No evidence of happy excited responses in the Community topics ?
Perhaps I’m getting confused with the responses of American fans to the Ryder Cup scores ???
@michael.whitchurch - yes, it’s a big change and it has been busy at Support, thanks a lot!
Yes, many customers are already happily using the new offering. 
We sent multiple rounds of emails, and replies to those emails go directly to Support. The majority of responses have been positive and many users have already transitioned and are using the new apps and new models. Customers who were already on auto-renewal are pleased to receive more apps for the same price, and those with three renewals are now paying less than before while gaining access to the full Studio suite. Unlimited cloud rendering with no credits purchase necessary, for images on all Desktop and web apps has received great feedback too. We also receive a lot of replies with questions, which is normal since it is a big change and we happily clarify any concerns or questions anyone has when writing in at Support.
Naturally, satisfied users are less likely to post here and find themselves on a user forum. Some on this thread have already contacted Support and had their questions resolved. While there are around 200 users on this post, this represents a very small percentage of our overall base. Many questions here are repeated, and since answers can get lost in the volume of discussion, the most effective way to get help is to reach out directly at help@topazlabs.com, where we can review the specific user account and answer one-on-one.
We’ve also received emails and direct messages from users who hesitated to share their positive feedback publicly due to concerns about negative reactions. Unfortunately, we’ve already had to remove several posts where users responded inappropriately to others who expressed satisfaction with the changes.
As a reminder, your own forum account was recently suspended for a few weeks by management. That ban timeline we had set, has now expired and I see you lost no time in writing to us back here To maintain your access, please keep your contributions constructive, on-topic, and respectful. We understand you’re unhappy with the changes, and you can continue using your owned apps or cancel auto-renewals if you choose. If you have additional questions, we encourage you to contact Support directly at help@topazlabs.com so we can provide clear answers and pass along your feedback to the marketing team. (Edit: I see you have Dm-ed me, I have replied)
Not sure why you’re taking this personally when I never replied directly to any of your posts.
I came here for clarification about the Studio transition and was frustrated by the amount of inaccurate information being provided by members who had no idea nor experience of the transition but were seemingly speculating and just making everyone more confused. Case in point:
the User Andy-E mentioned must of not logged into the forum for a while as she purchased Gigapixel years ago, not “17 seconds ago”. That time frame And-E mentioned is not related to any purchases made.
I will say that when I reached out to Topaz Support, they resolved my issue very promptly and I remain a satisfied customer.
More than one person has assumed that you are a Topaz employee, and this is going to backfire when they actually contact support and say ‘your support person on the forum said this and that’, especially when Studio renewals are due next year and they discover that they can’t rollback to an individual subscription. This also potentially creates liability issues for Topaz.
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Don’t know about York-shuh I’m from Norwich and we pronounce it as Norrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrwich if you like that one what about this for a name Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, which an Anglesey Village in Wales.
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All is good here. I can see how users can see And-E as an employee as he is very knowledgeable, replies quickly, and is very helpful. And-E mistakenly thought some information he was seeing was purchase dates; which scared another user, but he now knows that is not the case. There is no such information on the forums altogether; our purchases platform is completely separate then the forums. And-E learns quickly and will adapt his replies to new information he learns along the way. His replies help a LOT of our users and I greatly appreciate his presence all over the forums.
This is a user forum and meant for users to interact with each other. **Staff will have a Topaz Labs Staff badge when you click on their name ** The best way to reach out to us, as mentioned on top of all our sections over the forum, is to reach out to help@topazlabs.com
The transition was a big change (and is still underway for some users!) and it generated a lot of questions of course. Since there is a lot of factors to take into account, every user has a different set of apps, renewal dates, different bundles over time, etc, it is best to reach out to help@topaslabs.com to get one-on-one replies to any questions.
Also, I am glad all your questions were answered when you reached out to support @R-1 ! We certainly appreciate your posts and @AND-E 's help, and also the ‘Summaries’ I have seen posted are certainly helpful as well. Thanks to everyone that posted these.
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Thank you Ange, I wholeheartedly agree, if anyone is unsure with the information they receive then, they should contact Topaz Support.
While I’m here, may I just ask is there anyway people with Pirated software can be filtered out of the community perhaps by some kind of software verification or would this be to difficult to implement.
Thank you
Andy
If you see users that you suspect use pirated versions let me know, you can always DM-me and I can have a look on our side! However, they can still technically use the forums even without any owned products. 
They may be lurking for fixes or workarounds as of course, any pirated versions is not supported and they would not be able to get help from support@topazlabs.com
Thanks for everything And-E!
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Hello, thanks for extending the deadline. I hope to clarify a few points.
If I want to get all studio apps at the Founding Customer discount, and I currently have no active auto-renewals / subscriptions (but have 2 active perpetual licenses) do I -
- Have to click the links above to turn on auto-renewal for both Photo AI and Gigapixel?
- Do I then need to buy a new license for Video AI since mine expired in February 2025? Or does turning on auto-renew for the other two apps automatically give me Video AI once my account is transitioned?
- Does the new monthly subscription to Topaz “Studio” start once my perpetual licenses for PhotoAI and Gigapixel both expire on December 2nd?
@williamcalvert1990 - Yes, click on the above links (1 at the time) and do both renewals for the apps. It won’t charge anything today as you are active on both apps. No need to do it for Video AI. Once you turn on both the cheaper renewals, you will eventually be transitioned to Studio, which will include the new Topaz Video (Studio) as well as all web apps. The Studio offfering will start for Topaz Photo/Gigapixel as soon as you turn on the renewals. For Video AI it may take some time for the transition to kick in. You can always write to support@topazlabs.com once you have purchased your 2 renewals and we can add that Topaz Video access manually if needed before the transition completes! Your 2 renewals, once fully transitionned will be merged into 1 Studio renewal, at the December date (your renewal date).
Ange, Dakota, mentioned although you receive Topaz Video with two qualifying apps Founders Topaz Studio i.e Topaz Photo and Gigapixel you only receive Pro options with your currently Licensed products meaning because, you haven’t got an active License for Video AI you wouldn’t receive the Pro Tools for Topaz Video Starlight Sharp, for instance
I will check in with the Video team tomorrow and get back to you! I am a Topaz Photo Specialist and am not aware of the Pro models specifics on the Video side. Will reply here when I know more.
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Hello, again just found Dakota’s original statement
I believe Dakota means, (to be honest I’m not sure what he means this is just my interpolation) you still have access to the the Licenced downloadable versions you owned previously.
Besides, My Studio has now transitioned so, had a look myself and both Starlight and Starlight Sharp download without issue.
Hope this helps
Thank you
Wow. That’s impressive! And, beats the Mary Poppins song, for sure. 
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Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious! 
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I received the “transition in progress” email on September 18, 2025 at 4:17 AM (Japan time).
However, my account still hasn’t been migrated to Topaz Studio.
For those who have already completed the transition:
- How long did it take after receiving this email?
- At what point did you decide to contact support — after a week, two weeks, or longer?
It was 13 days for me. I received the “Transition in progress” email on 16th September, and the “Transition completed” email on 29th September.
I didn’t bother contacting support.
I received an email on September 4th, notifying me that: " Your account is being upgraded on 9/16." It described the details of the founding customer concept, the transition to Topaz Studio as a subscription-based product and all of the attendant details and hype.
And that was it.
- I didn’t receive a ‘Transition in Progress’ email.
- I didn’t receive a ‘Transition Completed’ email.
I found myself forced to try to glean information from this Community Forum, which I’d already been visiting for operational and version information. I’ve spent untold hours reading the Transition Questions and other areas devoted to the change, seeing the utter confusion and turmoil unfolding, to the point that this area is now rated as a “197 minute read”. A well thought-out and executed transition plan would have generated questions, but not sown such a morass of confusion and conflicting information, some of it coming from Topaz Labs-badged posters.
At some point in my journey, someone posted a link to a secondary account page that differed from the one I’d previously been checking. This page had an informative box listing my account status as ‘Transition Pending’. And so the wait began.
I was checking this page several times a day for the past couple of weeks, and saw few signs of progress, one of which was an unexpected number of Credits that appeared suddenly. It showed 28. I had 10 unused credits left from the original allotment of 100 that we were given in the early ‘cloud processing’ days to familiarize us with the process. So I don’t know where these 28 came from.
Finally, on September 30th, my account page no longer showed up as Transition Pending. It now shows my subscription status for Studio and date of the Next Bill. Some 24 hours later, I’ve still not been officially notified via email that the transition has been completed.
Yeah, after all the reading and account checking I’ve done, I figured it out. No problem, in the end. But there are apparently many users who were late in being notified of these changes to the Topaz applications, and some who only learned of it in a Facebook group and started asking questions.
It was an arduous task for the Topaz Labs support team making the changes. Kudos to them - it’s almost over! But it was also very stressful and baffling for many of the customers, past and present, who endured the uncertainty and frustration of being confused and left in the dark because of a poorly-planned and articulated information campaign.
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It took about five days for my account to be fully transitioned into Studio. However it took about another 10 days before I received the email telling me the transition of my account was complete!
Moral of the story: you don’t need to wait for the email. Log in at the main website and look at your account by clicking on the human head icon in the upper right. Look under My Products and Subscriptions. If you still see Transition in Progress, I suggest you contact customer support. Ange is suggesting here that they can manually get you access to an app you are entitled to and want to use now, or look at moving your transition along if it’s been in progress as long as yours has.
If instead of Transition in Progress, you see “Topaz Studio - Annual” and “Active” under Subscriptions, your transition is already complete; you don’t need to wait for the confirming email.
Even if your account transition is still in progress, you should be able to use the Studio version of any app for which you have an active perpetual license. It’s that third app, if you only had two active licenses, that you need the transition to complete before you can activate and use it, so ask for help from customer support.
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Just came here to renew my Photo and Video Ai and now I´m really shocked to realise that Topaz Labs does go the same stupid “give me your money every month or you are out” way like others before.
Thanx to … that I didn´t renew before - so I feel only half ripped of! My condolences to all who did renew!
Topaz you will see that things will not happen the way you think. It´s not only me who is out from this second on - it will be more or less everybody in the future - especially amateurs like me which are your “bread and butter” customers.
AI is growing fast and other companies will love to jump in this new gap in the market. Because I´m a loyal customer I didn´t do any research yet but this changes now.
I´m sure there is already an alternative which serves amateurs like me better … if not it will be there soon.
Bye, bye Topaz Labs you were a good buddy but that´s history
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