Topaz Photo AI v0.1

I did get on but it took a few tries. Kept looping around and not being able to access the site.

1 Like

At last, a program that can do almost everything weā€™ve used three of them for! True, not the same depth of knowledge, but the direction is good! It would be enough then to have a Video and an Image AI in the future.
What I would suggest: export to RAW, because then you could also replace JPEG To RAW AI.
The interface is not clear yet, it stopped while making the Face Mask after zooming into the image. In this case, the program ate up almost all the memory, almost all 32 GB!
And the artifact removal is better in Gigapixel AI (this is the best with 1x zoom) and Sharpen AI, unfortunately I canā€™t get it removed here.
So there is still room for improvement. One more thing: when installing, the models take a long time to download.
I like the program, keep it up, and it would be nice to have access to the knowledge of the AI programs now active (as a kind of framework, maybe using their models), plus RAW saving.

@yazi.saradest

Switching between before and after with the space key is fast with the mouse there are delays.

In the progress line it shows ā€œblending facesā€ with the mouse, but not with the space key.



If you have enlarged an image and then make the scale smaller, the large image keeps flickering in for a fraction of a second when Enhance is calculated.

This can also happen when you close an image and add a new one, the old one can then flicker in.

When more than one image is open, switching the enhance models does help to get the preview.

@yazi.saradest
@partha.acharjee

With this image I would use Enhance to remove the noise, denoise has no chance to keep all the details.

While I find the result of Enhance the best, it also has its weaknesses and those are the forests that it has denoised too much.



Whatā€™s great is that the software now feels very fluid.
__
__


Original



Photo AI - Denoise (Auto)



Photo AI - Enhance 1x low



GP-AI - LowRes 1x - 10 / 10 -



The Natural Model produces in certain circumstances lines in details.





For an image with a face that takes up about 1/6, it recommends face enhancement even though the face is large enough (5K image) and sharp.

2 Likes

Hi - weā€™ll be adding an option in the future to disable file logging when desired. cache-exiftool-12.41has to do with the metadata tool we use. Weā€™ll look into it not being cleared when closing the app. If you could also share the image above with me: Submit File to Dropbox, that would be great. Thank you!

I appreciate the info and will look into that. Can you please send me the image with the large face? Submit File to Dropbox. Thanks, Thomas!

Issue: Unable to uninstall .12b. From Win 10. Says ā€œconfiguringā€ & stalls at 75% processing.

Not something Iā€™d usually post in open discussion. But someone closed the .12b thread ā€¦

============== Early Release rpt:

Download of Early Rel. took 20 minutes (using 100+ Mbps Fiber to the Home network connection). 1 minute to ā€œcopyā€ & install.

Had to ā€œbuyā€ a seat - hope that was the correct thing to do for my situation - before launching this rel. The link took me to my acct page to do that. That page said I ā€œdonā€™t own any of the legacy productsā€ so am not entitled to an upgrade. I own all the Topaz products legacy & current portfolioā€¦

Installed to F: Drive okay. Standalone launched. As noted in changelog ā€œissuesā€ above - signif. lag before desired image appeared in UI. Image processed with manual settings for denoise, sharpen, face recovery, enhance (I used ā€œnaturalā€). Would like to see the cycling through of the Preview processing speeded up a lot since has to go thru 1-5 filters for each workspace or settings change.

Product launched to centered on my monitor display. I expanded to full-screen for use. After minimizing to tray then clicking to use again it returned to centered, minimized on my display. Iā€™d like to see the product maintain how Iā€™m using the product and remember that from use to use - if I click for it to fill full-screen during my 1st use Iā€™d like the product to always launch full-screen after that - whether minimized to tray or me logged off then rebooted PC.

Tried (Win 10) Ps 2022 PAI .1 Plugin.

  • Shows up okay in Ps Filter Topaz list (with all my other products ā€¦ )
  • Launched okay with image from layer stack - filled full screen (my heart sung!)
  • Topline Auto - selected Sharpen filter only - that was appropriate for my architectural image
  • Thereā€™s no ā€œEnhanceā€ function in the Ps Plugin like in the standalone - would like to see that added (seems Adobe/Ps shouldnā€™t prevent that - weā€™ve had similar functionality in other discrete products that worked okay in the plugins)
  • Thereā€™s no ā€œResizeā€ function in the Ps Plugin - I know thatā€™s an issue wrt filters (vs Automate) due to developer code from Adobe - suggest a Help note explaining to users why itā€™s not there (in Settings panel) be added. And point users to the standalone for sizing functionality.
    - Save to Ps - Worked. But is very very slow - needs a signif spd boost.
  • I like the little thumb feedback icon re: how well Auto selected filters. I assume that feedback goes back to Topaz vs just sits locally to me.
  • With the PAI .1 Saved to Ps image on Ps layer stack - color matched the launching layer & no pixel shifts or other distortions in tested image.
1 Like

Will do when I get back to home tomorrow.

1 Like

Whoa!

That actually seems like a ā€œfeatureā€!!! :wink:

Iā€™d have to pay a lot to Boris FX (Optics '22) to get that kind of look ā€¦

Wishlist Feature: Masking. :pray:t3:

3 Likes

I only recently started using Topaz products and theyā€™ve been fantastic so far! Itā€™d be great to see these tools combined into a single workflow, but I have my doubts that the AI and I will ever agree on everything it wants to do, which seems like thatā€™s the approach you guys are aiming for: streamlined, automatic selections, wholesale photo manipulation with minimal direct user-input.

Hereā€™s an example where I found it really struggled (Iā€™m unable to embed photos, so hopefully these Dropbox links work):

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cfoko53ypxantho/Screenshot_1.jpg?dl=0

Starting with a rather soft squirrel photo and a lot of bokeh, hereā€™s a 100% crop with no filters applied, and immediately, I noticed it rendering some odd pink tones from the raw file. Iā€™m assuming this is indicating blown out highlights, but I wouldnā€™t expect that from software that isnā€™t focused on level adjustments. (This also occurs in the existing Topaz products, but I donā€™t see it in other software, and havenā€™t noticed it happening in other images, so maybe itā€™s a weird edge case with this particular photo. It also doesnā€™t appear in the outputted DNG file when opened elsewhere.)

But to get to actual feedback on how Photo AI works. Once Iā€™ve selected Auto, it chooses RAW Remove Noise and Sharpen, which is what I would have selected. But the results present some funky situations:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/utcx7yyl37x9ym5/Screenshot_2.jpg?dl=0

Noise removal looks great, as expected, but sharpening fails pretty roughly in the areas it typically struggles: bokeh/deliberately out-of-focus objects and hair/fur.

In this case, you can see a lot of artifacts introduced across the bokeh throughout the photo, but particularly noticeable in the red area and a bit on the leaves at the bottom. These are areas Iā€™d wouldnā€™t want to apply sharpening to in the first place.

In the blue area, the fur in the tail looks heavily over-processed as well as around the furrier edges and whiskers of the squirrel to a lesser extent.

I dialed back the sharpen strength to 1, and even there, although it generally left the bokeh alone, it still struggled with the fur while not being as strong as Iā€™d like it to be along the head/body of the squirrel.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yk0d75kywcqxqhq/Screenshot_3.jpg?dl=0

If Photo AI is my one-stop AI cleanup solution, the workaround in this case would be to either accept these wholesale results and mask out the rough areas in Photoshop, but then youā€™d lose the noise removal, or run noise removal and sharpening as separate actions, but then weā€™re back to the current user experience.

So my takeaway, and referring to my earlier statement, Iā€™m really impressed with what AI can do to save these hopeless photos in general, but unless bokeh detection and smarter subject separation can be built into the model, this tool would need to include user-defined masking similar to whatā€™s already in Sharpen AI, because I would very rarely want to apply sharpening across an entire photo.

All in all, Iā€™m really excited to see where you all take this tool, but TLDR: I feel it needs masking capabilities, at least for the Sharpen feature.

2 Likes

Just trying Photo AI for the first time. Some greyscale jpg images just display black. If I load a second colour image so that thumbnails are displayed at the bottom of the window, it does show the thumnail of the problem greyscale images too, but clicking a greyscale thumbnail just displays a spinning busy indicator that never stops.

Greyscale is not yet supported, for the time being you can convert to RGB and it will open.

1 Like

Installer needs some error checking. First attempt installed very fast, did not see it downloading 103 files, no error messages. All menus seemed to work but no corrections were being applied.

Took a few for me to figure out the install failed. Uninstalled and tried again this time it did start installing the 103 files. It got to file 63 when I lost internet during a thunderstorm, it sat on the downloading for about 15 minutes and then just displayed finished install screen again no error message.

This morning I was able to get a full install and will test features later today.

So far I really like it, One issue I found is it attempting to do face recovery on dogs, it really blurs, smooths out fur, not what you want to do on animals.

2 Likes

So, I need to have an active upgrade plan going on to get to test this release? I have licenses for every Topaz product, but I planned on upgrading them on Black Friday.

I canā€™t send this because itā€™s a customer photo and I donā€™t have permission to send it.

1 Like

Just did a quick launch of PAI Standalone (Win 10).

Now it seems to be launching/holding the full-screen display I prefer. Fingers crossed that holds. Thx if it was a fix!!!

Iā€™ve tried a number of test images in the standalone & the Ps plugin. So far, knock on wood, the topline Auto has been selecting filters that seem appropriate to the image in the UI. I always work with single images vs batch.

One test I just ran picked what I think are the correct filters (Face Recovery & Sharpen), but mangled the modelā€™s hair (her face looks fine). I tried lowering the Strength slider a bit but it didnā€™t help the funkiness of how the hair appeared in the preview. To be pre-emptive, this is not an image I have rights to in order to share with anyone. Just one I used to test - the woman is not that large relative to the space she was shot in. So it seemed Face Recovery should be appropriate. Snip (labelled) below.

I temporarily tried Enhance > Natural to see if it would help. It didnā€™t - in fact made the preview look worse for this image. I turned it back off.

*** NOTE: Minutes later: I spoke too soon. When I minimized the Standalone to my tray (W10) then re-expanded to my desktop it opened centered on my display and not full-screen. Rats!