Topaz Photo AI LR plugin strips EXIF Lens profile aperture settings

Topaz Photo AI Bugs and Issues
1

When using the Process with Topaz Photo AI LR plugin (from file/plugin extras) Topaz will take the original file and create a DNG file from Canon Raw CR3. The new DNG loses Lens profile settings for the aperture.

This is important because Lightroom needs the aperture setting to apply lens correction. In this particular case I am using a fisheye lens and lens correction is drastically different for this kind of lens, which flattens out the image to make it ultra wide. This is very important. Thus you lose the ability to apply Lightroom’s profile correction on lenses after importing it back in.

If you compare the exif data from the original file the lens profile will typically be something like the following:

Original:
Lens: 15mm f/2.8 #0000000000

Topaz DNG:
Lens: 15mm #0000000000

I will also note that Topaz also strips out the firmware version of the camera from the exif data.

Attempted workarounds that don’t work:

  1. Apply lens correction in LR before import. Doesn’t work because Topaz can’t use Lightroom’s develop module settings (this is an issue in and of itself, forcing people to use topaz ahead of editing as opposed to after which can put noise back into an image)

  2. Apply lens correction on import to Topaz Photo AI. - Not sure of the algorithm here but it simply doesn’t see to do much. Perhaps Topaz and LR use different algorithms but for me this has never proven to do much of anything and in the case of the fisheye it doesn’t work at all.

  3. Convert to TIFF with LR settings and then use Topaz Photo AI. This works with obvious limitations and is not a workaround so much as it is a compromise.

Normally I would attribute this stripping to having limitations on the perceived length of the exif fields and truncation on Topaz’s part but that doesn’t explain losing the aperture setting. Most likely this field is a tuple and Topaz simply misses putting it back in.

Steps to reproduce issue:

  1. Step 1 - Import image from Lightroom using the Plugin Extras option on the file
  2. Step 2 - Allow Topaz to enhance the image automatically and save
  3. Step 3 - Inspect the exif data comparing the two files. I use an external program to look at the exif data and you can clearly see the missing data.

Topaz Photo AI [v1.5.1] on [Mac]

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2

Must note that manually applying the lens profile to the DNG in LR does fix this issue. So this is not as bad as I originally thought.

3

Please send me the original file and the output file so I can compare and try to reproduce the lens information issue.

You can securely submit your image(s) to my Dropbox using the link below. Please be sure to send me a note to let me know you sent something.
Dropbox File Request

4

Good morning. Just saw your reply. I will drop both files today. TY

5

Hi. I uploaded the files. Good news however. I updated lightroom and topaz yesterday and I believe the issue no longer exists. I will see if I have the old config on one of my macbooks. Very strange. In any event I had saved the file I had issues with and sent it over.

6

Thanks. I’ll see if I can reproduce with v1.5.2 and if not we can close this.

7

I just tested with v1.5.2 and the lens information was kept properly so I could use the lens correction on both the CR3 and the output DNG file.

8

Thank you. Seems my issue was with combo of Topaz 1.5.1 and LR 12.4. I am also a firefly beta tester using photoshop which I also updated. Something along those lines most likely caused the issue. Some of the file management stuff with PS Beta was definitely out of whack on the last release, especially using virtual copies.

Ever since the upgrades I can’t reproduce. Closing the issue makes sense to me. Appreciate you looking into this.

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