaz software.
I’m not sure I understand the use case for batch processing without using the preview. If you’re trying to apply manual settings to all, that can be done using the three dots menu on the filmstrip. If you want to be customizing each image, then I think the preview makes sense.
Giga has three view modes all spreadsheet, no spreadsheet all preview/compare or split spreadsheet and preview/compare. You can adjust workflow ui on the fly. Copy all settings is not what it does you can select one some or all rows then then you change a setting but not all setting values for only the selected row(s). You have the intersection of changed setting column(s) and selected image row(s) all bold and color coded for easy scroll verify.
In photo if you want only standard enhance with its auto parameters but no ai blur, but applied to only some images you have to click each image and preview turn off all ai but enhance std ai turn on its auto param. Repeating for every image and preview. Then to verify you scroll and hover or click every image make sure you got it right
In giga you switch to all spreadsheet view for more rows less scrolling. It highlights the selected rows in bold so quick scrolling you can verify your selected image set has no misselects. Then you select ai model with standard enhance with auto param it applies only that change to those row col intersection they might even have previously set different scaling and it will not change that settings long as you do not change the scale number. Auto is yellow while different ai models are different colors very easy to scroll the rows and verify setting. Furthermore after image preview you note different, overlapping or same set need to be hifi with compress fixed 50% and 6x not 4x and later a different or overlapping or same set should be art 80% blur 2x Very easy in spreadsheet view to make such intersected set changes and again review the spreadsheet.
It is literally seconds for giga likely no errors but hours for photo with likely errors or worse windows or chrome or mouse froze before saving. The more effective ui for selected parameters and model changes intersecting selected images is very obvious with hundred and thousands of images. Photo ui is unsuitable while giga is elegantly easy
Now let me give you an actual work session example.
I have a lot of game textures, and yesterday I just ran auto 4x. gigapixel saves the model chosen into the file name, so it was easy to figure out that auto was enhance about a third of them with art or low-rez model the rest was standard. Photo does not do that there is no way to recover that info that I am aware of short of hovering over thumbnail before saving, which is painful.
So I quickly made a short list of why they was not standard, previewed a few then realized these are was supposed to be organic photo realistc textures but they got created as low-rez hand painted art (because its a fantasy game). Then a few more that was not art but it still classified them as such, after some preview I realized they had geometric features being mistaken as art. So I decided to just restart and set all them to 4x standard model with auto param (again not possible in photo - copy all copies all the parameters) Auto model was a waste of time it changes more that should be standard than need to be something else. lesson learned not going to use it unless beta changes, and even then I will spot check known problems.
Then I created different selection sets for just changing sizes and model.
dozen sky textures where 4x was too big, click each in that set, click 2x once
lot of vfx textures click each of those, click 2x once, click art once. I know they are art and need performance for those and any standard detail gets lost to alpha so I also raised the blur param with one click.
lot of water textures for animated and depth shader. click each of those click 2x once. Look at one and go yikes that realistic std look is going to clobber shader performance (its an old game), one click all those are now low-rez model.
Bunch of cartoon art textures for in-game books, select each of those, click art once, notice they are stupidly jpegs and small size, fiddle with the compression slider on one - find 50% works, click once to change the entire set. Also click gamma once.
This town over here has marble and tile floors, let me take a close look at those as I know hi-fi will dial back what std does and I fear the worst. Yep sample one and it is like grainy rock. Go back and forth decided if low-rez or hi-fi looked best, settled on low-rez as it looked more smooth. Click low-rez once for that entire set.
Think I am done, go to bed, and its done in the morning. Windows slideshow and take notes that there are a few dozen out of the thousand that I want to customize each one using the quad view to decide and turn off auto param and start playing with sliders. Some of them I say not sure leave it, until I can playtest the game.
It took more time to type this than do these multiple intersecting set selections in Giga, and it batch ran over night. Now I do have a minor grumble you shoud learn from excel/windows and make select multi-modal using direction keys, search, (shift/ctrl) click, and mouse groups - but the bolding, coloring and quick scan scrolling in full spreadsheet view really helps spot individual misclicks to perfect the selection.
With photo spent all last week trying to do this and never even got one selection set done right in photo, even just trying to click each and for each manually turn blur AI off . And changing hi-fi to lo-rez which I know does milder blur. With the film strip I kept missing the blur icon even slow scrolling, and would miss click and misclick and oops did blur off but forgot to change the model, no way to verify that without click hover. eventually computer crashed and I lost the entire session without saving. I gave up and was going to cancel this its simply not feasible, and auto mode was simply not acceptable results, then someone mentioned they also got the bundle with gigapixel when I thought it was just same point tools same UI.
I found it was far more useful for batching to select subsets with the spreadsheet view and clicking the param change once because with large datasets you know if this one has a problem, I got a hundred just like it - I do not need to look at it them all nor click the setting change for each and every one of them, nor do I want them to have all the same parameter set.
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