Topaz Photo AI v0.10

Hello everyone!

We have another update this week whose big feature is the addition of subject mask refinement. There are now multiple models to choose from as well as sliders to change sensitivity and softness of the overall mask. In addition to this, there are also several RAW fixes/tweaks, some UI/wording tweaks, general fixes, and some big changes internally which should help reduce memory consumption. Full change log below.

If you own DeNoise, Sharpen, and Gigapixel with up-to-date licenses then you have access to Photo AI. You will need to claim a Photo AI license by going to your account before youā€™ll be able to login.

This is an early access release, so there will be some issues you may run across. Issue reports and general feedback are much appreciated. If thereā€™s a specific image youā€™d like us to see, you can send it to us at this dropbox link. Below the changelog are a list of issues weā€™re already aware of.


v0.10.2
Released September 12, 2022
Mac: Download
Windows: Download

Changes since 0.10.1:

  • Added Capture One plugin for Mac
  • Autopilot will now suggest upscaling on low resolution images - this can be turned off in the new ā€œAutopilotā€ menu bar
  • Viewport now centers on a subject or face after running Autopilot
  • Fix metadata (including colorspace info) being lost when using external editors on non-RAW images (including DNGs)
  • Fix photoshop plugin not always replacing the old one on Mac, causing crashes
  • Fix some metadata tags being missing when saving DNGs
  • Fixed color correction issue after enhancing
  • Fixed Autopilot re-processing after changing subject feathering
  • Fixed side-by-side view not centering the preview correctly
  • Increase network timeouts for model downloading on mac

v0.10.1
Released September 9, 2022
Mac: Download
Windows: Download

Changes since 0.10.1:

  • Fixed some grayscale images coming out skewed
  • Fixed Lightroom Classic plugin sometimes giving an error and/or not importing the file into the catalog
  • Fixed Lightroom Classic plugin not selecting the folders of non-RAW folders after export
  • Fixed Capture One plugin not installing correctly on some computers (and creating erroneous folder on those without Capture One installed)
    • Note: Capture One plugin currently only installs on Windows computers
  • Fixed wrong colors on images from more camera models
  • Enabled the save button while autopilot is running
  • Changed the saving progress bar with a spinner
  • Improved installer error handling
  • Disabled file associations on Windows due to it calling images ā€œTopaz Photo AI Filesā€ in Save As dialogs

v0.10.0
Released September 8, 2022
Mac: Download
Windows: Download

Changes since 0.9.0:

  • Added subject mask refinement
  • Reduce overall memory usage of the app
    ā€“ Should be reduced by several GB in some instances.
  • Lowered threshold for face detection
    ā€“ Some faces previously not detected should now be detected, but may lead to some false positives
  • After processing in LrC the photoā€™s folders will be selected
  • Slight rewording in some places
  • Slight changes to autopilot values
  • Added 800% zoom level
  • Mac installer should now allow retries of failed downloads

Fixes:

  • Fixed hanging on save with some images
  • Fixed issue where autopilot would return invalid values if auto masking failed
  • Fixed issues with baseline exposure tag on DNG output
  • Fixed cropping with various RAW files
  • Fixed size of scaling buttons in some cases being wrong
  • Fixed overall color cast when using face refinement and denoise together
  • Fixed some issues where AI engine would not load models if first two attempts failed
  • Fixed various Canon RAW files not loading profiles correctly due to localized names
  • Fixed some RAW files showing flipped 180 degrees on preview and output
7 Likes

Thanks for the update, Adam! Will look forward to checking out the latest changes.

A number of folks, who are also KelbyOne members like me, have been asking about the various Topaz products. I pointed them to the PAI early release. They seemed interested to try it out.

At least one of the other Kelby members who asked about Topaz capabilities is using a medium format camera (50 mp+), so was interested to know how each of the (formerly individual) products behaved with NEF in that file size range. So I suggested they try out PAI e.r. to see for themselvesā€¦

Hi Adam - I just downloaded/installed to Win 11 Pro desktop PC. Processor = Auto (AMD RX6800 XT & Intel i9 12th gen.).

Test with .jpg using PAI .10 Standaloneā€¦

PAI autopilot auto-detected bell tower section of this image (see labelled snip below).

I clicked ā€œRefineā€ to finesse the auto-detected mask. Chose ā€œLandscapeā€. The overlay then covered the entire width of the bldg and surrounding trees. Only the sky was unselected. Snip attached. As a 1st step in the direction of more user-controlled masking, this is good progress. I can envision folks needing even more manual control to mask. But this is a solid step into adding masking.

I was able to tweak that refined mask with incremental slider pulls. Which was good. It enabled things like capturing the flag pole. A single numeric slider pull didnā€™t exponentially increase the overlay coverage.

Only thing is (I may not be doing something I should be ā€¦) PAI seems to hang once I get that refined mask. No processing activity occurs at lower left of the UI. And, Iā€™m not able to launch or use any of the other settings in the righthand Settings Panel. Itā€™s as if everything locked. Iā€™ve waited quick a while at this point - no change.

Iā€™d thought I might try some manual sharpening. But with settings all locked I canā€™t expand sharpen or any of the other settings categories.

Must we go back after the Refine in order to make settings changes? If so, how? Oops - Got it! I hit ā€œDONEā€ as an extra step.

An Observation: After Iā€™ve hit ā€œDoneā€ & made some slider changes (to assess bhvr), as the Update Processing (lower left) is proceeding, the Red Overlay is flashing in the main workspace.

Thx!

BTW the 800% Zoom worked fine too. Both selecting it as a zoom option & my preferred CTRL + +/- hotkeys.

Installed okay to Ps 2022 Filter menu as Plugin.

Able to launch & process.

Able to Save to Ps Layer.

Didnā€™t see signif color shift. No pixel hop.

Nice surprise today, just got it!

M1 MacBook Pro, Ventura beta 6.

Quick thoughts:

ā€¢I manually deleted 0.9 (app) but not any support files before installing 0.10 (went quickly)

ā€¢Upon launch, no login was required

ā€¢Image opens at 100% view, I think I would prefer Zoom to Fit

ā€¢Graphics glitch is STILL THERE when Resizing (Enhance>Natural) ā€“ Ventura is only a month away, gotta figure it outā€¦

Trying another image. When Resizing, I see Enhance is not automatically kicking in as it used to (?):

Then after posting the screenshot I looked back, and Enhance had engaged itself in the meantime. maybe preview had to finish. (With another image, Enhance turned itself on immediately.)

There is no warning to save changes when closing image (Command-W).

Is it just me or does processing of even a smaller image take a long time? I donā€™t even bother testing on Intel any more :wink:

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 4.45.07 PM

In regards to subject selection: This is always going to be tricky. How does AI know what the subject is? Especially when there are multiple candidates:

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 4.47.30 PM

Nice job here!

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 4.50.20 PM

Another winner:

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 4.52.19 PM

Tried a trickier subject, fail. Adjusting refinement sliders made no difference. This is where brushes are needed.

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 4.53.51 PM

CORRECTION:

I looked away to post and changes kicked in. Further adjustments to the sliders did the trick:

Do you plan to add (in addition to the already-requested auto-color correction) some basic image prep options such as crop and rotate? Again, without these, one must use other apps before and after Photo AI.

Topaz Studio could crop (but not rotate ā€“ unless thatā€™s what Straighten does, I missed it at the time):

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 5.15.58 PM

Other app examples:

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 5.11.54 PM

Screenshot 2022-09-08 at 5.14.57 PM

Can there be a way to start working with various Settings w/out having to click Done in masking?

Itā€™s much like when we had to turn the Autopilot switch to Off before changing to manual settings.

I, personally, would prefer not having to hit Done in order to make manual changes after creating a revised mask.

At least to me, the fact I want to move on to tweak settings means Iā€™m satisfied (enough) with the refined mask.

First, identifies the subject but refini8ng the subject is impossible because it identifies background as part of the subject on the left of the subject in the image:

Second doesnā€™t recognize face:

And, strangely, I had another image open but closed it, and if I move the focus to the notebook display instead of the external monitor where I am working, then press ā€œprt scā€ the image displayed changes to one that was open and subsequently closed (NOTE- the setting is Extend Display):

Exiting Photo AI and restarting detects a low quality face on the same image:

Any reason why it keeps putting a COne folder with plugins on my G: drive when Photo Ai is installed on C:?

I canā€™t even delete or move it there isnā€™t an option when you update.

What is actually in the COne folder? Do you use Capture One?

Cheers for your ongoing work. The 2 issues I reported with v0.9.0 remain in v0.10.0. 1. If I try to process the same raw file twice using the new Lr plug-in (e.g. to try different settings in Photo AI) the second attempt results in an error when loading the DNG back into Lr (screenshot attached). 2. I am still getting a ā€˜tearingā€™ type artefact with some (but by no means all) processed DNG files from my Canon R5 *.CR3 raw files (screenshot of one area attached). I have not experienced this (yet) with my Sony RX10IV *.ARW raw files. The mask refinement is welcome, but the mask can still sometimes frustrate where the subject isnā€™t identified (e.g. some deer/ squirrels found, others not), on the flip side it often does well. Overall I am seeing very good outcomes in terms of image improvements, occasionally even beating my original edits using the existing Topaz apps (tearing issue aside). Speed of scanning/ processing is very good. Phil
[MacBook Pro M1 Max 32GB. macOS Monterey 12.5.1. Lr Classic 11.5. Photo AI 0.10.0].
Screenshot 2022-09-09 at 07.20.02

Just installed 0.10 on MacBook M1 pro.

  • LrC plugin is still not working. PAI shows ā€œloading imageā€¦ā€ forever. LrC shows as hanging in activity monitor.
  • In standalone mode the face recognition shows 3 faces that are of low quality but only one person is recognised as subject but mask is wrong. When trying to refine (brush?) the sliders do nothing in refinement.

PAI is no editing app. So we donā€™t need cropping and those things. Use PS or something different if you need to!

Downloaded 10, took quite a while to get all the modules, and looked forward to seeing the refinement of selection. Using the Porsche image the initial selection chose the car as subject ( as per 9) , I then discovered the small icon to refineā€¦ Sadly the changes were strange with this image. At first the movement of the sliders were made but little changed until there was a big change suddenly including the bushes and everything but the sky. I spent quite a while trying to find an adjustment that did the car with both mirrors, alas I managed to exceed the car by several centimeters all round , but still not both mirrors.

I have to say that if I was using this in normal processing I would abandon and use layers and mask in Photoshop and get there much faster. The relationship between numeric and effect is not linear, the alternate style choices were not relevant to the car , and I kept wishing I could just use the brush as per AI sharpen. As mentioned by previous poster the progress bar in low left was not moving when used in standalone mode. I recently built a new colour profile for my 5DSR to use in Photoshop using X Rites colour checker and their softwareā€¦ I like the colour conversion in RAW, and the tonal ramp it givesā€¦ It would be amazing if this standalone could read camera profiles like that and offer as nice a rendering. With no RAW adjustments I almost prefer to develop in ACR with my profile, then use Sharpen AI to select and paint selection in refinementā€¦ my only problem there is that when sharpening ONLY the selected area it then removes noise from only that area too , leaving me an image with mixed noise profiles ( not nice) Can we fix this so that I have an alternative ?

Windows 11 Standalone
Tested 0.10.0

  • The crop problem on Panasonic RAW looks solve
  • Refine Mask:
    For me itā€™s usefull sometimes where the starting point is good enough at selected the main subject but it cannot solve the numerous cases where the mask is wrong and mask edition is mandatory You need to find new more AI ways to edit the mask (look at what on1 is doing)
    -Sharpen filter:
    Furthermore I confirm that sharpening is most of the time too much , creating too much visible artifacts
    Look at this comparison Left is PAI with minimum sharpen =1 Right is rendering by ON1 PR2022 with NoNoise also I lower the AP Remove Noise because the original TIF was already denoise with DXO DeepPrime

-RAW rendering
Also my favorite RAW (Nikon P1000,P950) are still not render decently , in many cases itā€™s even very difficult or impossible to correct afterward colors as we can usually expect from a RAW. For me itā€™s making the regular use of Photo AI at least in standalone mode quite questionnable

Unfortunately since version 0.9 (also in V0.10) I have the permanent problem that no filters are applied (No Filters Active).
Only face recovery works, but only if all other filters (ā€œSharpenā€, ā€œDenoiseā€ and ā€œEnhanceā€) are switched off. I uninstalled both versions and completely reinstalled them with the default folders, unfortunately without success. Version 0.8 works without this error.

1 Like

Using Windows. Like the program. In Version 0.8 it worked fine on my microsoft surface book. However. in version 0.9.0 and 0.10.0 the program is no longer workin, because it will not save the changes, neither if used as a stand alone version nor when used as a photoshop plugin. Also at the bottom it now says no filters active.
image

Same for me.

What I would like to see is an invert option on the noise side of detect object.
As someone like me who photographs small birds how do you find the DXO option compared to the rest.



There still appears to be problem in version 10 with black and white photos the previous version produced heavily distorted results for black and white images unfortunately this version is even worse.
It works ok from the plugin in adobe photoshop elements but not in the standalone version.

1 Like

No i donā€™t but more importantlyā€¦Why are you editing my posts?

A side effect of the msi installer is that windows keeps a stripped down version on hand in C:\Windows\Installer & does a check every time you fire up the app and if anything it thinks is missing it will then use that stripped down msi to reinstall it.

So now i have a COne folder on a removable drive that has nothing to do with Photo Ai or where itā€™s installedā€¦and i canā€™t get rid of it bc the msi file will just put it back every time i open Photo Ai.