…and that’s when I stopped reading.
When someone states “I don’t care” from the top, it signals a definitive shutdown of dialogue, leaving little to no room for discussion because their minds/beliefs has already mentally disengaged.
By explicitly stating that you don’t care; you are essentially shutting down any potential discussion or empathy.
I found it quite convenient to stop paying for updates when I had the impression they were of little value for me, which occurred more than once. I suspended “subscription” for more than a year, resuming when the genAI models were introduced to GPAI, which was when I happily resumed paying. And I always knew that, if I decided to halt payment, I’d still be able to use what I then had.
With the new scheme, when deciding to cancel subscription I shall be thrown back to what I had at the beginning of the subscription period. Even if Topaz decided to charge more and more, I’d be stuck to either continue paying or go back to an app that may have been state of the art years ago (and probably won’t run on an updated OS). I would probably accept a subscription model that, if I decide to pull out, allows to freeze the revision state of the app for an additional fee but I am certainly not paying for a scheme that leaves me with nothing in case I cannot or do not want to afford an ongoing subscription.
" I don’`t care if it’s a subscription model" - that’s my opinion
Just like the others… opinions/confusion with oomph!
I have bought multiple versions of various Topaz products, but I only buy when there’s a version that offers enough of an improvement, over what I already have, to spend more money. I don’t buy new versions just for the sake of “new”. Topaz has had a lot of realases that had enough problems to be avoided altogether. Newer certainly doesn’t automatically equate to better.
Topaz had to offer something that wasn’t just “new” but also improved in a way that I found valuable enough to spend money on. There have been lapses, while I waited for improvements I thought were worth it, but Topaz has eventually come through with something improved and stable-enough to get me to give them money again.
The software rental system means Topaz no longer has to perform to that level for customers who didn’t buy software from them before Studio. The rental system means people have to constantly give Topaz more money, or they get nothing, and nothing is a much lower bar to reach.
Thank you to the users who stepped in to shut down the back and forth debate about what individuals consider fair or unfair.
In my view, the best chance of having Topaz listen to and address our concerns is stick to the facts.
Regardless of how we might feel about it, Topaz can introduce a new product with whatever subscription terms they desire. It’s good that they have offered a migration path with some cost certainty to existing customers, for those who wish to continue subscribing.
Topaz can also offer new features to customers who subscribe to their new service without offering those to existing customers within different products. Again, that’s fine, provided they honour their existing agreements.
As someone pointed out, Topaz can even make changes to their terms and conditions. While true to an extent, they do not have unrestricted license to do so. The extent to which they can make changes would be dependent on the jurisdiction. What they cannot do, is take payment for something they have no intention of providing. In the past 24 hours, responses have made it clear that Topaz intends to withhold functionality from products that was promised at the time the product or upgrades were purchased. There is no ambiguity about this because you can still go to their Website, buy the product and subscribe for automatic upgrades.
Potential purchasers should be able to take the claims made on the Topaz site at face value, however, if they look further they will find an unmodified EULA on the main page and official posts on the Topaz community pages explicitly telling them products will receive further enhancements. Starlight Mini in Video AI, for example, was to receive further enhancements, both in terms of performance and support for AMD, Intel and MacOS. As someone who purchased recently, I did so because of the addition of Starlight Mini, the promise of performance improvements, bug fixes including the removal of resolution constraints and the ability, going forward, to select from a range of new hardware that was going to deliver the best cost/performance ratio within the budget I am willing to spend.
As little as 14 days ago, with the release of Video AI 7.1.3, it was also claimed that “… this is a small patch - but rest assured, there’s some exciting changes coming soon to Video AI”. That doesn’t exactly scream “We’re going to EOL this product three weeks”, nor would any reasonable person interpret it in any way other than as a commitment to continued support of the product.
To further add insult to injury, the ‘new’ studio fixes and features are being tested within the current desktop apps by beta testers. That tells us that there is no significant architectural difference between Video AI and the forthcoming Studio release. It also confirms that the decision not to include enhancements or fixes is an arbitrary one - one that directly goes against the existing user agreement to continue providing updates.
Topaz needs to step up and, at a minimum, implement the feature and performance enhancements they previously committed to, not simply stop supporting the product “as-is” at a particular point in time, which is what everything that has been officially stated points to.
My suggestion to Topaz is this. Continue giving founders access to Topaz Studio during their subscription period, as planned. Those who see value in it will continue to subscribe. For those who wish to continue using their perpetual licenses, continue to develop those products until they are feature complete, including all the features and bug fixes which have been promised to date. This should be within a reasonable time frame, but to avoid unfairness, these releases should be made available to anyone with active upgrades on 16/9, regardless of how long it takes for the products to reach maturity. Users of older versions who don’t have active subscriptions should also be able to pay a one-off upgrade fee to achieve feature parity, just as they would have had to if they’d chosen to upgrade. Finally, provide an offline installer with a license file, so we can be sure our perpetual license remains so.
I will repeat it for you, it is called a BAIT and SWITCH and also wait for it, cough, a BREACH OF CONTRACT. That is what it is called.
???
I am referring to Starlight Mini and various related fixes in beta builds, including an early MacOS/AMD Starlight Mini implementation in 7.2.0.2b.
There are new features as well that likely won’t be released in Video AI, but I’m only really concerned with the ones that were promised features for current owners.
That makes sense!
I don’t do video work so have no insight into betas there…
Can we expect first-class Linux support with the Studio apps?
My question is about Starlight Mini, are we still getting a completed version of that for Video AI as promised on a perpetual version of the software?
When it was released first for Nvidia cards only, it was promised that it would come to the software for AMD cards as well, and would be just as supported.
Thanks for the response, hope that it’s added. Otherwise the cloud rendering for images would likely not be a convenience for my workflows in any scenario (like being able to process away from my GPU machine).
Not according to official statements made ~13 hours ago. See my comment above regarding the status of this in betas.
Starlight Mini will remain in Video AI (perpetual license) as-is
In the new Topaz Video product - Starlight is a Pro feature, but legacy Topaz customers will get access to this model as long as they maintain “founder” status with an active subscription. The new Starlight Mini optimizations and AMD + Mac support will be available in the new Studio version only.
But it isn’t really different for the photo apps - bloom, max, wonder (what a name) were all tested in the existing apps and yet they are meant to be the exciting new models in the magnificent „Studio“ app.
Are the Studio apps completely new apps, built from the ground up? Or are they forks of the current perpetual apps?
Except there weren’t any revs to Wonder (ha ha re: your comment) & ‘Photo’ is supposedly brand new & there’ve been no betas for that. That’s what puzzled me. I naturally assumed Wonder would be part of the existing product it was tested in…
I wonder what kind of wonders wonder will bring…
the new Wonder model (
) for Topaz Gigapixel (not current Gigapixel Ai) and Topaz Photo (not current Photo Ai)… [subscription-based only model… not perpetual]
Yeah, that’s what everyone expected (and there even were promised new versions of TPAI/TPGP).
Unfortunately the folks at TL decided otherwise…
