Topaz Photo AI v1.3.0

I prefer the previous settings for Sharpen; Lens Blur and Motion Blur. This new setting, Strong, doesn’t provide the clarity that I received from the other settings.

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Are you planning to do this by alienating your current users by not listening to feedback and dumbing-down the application as much as possible? It’s really mind-boggling what is happening here…

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Same problem on Fujifilm X-T5. Squares are visibles also at 100% without look very closely…

In addition to this issue, all the images are very dark, they lost almost 2 stops.

I agree with Goetze_u and 4parker Parker

These have been some of my go to images for evaluating motion blur. The 1.3 release does a good job of removing motion blur without over sharpening. I can get similar results to 1.2.10 if I adjust both noise detail and sharpen sliders but when it comes to auto pilot I prefer the 1.3 results for these images.

Original-1.2.10-1.3

Uninstall v.1.3.0
You can find v.1.2.10 near the top of the appropriate release notes page.
Hope this helps- Ken.

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please always have an expert mode with all manual adjustments, auto is fine for some but some of us would like the control to tweek,thank you.

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The files coming back to LrC have a yellow tint. I have the latest version of LrC. 12.12.1


I should have added. It looks correct when in PAI.

I agree with the prior comments. At the base autopilot level, the new sharpen model does not deblur enough. I have achieved results better than the prior models with values ~30 strength higher than the recommended value.

When tuned correctly though, the level of detail the strong model is able to preserve is much better than the prior versions.

Additionally, the new model is considerably more sensitive to noise, so it can be important to denoise before running the sharpen.

I have two issues with Photo AI since beginning, which have nothing to do with the performance itself, but how the program behaves under Windows.

  • When installing a new version, the program icon which I fixed at the task bar doesn’t work anymore. I get the message the program would not be available anymore. No other program does that.
  • The window does not work with standard functions in Windows for docking a window at the edge of a screen (Win-Cursor left or Win Cursor right). I can’t be the only one using the software on an ultrawide monitor and using this feature to have two different programs on screen. Again, no other software I use does that. Both issues were not existing in the standalone products.
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Sharpening is improved here but, for example, in Photo AI now identifies Motion Blur in Sharpen AI as Out of Focus …

PAI 1.3.0 (commercial). Win 11 Pro desktop PC. Processor Pref Setting = Auto (AMD RX6800 XT, Intel i9 12th gen). 64GB RAM. Running Standalone vers.

I just ran this rel. and got a result I never got previously (I’d run a fair number of tests…) in the beta. Used a .jpg image I’d previously sent to Yazi via Dropbox during beta testing.

The Sharpen Std model worked okay after I’d selected faces of interest.

The Sharpen Strong model produced terrible artifacts both at upper right (b/wn the 2 girls at right) if on a very low setting value and a hideous horizontal panel of artifacts if the slider value is moved even slightly to the right. Two snips with slightly diff. values attached as FYI.


I used the Strong model as preferable, most generally, in the beta … never got results like this. And, I tend to use certain images repeatedly for testing for consistency sake.

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We do appreciate your feedback on the sharpen models. We are disappointed the new model is not working well for your images and we will continue to improve the new model to address concerns.

We have gotten many reports of issues with the previous Lens & Motion blur model for the common artifacts it creates. Even in your provided example, these artifacts are present, although relatively minor. The woman’s necklace looks like it is covered in a clear jelly. To the right of the leaf, a patch of her hair is sharper in the back than it is forward of that. Her shirt has a thick black halo around parts of the edges. Often these artifacts can be much worse, causing a scaley texture to be added to skin, or much larger patches of hair with uneven sharpening. Many users have expressed that they don’t like these tell-tale signs of AI processing and it makes batch processing a large number of images unreliable. In the beta thread, even you noted that applying the new sharpen model instead of the Lens & Motion blur model was fixing artifacts in your image.

Now obviously this does not mean you need to like the new model, but hopefully it provides some context for its design. We see now that many places where the old Lens & Motion blur model might produce artifacts, the new strong model just under sharpens – which is also unsatisfying! We will try to make improvements here. And if you are still getting artifacts, we want to know about them.

The relative softness of the result on autopilot is both a result of the less aggressive nature of this model and the fact that we have tuned down the autopilot recommendations in response to many users telling us the autopilot selected values are too high. We can adjust this some more, but in the future, we would like to move towards making these recommendations more user adjustable, as how sharp you want your image is generally a subjective choice. These features take time though.

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Yikes, this looks like a processing error. I believe you have shared this image with us before, but could you also share your logs from this run with us? ( Dropbox ) We will look into the problem.

Hi Cameron,

Yikes is right! I ran the image after install. I didn’t reboot my PC. But sorta don’t think I should have to… It’s late right now. So I’ve sent the 3 log files from the image processing after install. Not sure if all 3 relate to the posted results. But they’re my only ones tonight. Hopefully the data will explain what’s what.

Have a nice weekend.

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To expound a bit further on the new model’s design, we did not generalize the Lens & Motion Blur model into a single option because we were looking to streamline the user interface and simplify options for users. Instead, we wanted to make the new model more robust to a larger variety of blurs than would fit in the two neat categories of Only Lens or Only Motion blur. We found that users would often use these on images that did not match their label anyways.

We will continue to improve the model and I hope you will give it a second chance at a later date.

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Just implement the choice to select the old models manually, if the new models did not achive the user expectations. (There are also cases where the autopilot just did not detect the motion blur in an image correctly.)
A good solution is seen in VideoAI, where you also can select different models to try, so the user can decide which model works best for his likes.
I know such software development is not an easy task. You should take this as constructive criticism. :slightly_smiling_face:
The Topaz results are much better than other programs i`ve tried, as can be seen in the image below.
Way better and finer detail rendering and much better denoise results,
(100% crop of a mft photo at 3200iso. Color difference is caused mainly due to different further editing)
I hope for the future improvements.


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A specialised tool is always going to be better than a general purpose one and this is where v.1.3 has been let down. Choice is the key. If this were not so, then why so many different types of blur filters available in editing programs and not just one? After all, a global colour editor changes the whole image & not any one specific, hence a range of colour slider adjustments are available.
I am now very satisfied with having returned to v.1.2.10 , I’ve completed my current project without any issues and will continue with it until any later version is revised with choices.
Having been a Topaz user for many years, I have always been extremely happy with the products & results. I also understand that it may not always be feasible to incorporate every user’s “whim”.
However, this move has removed the choices that users had. How they used them was & is their choice, v.1.3.0 has taken this away and is obviously frustrating more than a few users!
For those who have stated their satisfaction wth the combined tool, thats great, but again, choice is key and the removal of an excellent set of tools will & is resulting in many unhappy users.

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I am not satisfied with the new version 1.3.0!

I tested the program some time ago and then paid Topaz to work on improving the functions.

If suddenly functions are completely changed, I can no longer influence the results as usual, then this is no longer the program I wanted and for which I would pay again in the future!

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