Another exciting Topaz release day, thanks! Let’s try it out. And BTW, I am going to point out a bunch of “stuff”, but the fact that I am taking all of this time to do so (yet again) shows my dedication and investment into what you are doing 
andymagee-52287 mentioned the icon:
I think it’s very clever and slick. The juxtaposition of the pixel and camera (?) is close to the design of Gigapixel (a pixel and an enlarged pixel-?). It’s definite improvement upon the “underpants” icon from before
Note: The PAI 3 icon in my Mac Dock (Ventura) didn’t update after the in-app update until I launched PAI, maybe that’s normal:
I’m still offput by the version designation number by the GP and PAI app names; it looks like I have 3 messages from Topaz:
Anyway, let’s fire it up!
I drag an image from my Finder into the GUI (after first testing Load image, which is not just the button, but the entire interface is a “button”, as before).
The first thing I notice: The New Features presentation (which was not there a moment ago) now overlays my image:
I would have expected to see this information immediately upon first launch, not at this point where it is blocking my work.
Upscaling, which is “always processed last”, is the first thing to happen on its own, ha!
Notice also that the Upscale options are by default collapsed and hidden to the user – I would prefer they are presented open and ready for adjustment. So right here is my first “extra click”, assuming I wish to keep the autopilot-offered Upscale option at this point. It would be THREE more clicks if I wanted to remove it and choose another Enhancement…
No matter which direction I choose to go (keep Upscale or close it and try something else), part of my image is covered by the intrusive panel and I see the tons of wasted space, STILL!!! The open panel cannot be dragged into the wasted space (we used to be able to do that), only moved to block some different area of the image:
Balance Color always (in my experience) makes the image look worse, how about a basic generic Levels dialog instead? (Today I am using one of my AI renders as a test image.)
Good thing I also have Photoshop on hand!
Back to PAI:
Adjust Lighting is more useful but still not as much as Levels. I maxed it out here and got a good result, but have very little control overall (no shadows/highlights, etc.):
Now I will Upscale, where PAI and GP always shine:
The autopilot result:
And WHERE IS THE QUICK SELECT PANEL FOR THE MODELS? You mention “a standardized Topaz UI across all of our applications”, but PAI does not match the new GP layout in this respect! This was your perfect opportunity to get this fixed since we’ve been going on about this for some time now and you just put out the rebranded versions. Now you will need to rebrand again sometime soon…
I think I like PAI’s High Fidelity v1 better than what Autopilot chose but I have to peck around in the pulldown list to compare, because there is no Compare and of course no Models panel-! Not efficient.
And speaking of comparing, let’s see what GP does with this same image:
“High Fidelity” (mystery version) in GP is not exactly the same and the sliders offered do not have the same names in both apps, were I to try and manually match them with each other.
I noticed again the lack of a 6X preset button in PAI (why “MAX” instead of 6X?).
The next step scares me but I will try to do some Remove…
I still think the button should say “Process selection”, because “Remove” means what? Leave a blank hole? Take the object away and use the background to fill? Replace it with another random object? As I write I don’t really know what will happen here!
Here’s what I got:
Not bad at all! At least a car or monster didn’t appear
Note that if I wanted to try again I’d have to redraw the selection because Undo = Clear Selection, when they are actually 2 different processes (I mentioned this in beta testing…). There is also no Redo.
Another try (because the selection wasn’t so hard to draw) gave a consistent result with the first, which can be good or bad - depending on whether you liked the first result or not and wanted an option. We are spoiled by PS’s multiple Generative Fill options using a single selection.
Anyway, there is my report for the release! I should have just written a blog post… I will get to that ASAP!
