Randomized blurry patches in blown up images of Photo AI

[devenpsc]

Hi,

First, your software is amazing, especially on raw files. (And why does it seem to work so good on raw vs the same file with same settings in jpeg or tiff?)

Anyway, I’m having a consistent problem. I work on gigapixel size images of nature scenes and I’ve been going back and playing around with how much I can blow up previous work of individual frames. I’m finding that there are blurred patches on pretty much every photo I experiment on, which have been many at this point. No setting changes in Photo AI make it go away. OR, it randomly goes away on its own.

The blurred patches can move to different image areas from one file format to the next, or they can move just in the processing of the same file type.

Or, I can be viewing a file in Photo AI’s viewer, see a blurred patch in the same area several times, and then later I pan back to the same area and it’s gone. It’s completely random and not consistently reproducible. It seems to be a bug to me.

Sometimes the area that is blurred is more sharp in the original file, or at least equally sharp as other areas that have been blown up and retained new detail. It’s very weird.

To redo my gigapixel work will take hundreds of man hours and I don’t want to start the job until this wandering/varying blurry patch issue can be figured out. It’s across the board on all types of my photos and file types as mentioned, so I don’t think it’s on my end.

And, I just noted the other thread about this, but count my voice in on this is a big issue of some sort. The person who showed the image of the blurred bush in the other thread, that is exactly what I’m talking about.

Again though, keep up the great work. Once some of the kinks are ironed out, your software will be a dream come true for my work! Thank you!

Below I’ve added a three file format comparison. All of them have random, nonsensical blur, but as mentioned above the blur shifts around per each file type. All settings were exactly the same for the exports. The top is a tiff and has an actual line of solid blur in the top left area. The 2nd down is a jpeg (No compression setting) which has clearer bushes in the top middle than the 16bit tiff. The bottom is raw with its own issues.

The image is from a 50mp Cannon.

[christian_p_schaefer (X)]

yes, that’s exactly the problem (“Titles”-Issue) I have reported.
Topaz is working on a Fix, but I don’t know why but this has to be a really complicated Task they say…

I hope its getting fixed soon, because GigaPixel/Photo AI is currently not usable to upscale Images…

Here are some Examples of these Patches/Tiles:

[devenpsc]

Good examples also, and I agree. I can’t start any of my work with the software until this is fixed, unfortunately. Photo AI has the potential to be great, but this random blur thing is a hair puller.

[yuan.liang]

Which models (eg standard, high fidelity, low resolution, cg) in the upscaling filter have you seen this issue?

Can I have the part/crop of the original image you showed in the post to reproduce it? Dropbox

[devenpsc]

I’ve uploaded the three different file types of the photo I included in the message. I typically only use low rez model with 0 suppress noise slider, as that usually gives me the most natural results. I don’t use the sharpen or remove noise sections typically. I usually max out or near to max out remove blur, and again, no noise suppression.

However, sometimes I feel, like at least in some cases, Photo AI is adding random noise suppression even with the slider at 0. Maybe that is some of the issue? I noted in other photos, there is definite noise suppression in shadow areas. I would think when that is zeroed out it would not add it at all.

In the photos I’ve uploaded, I exported them from Capture One with no added sharpen or noise suppression from C1, because that also gives me the most natural results across all file types when imported into Photo AI. Any pre sharpness blown up looks bad to me.

The random blurry issue has shown up in most of my photos, and again, at times can be random and changes, as is the case with the photo I uploaded in the stringy boulders thread.

[devenpsc]

I uploaded another file to your dropbox. The big round hill of rock had a lot of areas that would be blurry as I panned around on the rock, using low resolution mode, 100% blur reduction and 0 noise reduction. I was viewing at 200% of normal to see the blur better. As I said above, I could pan the image around and the blur patches would come or go away as I moved the image. Hope this helps.

[kevin.shank-0439]

I find the best way to really highlite this make a seamless texture of something that has consistent texture - this way they have no excuse that it should be patchy because source images have patchy variances themselves (like your boulder in grass).

So only grass or a rug or wood or a rock, etc.

Then tile the processed image, you will see much easier at the tile intersections there is a major difference in local blurring or over sharpening.

It is coming from enhance upscaling itself.

Pretty much any image it identifies as standard resolution, will get overall output as blurry interpolated with some sharp patches and if you read in the output it will indeed get identified as a lo-rez image. Whereas if it identifies it as a lo-rez image it gets sharpened enough to be classified as a standard image when the output is read back in.

I woraround this for a 16x enhance by doing it as 2x2x2x2x so it would convert standard->lowrez->standard->lowrez->standard->lowrez->standard->lowrez.

[devenpsc]

Kevin, I didn’t follow everything you were saying, especially the last bit. I did try some random seamless texture images off the internet and the random blur did not seem to happen. But man does it sure happen on my photos, and the other person’s posted above. You may be right in your theories. All I know is I’m dead in the water with all the smeary patches for using Photo AI for my work. I need to be able to batch process thousands of photos and not worry about blurry spots, some with nearly straight lines of blur as in the attached image. I’ve drawn lines to call attention to where this occurs.

Adding to this straight line thing. I tried another file that was a jpeg from C1, with this time, a minimal amount of sharpening added vs no sharpening. Then sent it to Photo AI with my usual low rez mode and 100 blur reduction, no noise suppression. I got more nearly straight line blurs. New jpeg variation is below.

I also wondered if because these were focus stacked DNG’s from Helicon’s software, if that was my issue. But, I went and tried some of the original raws and there was still plenty of blurry spots.

[christian_p_schaefer (X)]

Yes the Patches/Tiles are often clearly visible.

It even happens with Suppress Noise = 0, Remove Blur = 0, Fix Compression = 0

[kevin.shank-0439]

Since you are in the beta do you know if they are paying to attention to non beta posts on this? I would like to post the texture analysis I did but not if it goes in the bit bucket because it is from ‘old’ code.

[christian_p_schaefer (X)]

It was a „fight“ until they have understand what exactly is the Problem…

But sure, you can post it here

[devenpsc]

Here’s some examples of the blurry effect moving around when trying to just view the results in the processed window. I’ve drawn around the sharp areas. Note how the sharp areas change based on panning of the image at 100%. This messes with your head, because you think an area in the core image was messed up or too blurry to fix, but pan the image around and suddenly that area is now sharp and a new area is blurry.

For comparison to the view port issues above, below is the actual rendered image and how it turned out. Outlined areas are new sharp areas. I intentionally blurred this image a lot to see how much Photo AI could recover.

Unlike some of the earlier examples, these blurry patches did not have straight lines. It’s so odd how the software can’t just give you the same result across the view panel or in rendering. Hope there’s a solution! : )

Here’s a comparison where I’ve outlined the same section of leaves to follow as I pan the image. This might make it easier to see the changes.

[kevin.shank-0439]

You would think blurry patches in the UI would be a different bug than blurry patches in the actual output, but maybe it also points to a common bug in the image render for both display and output that is randomly tripping between blurry and detailed and it is rerunning image inhancement every time you pan/zoom/save.

An easier way to see blurry patches is apply a high pass filter (any image filtering software), if you have scaled 2x then it will only show the details added and you can clearly see where no details got added.

[devenpsc]

I forget about high pass. It does help to see the tiles and straight lines a bit better where the blur is.

[kevin.shank-0439]

seamless land texture from the greatest RPG of the past two decades Morrowind. Very consistent in color, texture, with no edges

2x enhance autopilot did standard at 46% suppress noise and 39% remove blur. My guess is the noise and blur algorithm are ping ponging against each other locally rather than consistently across the image - most likely because enhance does not use subject masks to use different settings in different area (not needed on such a consistent image)
Also added the high passed version, you can see the middle patch is blurry but then just WNW of the middle it gets detailed.

Now I supposed it could be argued that the source texture itself has been processed to be seamless and has some blurry patches? Isn’t that the point of the blur and noise preprocessing in enhance is to try to fix variations in the image quality?

If I load the enhanced version back in for another 2x enhance, in then gets classified as Low Resolution rather than Standard. That happens consistently across the texture library that 2x will classify Standard and produce something classified as Low Resolution, enhancing that 2x will produce something classified as standard, and so on for every 2x upscale. This seems to be caused by the Standard setting producing blurry patches.

[devenpsc]

I played the first Morrowind in my late thirties. How old I’m getting. Sigh.

Great examples and your theories may very well be right. However, I have the blurry issues on both standard and low resolution. Those are the two models that are useful to me. The sharpen and noise reduction sections seem to be useless for most of my applications. They do weird stuff to my images most the time.

Blurry issues aside, I do wonder why raw files (nature photos) can turn out so lovely, and not their corresponding same jpeg or tiff? I also wonder post enlargement why the rocks and boulders have to have biological branches and roots?! If all of these aspects could be fixed, then this would be a miracle program in my book.

[kevin.shank-0439]

I only get low-rez on the output of standard so by then the damage is done so it may be that I have not noticed it.

I also echo the comment about variability is inconsistent, if I first tile the image, then enhance the tiled image the pattern of blur is not itself tiled, just like when panning and zooming in the UI. That rules out any argument it is just preserving the source blur pattern.

This happens to me with .tga and .png and .bmp sources
I suspect that with camera files the sensor noise algos tied to your camera brand are alo happening

Some did a gigapixel version of morrowind, but it is nearing 5yrs old and I thought it needed a texture update for my 4k display and Topaz AI auto function sounded ideal for thousands of textures. The image quality has certainly improved looking more photographic since then, but the seaming errors caused by patchy blur is very noticeable.

[devenpsc]

Thanks for your added effort on showing these issues. I think at this point it’s just a waiting and hoping for updates game. : /

Good luck with your re-texturing. Sounds like a lot of work!

[kevin.shank-0439]

Here is a 4k zoom of enhanced 4x twice (though the forum downsized it).

SW third at the wrap around seam for the moss on one side of the texture it was very blurry, and the other side it was highly detailed. I zoomed in on the tile seam its at 1/3rd up.

[devenpsc]

Thanks for continuing to post on this issue, that is still present even with 1.3.3. Well, the blurry areas don’t move around at least.