It’s always been the same with all of the AI apps - you have to run them at least once as a standalone before you can use them as a plug-in for Lightroom or Photoshop.
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Not trying to defend the firm, but mine works well now. I do think the machine-specific quirks seem to be prevalent and uninspiring.
Version 3.3.5 works well on my Windows 10 machine. One minor label issue found.
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Although I am generally pleased with the results I get with 3.3.5 (thanks for fixing the halo and image shift issues!), the ‘auto model’ selection feature on sharpen 3.3.x is terrible. It is usually over aggressive and almost always defaults to ‘too soft - very blurry v2’ which over sharpens the image and leaves unwanted artifacts. I can’t remember which version, but older releases had much better auto model selection. Perhaps it was the 3.1.x series of releases.
@anthony.lawn can you please look into this and get the auto model feature back to where it’s useful again? In it’s current state it’s unusable.
Thanks
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Team at Topaz, I have to ask you this: Are all of the “Very Blurry” models doing the same thing?
I know that’s a hard accusation, but look at the results. Each of them is the same smooth image on my PC.
Are they all adding noise reduction when it’s not even being requested? My system is doing that. I have NR on ZERO, and they look like glass, yet all the same.
Each “Very” mode gives me the same result: super-smooth and well-sharpened goodness, but how can we think, then, that our product is what it says it is?
I can only hope this is just system-specific dysfunction, as the alternative is quite concerning.
C’mon team. Can I donate funds to help this get better?
This forum is about user to user interaction, please direct your enquiry through the support on the main webpage. It seems that there may be a specific issue for your installation as you can see here from the different models used that the noise reduction at zero does have different effect depending on the model, blur can be caused by noise as well. Note that all images (RAW) have some noise reduction applied during the demosaicing process. The image is a ISO25600 CR2 RAW from a EOS 5D Mk II:
It is my understanding, which may be wrong, that Sharpen AI uses AI tech so I would think that means that it will behave differently depending on the photo. For example, a photo of plain gray or a test pattern might make it behave differently than some other photo and some other photo and some other photo and so on. I think it even behaves differently in different parts of the same photo.
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They’re all noticeably different for me.
On my setup, running 3.3.5 as a PS plugin I can’t set ‘Suppress Noise’ to zero, it always resets to 10. Strangely, a setting of 1 or anything else stays set.
If it is Sharpen AI then you need to raise a support request.
Only DeNoise is like that as you need to choose Low Light to set to 0 in DeNoise.
Following up to this, I have tested versions 3.1.2, 3.2.2 and 3.3.5 with the same batch of images (which need a very minor sharpening) and something is definitely wrong with the auto model selection in v3.3.5. It keeps picking ‘Too Soft - Very Blurry’ and applying it to the images (which usually results in terrible, over-sharpened images with tons of artifacts), and on top of that, it’s adding the -Motion suffix to the output filenames.
v3.1.2 and v3.2.2 correctly select and apply the ‘normal - too soft’ model to the same batch of images and correctly apply the ‘-Softness’ suffix to the output filenames.
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Hi, anyone else seeing NaN for the S and N parameters in the file list. It also looks like The Blur and Noise sliders and value boxes have no effect while it’s in this state.
It seems to go away if you quickly change the parameters to auto and switch back but doing that for 370 images is a pain in the neck.
It Also looks like if I process them all under auto I may be able to get working parameters back by switching auto after processing, but again processing them all twice is a pain too.
Version 3.3.5 on an Apple M1 Mac Mini.
Loving Sharpen 3.3.5 on windows 10 so far. All the bugs I encountered are fixed. Great work Topaz Developers.
Happy Holidays
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That’s strange; I’ve never had to do that.
I was having this problem too. But if after setting the model, you also make a change to the noise or sharpness sliders, or turn auto on or off, the problem goes away. Not saying this is ok, just a goofy workaround.
The same for me. The current version of Sharpen AI doesn’t work at all. Processed photo is worse than the original.
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Newly installed Sharpen v3.3.5 crashes just before finishing. Always crashes when run from Lightroom (version 11). Does not crash when run as stand-alone app. Suggestions?
What system are you running SAI with?
The data should be listed in the SAI Help menu to copy/paste here.
Also, in the File Menu what settings are you using for processor under Preferences? Is SAI running using GPU, CPU (low, medium or high)?
In sharpenAI 3.3.5 noise suppression always seems to be applied on maximum level, independent of the position of the suppress noise slider. I hope it will be fixed soon.
Performance seems to be nice, even GPU seems to produce good quality results now, but I have not tested many images yet.
Application & Version: Topaz Sharpen AI Version 3.3.5
Operating System: Windows 10 Version 2009
Graphics Hardware: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650/PCIe/SSE2
OpenGL Driver: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 471.41
CPU RAM: 32703 MB
Video RAM: 4096 MB
Preview Limit: 5947 Pixels
Seems as if 3.3.5 is not for me. Installed it, tested it, discarded it and now rolling back to 2.2.4. Preview is painfully slow (though processing itself seems a tad faster than in 2.2.x) inrespective of if GPU, CPU or auto is selected (my impression is that the SAI preview is optimized for graphics adapters with a lot of firepower and tends to get slow with on-board graphics hardware as my PC has). Control over the models and what they do is intransparent to me and much worse as in 2.2. I have backchecked with some good results I got in 2.2.4 and have had a hard time reproducing them at all with 3.3.x. Preview in comparison mode is mangled sometimes (completely blurred so that the subject of the image is not even recognizable). I shall be out of the eligibility window for free updates in a month or so and I am not planning to extend because so far no update has given me a combination of speed and quality that I have been satisfied with as in the 2.2 versions.
