Sorry I didn’t make a screen capture because it happened twice (different folders), and I reverted straight away to the previous version.
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I just now loaded a TIFF into 1.1.9 standalone. It says that the subject is detected (very easy subject to detect because of very shallow DOF and totally soft, blurred background). But when I hover the mouse pointer over the red Subject word in the Autopilot panel it does not show the red overlay of the subject like in all earlier releases. I even clicked on the Refine button and it also does not cause the red overlay to appear. M1 Mac Mini 16gb, Monterey 12.6.3.
I tried with another photo and it worked properly. I then went back to the first photo, but the same problem appeared. I then restarted Photo AI, but the problem still exists.
Yes, I know, I could submit yet another bug report to Topaz. I have submitted so many of them though over the months and each one takes time for me to prepare. I feel like I am an unpaid employee of Topaz. 
No salary, no benefits, nothing. Just working for free. The good thing is the Topaz people always respond with intelligent, non-canned replies and very courteous. I assume everyone who replies to me gets pay and benefits though. 
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Very happy to see the cropping tool now added to Photo AI.
Just thought I’d mention that after applying the crop, if I later want to edit the cropped area again, when I click on Edit Crop the crop grid shifts to a completely different location and assumes a different size, so you basically have to start all over again. I generally only need to re-edit the cropped area for very fine adjustments to the previous crop, so starting over is obviously not what is wanted.
As the crop tool is in Beta the developers may already be aware of this? This is happening for me with Photo AI as a standalone app; Windows 10.
Is there any way to turn off Autopilot completely?
I am editing an ISO 10000 image and PAI wants to apply strong noise reduction automatically, I assume via Autopilot?
The resulting image is not at all satistactory.
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How do you have your A.P. Preferences set in PAI in the menu at top of the interface?
You can turn off virtually everything. But (oddly) there are no settings options to turn off Denoise.
I imagine if you turn off the switch next to Denoise in the righthand settings panel, and move the sliders to your taste (ditto for Sharpen) then you will be at as close to manual (vs Auto) as the product will currently allow you to go. Hope that works for you!
Positives:
- Subject detection works well and often selects what I would select myself. Only when there’s really low contrast between subject and background it selects a bit too much.
- Processing speed / preview speeds feel quite a bit faster than a few versions back.
It’s becoming a bit old by now, but these issues that have been reported many times still remain:
- Pixel shift down+right when sharpening. When ‘subject only’ is enabled you see a stretching of the top-left boundary and squishing of the bottom-right.
- Recover face undoes the pixel shift, slightly detaching/misaligning the head from the neck.
- Face recovery turns grey and blue eyes into brown eyes.
- Denoise strength slider only works in the RAW model. On normal/strong models it does nothing. At least nothing I can spot with the naked eye. Strength 1 looks just as smooth as 100 to me, leaving no room to dial it down a bit.
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Gigapixel’s new model have superior detail retention at x2 enlargement compared to
the current Photo Ai’s enlargement at x2. No noise reduction was used on either program.
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I already sent a screen snip (& follow-up). Plus, description of where to find what they were looking for. I don’t think they followed my recommended steps or looked at my visual snip (which is like the one you’ve now posted also).
At least I didn’t get an ack back (or, a Thx!) that they did so and it helped answer their question that I tried to help solve while taking a break from prepping Ps edu content …
Does Topaz use the Apple Silicon Neural Engine? A little? A lot? Not at all? Does it use the Apple Silicon GPU?
I imagine if you turn off the switch next to Denoise in the righthand settings panel, and move the sliders to your taste (ditto for Sharpen) then you will be at as close to manual (vs Auto) as the product will currently allow you to go. Hope that works for you!
Thank you for responding
everything is off in Autopilot, cannot deactivate denoise in autopilot however.
in the RH Panel unfortunately if the switch for denoise is off there is no access to the sliders - everything is off.
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You are correct, I tried that as well once you switch off Denoise or sharpen ,there is no option to move slider at all.
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Ah yes. I see that.
But even if you leave the On/Off switch set to on (your only option, apparently, if you want any denoising done) - once you start moving the sliders then you are customizing your settings manually vs using the default A.P. settings (which should be indicated by little green vert lines on the slider bar).
Is that an issue for your application (which is…)?
If yes, then it sounds like what you’re proposing is a new feature for the Product Roadmap (2023) discussion thread for the CEO/devs to consider, which you could spell out there & briefly mention the why/rationale for that wishlist feature.
It sounds like a good thing - to me too - to be able to turn off all Auto functions. But, given the tagline of the product as an “autopilot” (for people who don’t want to be autonomously creative - my editorial opinion in parens)… it may be interesting to see if a suggestion to be able to disable autopilot is addressed.
I’m Using Lightroom Classic as my photo editor and exporting TIFF to Photo AI - and to Sharpen AI for this post.
Background:
I have an ISO 10,000 RAW (Nikon HE*) file
(all files here converted to JPeg for ease of viewing)
Edited in Sharpen AI - for noise only in this example, I can adjust noise and still retain detail in the feathers:
Edited in Photo AI - Autopilot adds noise reduction - I have no way of reducing the level of denoise.
All other Autopilot settings are off - this is what Autopilot is doing:
The level of Denoise is too strong - detail in the feathers is lost.
It would be great if Denoise can be turned off in Autopilot and adjustments using the sliders is allowed.
Many thanks
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I see what you’re saying about losing detail (at the very least, the feathers are softer than they could be - the eye too; which is critical for wildlife photography).
What happens when you run that same image (where you’ve circled “Removing high image noise” in the Settings Panel) & get the result you’ve included a zoomed in result of above - if you go down to the little arrow pointing to “Remove Noise” & you click on that to expand the Settings for Remove Noise. You should be able to manually make your own modifications to the A.P.-selected denoise settings. Are you able to do that? If so - is there enough buffer room on the denoise slider to lessen the amt of denoising somewhat & perhaps pull up the detail or clarity a bit in that same Remove Noise part of the settings panel? Does that help you at all?
Another option to add to that - if it only gets you partway to the level of sharpening (w/out over-sharpening) you need - what happens if you mask just the bird (or some portion of the bird you’d like sharper) and then in the Sharpen area of the settings panel, you turn on the sharpen subject only? You’ll likely have to do trial & error on the sharpening & clarity so the bird feathers don’t become an illustration… Does that approach help at all? Part of the reason I’m suggesting that - besides further sharpening the bird feathers post-denoising - is to ensure your nice shallow DoF isn’t lost in the process of ‘crisping’ up the bird.
Take your time - don’t feel pressured to reply tonight.
Here are some screen snips showing what I was talking about - I’ve zoomed in to 200%, so if you’re at a more normal viewing zoom level it may look better. You’ll have to play with settings to see if you can achieve what suits your taste.
Denoise & Sharpen Settings Panels Expanded to show Manual Settings:
Manual Masking of Just the Bird (from the Select Subject part of the Settings Panel - I’m not a fan of the AI ‘brush’, but that’s neither here nor there):
The bird with the Sharpen Subject Only switch turned on (so just the masked - ie, red overlay - area of the image gets sharpened).
Using Topaz Adjust 5:
Sorry, I should have expanded that panel - the strength slider has been reduced to 1 on this image, the auto setting was around 11 I think, but even at 1 it’s too strong.
Thanks for this suggestion, I’ll have a go at it later. I will make a couple of observations:
With the smoothness in the whole image as a result of the noise reduction process the background looks fake as well as the bird.
I would much prefer to get the image looking better after the application of noise reduction than fixing the image.
I’ll see if playing with selective sharpening helps.
Many thanks for your guidance, it is appreciated
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Others have posted the same observations & opinions as you.
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I’ve been posting about this since the very first release months ago, and it’s the first reply posted in this thread as well.
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controling the denoising area and amount are essentials and seem urgent to me.
Strangely they prefer spending energy on cropping which should not be the focus of the program.
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