In testing TPAI 2, I’ve hit a number of issues with the DNG files it creates, whether from the plugin or the standalone app. I filed one bug recently and I’ve also seen issues that others have reported. I’ll list these below.
In practice, I’ve found a workaround that solves all of these issues: use Lightroom to create a DNG from the raw file first, then call up TPAI via the plugin and choose the “overwrite file” option, then finally back in Lightroom, choose to overwrite the settings in the DNG file with those in Lightroom. Deviating from this leads to one or more of the problem issues.
As I’m not interested in making TIFFs and thereby abandoning a raw workflow, I didn’t do much testing of that path.
I did my testing with Fuji RAF files from a GFX 100S, but I see bug reports for various cameras that are similar to the things I’ve seen.
I used TPAI 2.0.5 on Windows 11, everything up to date.
Issues that are solved by this workaround:
Bug 53608, which I filed regarding the UniqueCameraModel metadata tag.
Running the plugin directly on a raw file causes Lightroom to do a “save metadata to file” action. This may or may not create a sidecar XMP file depending on the state that Lightroom remembers for the raw file. When it does create an XMP file, TPAI does NOT clean it up later. When it does not, the resulting DNG file has more problems than one created while the XMP file exists.
Images sometimes come out one or two stops too bright. I’ve seen no pattern to which files exhibit this. It’s visible in TPAI immediately on opening the raw file. It’s not a before/after issue.
If TPAI applied sharpening and/or denoising, the related controls should be set to zero in the DNG file so that Lightroom does not apply even more sharpening and denoising.
White balance comes out as Custom, rather than preserving As Shot.
Lens corrections are initially applied properly to the DNG in Lightroom, but if you apply any develop preset at all, then vignetting correction gets permanently disabled.
The lens correction setting in TPAI doesn’t do anything for DNG files. I don’t know if this was the intent or not. TPAI could certainly apply corrections to the raw image data like PureRAW does, or preserve the correction metadata for use in Lightroom (which does happen with the workaround).
Hopefully this information will be useful to others experiencing odd DNG issues and to Topaz in solving them.
Thanks for reaching out and sharing this detail. There is a lot of great information here.
I will be testing each and checking if there is a task for it already then creating a new task if there is not.
If you have files for the exposure changing on importing to Topaz Photo AI or the lens correction not working for DNG files I can take a look at those.
You can securely submit your image(s) to my Dropbox using the link below. Please be sure to send me a note to let me know you sent something. Dropbox File Request
For the brightness issue, I have uploaded 4 files:
2023-09-30-0126.raf - the original raw file
2023-09-30-0126.dng - the output created by TPAI (denoising and sharpening turned on, all else off)
2023-09-30-0126.xmp - the XMP file that TPAI caused to be created and did not clean up afterwards
Screenshot 2023-10-29 131306.png - screenshot showing the RAF and DNG files displayed in Lightroom
For the first lens correction issue (presets disable vignetting correction), I have uploaded 2 more files:
lens correction before preset.png
lens correction after preset.png
To duplicate the problem, load the DNG file from above into Lightroom. Be sure not to apply any import develop presets! Then go to the Develop module and open up the lens correction panel. It should look like the “before” screenshot. Then apply any develop preset that you have–it does not seem to matter at all what the preset really does. Once you apply it, suddenly vignetting correction is turned off (you see the image change shape) and becomes greyed out.
For the second lens correction issue (TPAI lens correction setting doing nothing), you can process the RAF file both with the lens correction setting in TPAI turned on and off. The resulting DNG files are the same. The raw image data was not reshaped. The metadata describing the corrections has been converted from RAF format to DNG format, but it’s clearly not done exactly right, as the first problem demonstrates (vignetting correction can get disabled). I don’t know what the intent of this feature is. It would be great if it could apply the corrections to the raw image data like PureRAW does. That would save extra processing time later. But it’s perfectly reasonable to simply convert the correction metadata, so long as it doesn’t result in problems.
Please note that all the issues I wrote about are solved when one first creates a DNG from the raw file in Lightroom and sends the DNG to TPAI instead of the raw file. I don’t know the details of the available APIs, but I would hope that there is some option to say “create a DNG file just like one that would be created in Lightroom”. Whatever method is being used by TPAI to create the DNG is clearly causing a number of problems.
