Topaz Photo AI v3.5.0

Hello everyone,

We’re excited to announce another major update to Photo AI with a new take on our lighting enhancement, a new way to run Super Focus on any machine, crash recovery, and more!

Let’s break it down!

  • We’re announcing a version 2 of Adjust Lighting which is vastly improved to deliver a more natural, vibrant, and reliable results across the board.

  • Now anyone can run Super Focus in the cloud at lightning speed on any device, even if you don’t have a good GPU.

  • And for those who can, Super Focus now runs 40% faster on Apple devices. This combines with our previous speed boosts - it is now faster than ever.

  • If you encounter a crash with Photo AI, your session and work is now saved with crash recovery so you can get back to creating beautiful images.

And there’s so much more to this update! Let’s take a look under the hood.

You can find the installer links and the full changelog below for this version of Photo AI. For any issues, make sure to send us an email to support@topazlabs.com


v3.5.0
Released February 6th, 2025
Windows: Download
Mac: Download


Adjust Lighting v2 Improved Lighting Optimization Model

Adjust Lighting got a fresh now coat of paint with version 2 of the model in this release.

This updated model is designed to deliver results that are more natural, vibrant, and consistent while having more control and predictable behavior than the previous generation of the model.

Before:

After:

Adding the Adjust Lighting enhancement will use the new v2 model by default. Controls for the new model better match lighting controls in image editing applications for a more natural workflow.

The exposure slider affects the overall adjustment, positive for brighter and negative for darker.

Screenshot 2025-02-12 at 1.31.28 PM

We are also looking at introducing additional lighting transformations such as simple highlights and shadows in a future release.

Please share any feedback you have on this updated Adjust Lighting model. We’d love to see your results.

Super Focus in the Cloud

Now anyone can run Super Focus in the cloud at lightning speed on any device. Even large images are no problem.

Previously, running Super Focus on local machines could be slow and resource-intensive for many users especially with low powered hardware or on large images.

Now, running Super Focus in a cloud render is simple. Import your image, open Super Focus, pick your processing settings, and click on the cloud render button. We automatically provide an estimate for processing time and the credit cost for your cloud render.

Sit back (for a short time) as your image is processed in the cloud and returned quickly in the same session. Continue on with your workflow as usual.

Cloud render is able to do the heavy lifting and process nearly any size of image.

A 6MP image processed in 1 minute with cloud render. Local processing for super focus with the same image took 7 minutes on a Mac M2. The video below is in real time, impressive to see super focus complete so quickly this video can be attached to the post.

Crash Recovery and Session Save

Crash recovery and session save are here to safeguard your work and provide peace of mind during longer projects or batch processing.

Previously, a crash could result in the complete loss of your progress, leading to frustration and wasted time, especially when processing multiple images. With this new feature, your work is automatically saved at regular intervals, ensuring that even in the event of a crash during work or export you can recover your progress and continue right where you left off.

The application automatically remembers images loaded, enhancements used, and export progress. On the next session, you have the option to recover the application state.

Screenshot 2025-01-21 at 3.46.20 PM

As a bonus, the crash recovery features makes it very easy to enable session saves. Closing a session with images open now asks if you want to save the session so you can pick up your work at a later time. Selecting save and exit will save the application state and reopen it on the next session.

Screenshot 2025-01-21 at 3.46.48 PM

Use the Preferences menu to change the default behavior for crash recovery and session save.

Super Focus Speed Improvements on Apple Silicon

We have yet another speed optimization for Mac devices with Apple Silicon chips. By updating the model to better utilize the Apple Silicon hardware, we are able to further improve the model performance.

In our testing we found that older Apple Silicon devices saw the greatest improvement in processing time, up to 40% on M1. On the new M4 devices, the improvement is close to 10%.

The optimization has varying results on different machines and hardware, especially if your computer is running other applications or processes.

Account and Credit Information

Your account and credit information is now in the header for the application. Easily manage your account details and credit balance from within the app. You’ll need a cloud rendering subscription to purchase credits for running Super Focus in the cloud.

Screenshot 2025-01-21 at 5.21.31 PM


Changelog

  • Add cloud rendering for super focus
  • Session resuming and crash recovery
  • New lighting model (Adjust Lighting v2)
  • AutoPilot will no longer recommend Text Recovery
  • Improved display of which filter is currently processing
  • New preference to hide all generative ai models
  • Update OpenImageIO
  • Enterprise users can now disable tracking, generative ai, or cloud rendering for all accounts
  • Support for floating licenses
  • Fix some buttons appearing clicking while images are loading
  • Fixed pressing enter resulting in invalid state in export
  • Update license.rtf
  • Automatic lensfun update

Known issues

  • HEIC iPhone files will now open and we currently suggest exporting to non-HEIC formats like JPG, PNG, or TIFF while we work on further fixes for macOS 18 HEIC files

If you encounter any issues with this release - please reach out to support@topazlabs.com rather than commenting the threads below. This helps us keep a tab on the volume of issues to prioritize fixes faster.


Stay tuned for even more exciting updates coming to Photo AI very soon!


Dakota Wixom
Product Manager
Topaz Labs

8 Likes

I just now tried Super Focus on a 16mp JPEG. I have the preview window on a small portion of the photo (Sharpen strength Low, Focus boost None, Preview control Small) on my M2 Pro 12/19/16 32gb Mac and the small preview window has said Rendering preview for many minutes and the progress bar has not moved for a very long time. It seems to be hung.

Screenshot 2025-02-08 at 10.44.02

Much faster with 3.4.4 and earlier.

Edit: It is clearly hung because the progress bar has not moved for 20+ minutes. Clicking on Cancel button just causes a beach ball that doesn’t go away. Activity Monitor said Photo AI Not Responding. I tried to terminate Photo AI with the Activity Monitor, but it was unable to do it. I will reboot my Mac. :frowning: Not good.

Edit 2: Cannot reboot Mac. Photo AI has hosed my computer. I must find a way to do a hard reset. This is horrible!

5 Likes

I have same result on my M1 Mac studio , i have to force quit as cancel rendering does not work.
To be honest this guys should stick with basics, instead of introducing new features.

4 Likes

Wish I had read this before installing! Gees, until that is sorted I am not going to be using the program, unless I can downgrade back to 3.4.4

1 Like

All of my photos (JPG) looked like they were in advance overexposed in the new version without doing anything by myself . I roll back to 3.44 version . Everything look natural now again !!

1 Like

Hi.

Here’s the Photo AI 3.4.4 link for both Windows and Mac

Windows
https://downloads.topazlabs.com/deploy/TopazPhotoAI/3.4.4/TopazPhotoAI-3.4.4.msi

Mac
https://downloads.topazlabs.com/deploy/TopazPhotoAI/3.4.4/TopazPhotoAI-3.4.4.pkg

1 Like

Hallo.
Fehler im Adjust Lighting.
Hier wird bei der Einstellung der Stärke kein Wert angezeigt! Siehe rotes Feld.
Exposure= ,
Bitte einmal überprüfen.
Betriebssystem ist Win10
Grafikkarte GTX 1650

So why do I feel great fear now?

(The last claim of an 2x speed gain resulted in an up to 2x slowing here :face_with_spiral_eyes:)

3 Likes

Have you tried the same thing on your Apple phone with the recent Topaz release for them? :neutral_face:

Gigapixel for iPhone is extremely restricted, especially for offline on-device rendering, but also gives only few options for cloud-rendering :-/

That said the results especially from the cloud renderings mostly are quite fine…

But since the first release there was no update and no answers to suggestions or any kind of „roadmap“ - report of issues/suggestions in the TestFlight phase were vastly ignored,…

Maybe this is due to all resources currently going into the Starflight project?

1 Like

Hard to know…

I’m not a video creator.

Thx for the reply.

P.S. the TestFlight version also can be installed on MacOS - and runs slower on my M2 Ultra than on my iPhone 15Pro :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Seeing this whole performance mess, also in TVAI I strongly do believe that the devs at Topaz haven’t really understood how to get the most out of those Apple Silicon chips and also likely don’t have a good hardware base to test with those.

2 Likes

Confirming there is indeed a major speed improvement here for Super Focus based on benchmarks across multiple different devices. Our team is aware of and working on some issues for certain MacOS devices though, such as with the Redefine model.

There are some issues with certain new hardware ecosystems in general. We are working with our partners to resolve them, often there’s work needed on our side, but it also often requires updates from those hardware providers themselves.

You can imagine there’s a ton of new hardware launches during certain seasons like this, too. Topaz works ahead with new hardware for certain companies, but sometimes we encounter platform problems which still aren’t resolved post-launch.

Very much looking forward to a world where running generative AI models locally on device is more common and standardized. We’re getting there slowly…

1 Like

Please try it out but do keep in mind running the AI model the first time will be slower than the second time. Make sure to consider this if you do a personal benchmark with your hardware. :slight_smile:

Sorry to hear that! Please reach out to our support team so we can confirm and log this issue. Deleting the coreML cache may also help to resolve some of these issues for example.

Hello - can you please elaborate? Are you applying the Adjust Lighting effect or are you saying there’s an issue with the color profile of the image in general?

The input files look much brighter than the original files in the program without having use any effect .
I rolled back to version 3.44 and everything is fine now . Unfortunately i did`n took a srceenshot to show.Maybe i will update later back to 3.5 an post a picture .

Give logs too, as they may point to the cause of the issue.

I’ve just noticed with this 3.5 release that I no longer need have sRGB Preview Fallback enabled and the preview is now more colour accurate (now the same as Gigapixel and other colour managed apps).

I don’t recall seeing this fix stated anywhere.


First picture is the original file.
Second is in the software without any effect.
Output file is fine like the original.