Good morning, everyone.
While reading every day, and many times a day Photo AI thread, Notification Pops up, inviting me to give my feed back on the program.
Due to the time and efforts of all testers and photographers, who trying to help Topaz Lab’s team to improve and speed up their development of new, 3 in 1 Photo Ai, everything is already written in a posts, unless …. I want to pay back my duty to all of you, for privilege to read it.
I need to tell you my story first.
I hope my writing will be, at list for Topaz team, like extra breath of air, or seep of the water before finish line.
Please, take cup of coffee, and hear me out. Many of you, probably, in the same shoes as me.
This year I decided, finally, to take care of my Photo & Video Archive. I waited for Apple to unveil their “ latest & greatest” computer at the March Event. I ordered one, to replaced my, honestly Marvel of Engineering, 2013 fully loaded Mac Pro, and received it in June.
I settled on Mac Studio Ultra with 4TB SSD.
I wanted to start with old video, as a logical choice, 50 hours only vs 35K of photos.
I downloaded Trial version of Topaz Video Enhance AI, played for couple of days with my Sony VX3 Hi8 footage from 1994, and wasn’t impressed much.
Original footage from Hi End camera, at that time, was better than enhanced one.
Finally, after 2 days, I purchased the program with hope, that I can find settings, that can be used to enlarge my video, from SD to HD without adding artifacts.
Next day I decided to try my 1985 VHS video, and while continue reading Topaz website, I came across page with GigaPixel Ai.
I downloaded Trial, and … what I remember, I was sitting and looking at my 49” computer monitor (Sony 4K TV) at least for 5 min, literally, and couldn’t believe what just happened.
I don’t know, why I decided to try that particular picture, that I haven’t seen from time I digitized all my 70 rolls of b&w and colour films, using my great Nikon CoolScan IV ED, 18 years ego.
It was picture of my wife, from our vacation 45-47 years ego. Film was poorly developed, sitting in a roll, in aluminium case for almost 3 decades, before I digitized it.
When I open that 3880 x 2183 TIFF file in GP Ai, and looking at the processing on the screen for around 10 seconds , I saw clear eyes and face of my wife looking at me from huge computer screen, from distant past. I was stunned.
Before it was just old picture, with barely visible eyes, with face cover by bad, decayed, film grain.
That particular picture made great impact on me. .
I own probably all photo editing programs that was on the market for past 20 years, and is very hard to impressed me, so much, as GP Ai did.
I can improve that picture very much, and many professional photographers, who working everyday in photo editing, can improve it even better, but in 10 sec time, and to that extend …
You have to be very skilled Japanese Calligraphy Painter, to recreate skin texture, eyes and eye brows, that computer program can do in no time.
I purchased GP the same day, after DN, 24 months extension, and last SH, to get free PhotoAI
Topaz Lab brought to the market truly amazing technology, that can help all photographers in the world, who working very, very hard, trying to restore their precious memories of parents, grandparents, sons and daughters, and step by step, mm after mm, for hours and hours working to restore, like expensive paintings, their family photos, to preserve our human connection between generations.
Unparalleled ability of Topaz GP Ai, and soon to be Photo Ai, to Restore, Recover Human Faces from photos, or Enhance Faces from digital cameras, Clean and Enlarge them, should be Marketed as Photo Restoration Tool at first place.
Let’s put in a that way. It’s a Diamond in your crown. It’s the greatest math algorithm in a core of your software engine, that not only takes a seconds to do it, but know how to do it properly, and I hope Topaz management aware of that.
What I like, and what I hope for:
1 - Absolutely great idea to combine all 3 programs in One, from business & customers point of view.
It’s a win-win for everyone.
2 - Well design UI, even better than already great other 3, and visually very appealing.
3 - I like number typing window in version 0.6, that I can input multiplication number from 1-6, or please, make missing buttons 3 & 5 to appear.
4 - Please keep enlargement settings unchanged, until user decided to do so, like GP
5 - Please, if possible, make vertical tool bar adjustable to the left, with automatic font enlargement, like C1, to be visible on 4-5K Hi-Res, or large monitors.
6 - In C1 on my Mac, Photo AI shows as plug-in every time. Version 0.6 was the best, almost like final version, but every next version had some issues, and I was able to go back to 0.6 after each update. Recently settled on 0.9, and now 0.10
7 - In C1 0.9 & 0.10 can’t save file back to editor, like GP or 0.6, and I have to sinc my library every time, but it’s ok, I will wait for it.
8 - Processing in Photo AI 0.6 , Jpeg or Tiff files from scanned films, or digital cameras, from Sony & Nikon, I haven’t seen any colour shifting, or other artifacts.
9 - Some images I rejected, due to face processing unsatisfaction, but most of the images were really good. I manually control Face Recovery strength slider to preserve skin texture. In both programs.
Remove Noise I turn off in most cases, as Face Recovery, with Enhance turn ON, produced the best results.
10 - Photo Ai seems to do better job to preserve skin texture, and maybe final version will remove noise from the people’s full length neck, not only below a jaw, and maybe will be able to not emphasize skin freckles, and make them darker.
With all respect to the Topaz Lab’s team, my friendly advise:
Please do what you do the best. Finesse it to the level, that no one can reach.
