Topaz Gigapixel v1.3.0 - Recover Faces 3 & 300% Speed Up for NeuroServer Models

Hello everyone!

We have another Topaz Gigapixel release only a week after our previous release! We have another new model as well as a huge speed improvement for some NeuroServer-based models.

  • Recover Faces 3 — Portrait Quality Face Recovery
  • Wonder 3 & Recover Faces 3 Speed Improvements with NeuroServer — Over 300% Faster

v1.3.0
Released May 13th, 2026
Windows: Download
Snapdragon: Download
Apple Silicon Mac: Download
Intel Mac: Download


Recover Faces 3 — Portrait Quality Face Recovery

Recover Faces 2 had two problems that limited how useful it was for many images.

The first was a hard size limit. Recover Faces 2 has a maximum output size of 512x512 pixels. Faces larger than that are forced to the smaller size, losing detail and sharpness. Faces that needed recovery would look smooth and out of place when compared to the rest of the image. Our recommendation was to avoid using it entirely in these situations.

The second was dot artifacts that appeared at high strength levels, exactly when you’d need strong recovery the most. On blurry or low quality faces, a strong face recovery is needed, but artifacts would make the result unusable.

Recover Faces 3 fixes both these issues to expand when the enhancement can be used.

The size limit is gone. Recover Faces 3 sharpens and recovers soft detail on faces of any size, producing sharp, portrait-quality output regardless of how large the face is in the frame. This image has a large face with soft details. There is room for improvement, but the existing Recover Faces 2 model would not create an acceptable output.

Using Recover Faces 2, the freckles are reduced significantly. The eyes are softened instead of improved. Eyebrow hairs are blended together as well.

Meanwhile, Recover Faces 3 is able to sharpen the eyes, improve the skin, and enhance the eyebrows too. It’s far better suited for high quality outputs.

The dot artifact issue is resolved. You can push strength as high as the image calls for without worrying about it. For low quality or heavily degraded faces, that means the model recovers those faces with high quality output.

The new model is a generative recover faces model that processes each face separately. Each additional face selected will increase processing time. For example, 4 similarly sized faces will take 4x the time compared to 1 face of the same size.

For faces already with decent quality and below the 512x512 pixel limit, Recover Faces 2 will still do the job and process faster. For large faces, blurry faces, or anything degraded enough that Recover Faces 2 struggled, 3 is the better starting point. and the quality difference is worth the extra processing time.

Recover Faces 3 runs on NeuroServer and processes locally on NVIDIA, AMD, and Apple Silicon (macOS 14 or later).

Cloud render is currently unavailable for Recover Faces 3, so it will require local processing to run.

Due to the lower quality of the older model, we are sunsetting Recover Faces 1.

Wonder 3 & Recover Faces 3 Speed Improvements with NeuroServer — Over 300% Faster

NeuroServer-based models are now significantly faster. We reduced the model load time and increased processing speed for Wonder 3 and Recover Faces 3.

Testing with a NVIDIA 3080 at 20MP output, we saw a speed increase of 330%. For larger images and faster GPUs, the speed increase is possibly even larger. If you’ve been putting off images and batches because of processing time, this update will enable you to use these models more.

Hopefully this encourages more usage for these models with images that need the extra push.


Known Issues

  • Recover faces 3 intermittent out of GPU memory error with 8GB VRAM. Will have a fix in next patch.

Changelog

  • Add Face Recovery v3 through Neuroserver for NVIDIA, AMD, and Apple Silicon devices
  • Update NeuroServer to speed up Wonder 3 and Face Recovery v3
  • Fix crash with face parse model in image analysis
  • Fix Recover v3 grey output on Windows devices with foreign locales

Lingyu Kong
Technical Product Manager
Image AI

9 Likes

When will Topaz Photo updated with the faster neuroserver loading times?

2 Likes

I do like the more frequent updates that Topaz apps are getting in the last weeks (and especially also real updates with new/improved models and not just some GUI changes that no one wanted nor asked for).

Seems like things are heading in the right direction at Topaz again.

3 Likes

The Wonder 3 redesign looks great, but there must be some issue with VRAM usage. Images that I could previously scale with the older Wonder 3 or Wonder 2 now try to use more than 32GB of VRAM and cause the process to crash. I have an RTX 4080 with 16GB. Has anyone else experienced this?

Can’t wait to use Recover faces V3 in Topaz Photo!

Topaz Photo should release an update later today if all goes well :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Can you write to us at help@topazlabs.com with the details of the issue? We would need to investigate this.

Do you use multiple screens or other apps occupied the GPU?

I have 2 screens (2k 165hz and 4k 120hz) but I only use one at a time. I don’t have any apps using the GPU or VRAM. I’m still running tests to see if it’s my problem

1 Like

I ran on a 3080 (16GB) without issue. Please make sure that no other app occupies RAM or VRAM.

1 Like

I’ve tried restarting the PC, updating the GPU drivers, reinstalling Gigapixel after deleting all the old data, start as administrator and even change the region… The problem persists. I’m trying to process this:

(Final output 93,3 MP)

Wonder 2 in Gigapixel: Uses 9GB of VRAM and the process finishes in less than a minute
Wonder 3 in Topaz Photo: Peaks at 16GB and drops back down to 8GB in a loop until it finishes. It takes several minutes but never uses virtual VRAM.
Wonder 3 in Gigapixel: Uses 29GB of VRAM, 16GB of VRAM, and 13GB of virtual VRAM, causing the process to take HOURS. Sometimes it tries to use more than 32 GB of VRAM and the process crashes. It keeps increasing over time and never goes down.

I’ve checked the logs, and they don’t show anything of note or any errors. It’s just that the process requires more memory than my PC has.

I can generate images smaller than 40MP without much trouble, but if the output is larger, the process uses virtual VRAM and takes hours to finish

The development team tested, off of your Gigapixel warning, and tested on RTX 4080 without issue, large images. Are you on latest Studio NVIDIA drivers and not Gaming? Also make sure to send to support@topazlabs.com your app Logs from Help menu > Open Logs folder > Send all logs (or here by DM) and I can relay them to the development team for their review.

We’re going to check if we can recreate the issue.

1 Like

My first result from the new update! Source: 2002-era 1-megapixel street carnival grab shot!

Original, reduced:

6X raw view in GP:

Before and afters (with Radiant Photo color correction):

Wow! I wish these people could see this!

3 Likes

Looks pretty good! However I wonder why it’s changing the darker compression artifacts on the person’s chin into weird splotches.

I have a problem with this and the previous version:
nothing happens when i want to upscale an image, no model is working.
When is click “preview” or “export”, it shows immediately that the image was upscale, but nothing has happend.
The image is shown small in the left upper border. The exported image is simple upscaled (maybe bicubic) but not processed.
Please help.
My PC:
Windows 11, RTX 4090, 64GB RAM

topaz_log.txt (60.3 KB)

HF v2 actually gives much better results than v3…

1 Like

Can you try uninstalling the app completely and reinstall?

1 Like

Can you provide a few examples? In our test, that was the opposite. Of course, not all images are the same :slight_smile:

1 Like