I just purchased Photo AI after having tested the trials of Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI, being happy with the result. Since Photo AI didn’t have a trial, and the model I liked the best in Gigapixel AI being “Low Resolution” was present in Photo AI as well, I thought I’d be getting the same result. But after doing some comparisons I’m sad to see that Photo AI isn’t at all as good, and looses out on details, even after using the same upscale model “Low Resolution”.
Sharpening inside of Sharpen AI gave a much better result compared to just sharpening and upscaling in Photo AI as well. Will Photo AI ever be as good or similar to the power of the separate apps? See comparisons below, especially in the leaves areas:
As you can see in the leaves area, using Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI gives a much sharper and more natural result, compared with the result of Photo AI which gives an almost unusable result.
Can I get some advice, should I ask for a refund and instead buy Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI, or should I wait for Photo AI to improve? Reading here, and on the FAQ it seems like Photo AI will replace the other apps, so it feels wrong to buy the other apps instead of Photo AI at this point. I’d rather keep Photo AI as I like the concept, and hope it will be improved soon. Thank you!
Photo AI is still a very young product compared to the other three AI products. I think the goal is to bring Photo AI as close to the other three as possible, but in the meantime if you want the best image quality maybe stay with Gigapixel, Sharpen and Denoise for a while.
Thanks for your response. I understand it’s a new product and I can accept these faults in the beginning of a release. I’d just like to know if the developers know of these problems, and if they plan to fix them, maybe have an ETA.
If they could just apply the same upscale model as Gigapixel is using “Low resolution”, maybe it will solve the problem I have. I’d rather stick with Photo AI if it is planned to be fixed in the future
Thanks for the new software; I’ve been a beta tester, so I’ve tried it in earlier versions as well.
I guess many of you already know this(?), but a head’s up if you’re new to Photo AI - I’ve found that although the Autopilot performs miracles sometimes, other times you’ll need to make adjustments. In my case right now, I needed to turn down the ‘Recover faces’ from 100% to 10% to get a good output.
As you can (hopefully) see below, the enhanced face on 100% ‘Recover faces’ gets smeared and looks like an oil-painting, or like I’ve only put it through Photoshop Smart blur or something.
Again I suppose this is an example of the need to be able to change the masking area manually. I tried the ‘Refine’-button, but the mask would then only get narrow down the middle of her face and sweater.
A good example of the face recovery… The photo is actually unusable due to the blur and film grain. Interesting how Photo AI has brought out the faces. Especially frapent, the ladies in the middle and on the right.
After using refine subject and adding sharpening, no other buttons work. Cannot change mag, upscale, or even save to LR classic. Can still move FOV around on image, but nothing else. If I close app, it will ask to save, and that works, but can do no other mods.
Yes Anthony. That image worked better without FaceRestore as the two foreground faces are sufficiently clear. However, on some of my low res JPGs from 20 years ago, Face Restore can help with people who are in focus, but overdoes people in the background. That’s why people are shouting for a face selection tool! Hope you can work it out.
Yes, I bought this with the intention to do large batches of images, doing them one by one and having to wait for the preview as well takes forever. Not efficient at all.
Yes, much slower workflow now you can’t batch everything with the same settings. The upscale defaults to 4x, I had to go through a load of images one by one just to set them to 2x.
Imo, actually I had the Mavica for about a year before this picture was taken so I wasn’t too far behind you! By 2005 I was using a Panasonic FZ-20 SuperZoom with 5 megapixel resolution and upgraded my equipment every couple of years since then until the pandemic. I did try Photo AI on my newer high-resolution images and it worked quite well but I would still like to have a details slider available under the sharpening tool so I can be more precise in the details aspect of the image without reducing sharpening overall. I see other users have requested a masking brush and that would work too. When I was trying to restore the details, I tried first to adjust the noise slider but determined that it was the sharpening slider that was just too strong.
Yes, in all of my examples above, I have simply opened an image, and the Autopilot in Photo AI has done the rest, initially.
If I’m not supposed to use ‘Recover faces’ on images with a high quality face, that’s fine by me, but the selling point of the software is that it makes the decisions for you (mostly), and it invariably (in these cases) has used ‘Recover faces’ and set it to 100% automatically.
i have noticed the same problem with P ai compared to denoise ai (pictured left). P ai is smearing detail, and this is with the noise slider set to 8. no enlargement either.
Correct, I currently use Topaz products (Gigapixel AI) mostly to upscale pictures that most of the time are not high enough quality / resolution to be send to my lasers that 318 DPI is the native DPI. I can do the calculations to get the DPI from the pixels, but Gigapixel AI does this automatically today.
Also no option to do anything but 1, 2, 4 or 6x, where Gigapixel has the option of going by inch and by DPI to have the proper output for my lasers. So even if I get the DPI (or pixels) calculations, no way to use Photo AI to use those numbers for the native output into LightBurn since the only options are 1, 2, 4 or 6x.
I just tried to manually change the desired width or height and it doesn’t recalculate the other value (assuming they are locked ratio) or allow to change the 2nd variable. If the width is 2000 pixels and I enter 800 then go over to length field, the width field goes back to 2000 pixels. So don’t see that option in Photo AI 1.0.
By 2005 I was using a Panasonic FZ-20 SuperZoom with 5 megapixel resolution and upgraded my equipment every couple of years since then until the pandemic. I did try Photo AI on my newer high-resolution images and it worked quite well but I would still like to have a details slider available under the sharpening tool so I can be more precise in the details aspect of the image without reducing sharpening overall. I see other users have requested a masking brush and that would work too. When I was trying to restore the details, I tried first to adjust the noise slider but determined that it was the sharpening slider that was just too strong.
