I’m trying the current version of Sharpen AI. I normally invoke it from Lightroom, but today I have an image of a light cat on a black background and only want to sharpen the cat.
My first problem was HOW to get the whole cat image sent to Topaz. It’s got several layers on it, and I want the image WITH my manipulations sharpened. I couldn’t get the plugin to run with that.
So, I flattened it - big no-no right off the bat.
Sent it to Topaz and did a mild sharpening. It slowly churned it’s way through the Stabilize, then disappeared and I"m back in Photoshop… No new layer, no nothing. WHERE is my Topaz output? It’s not on the source disk, it’s not in Photoshop.
Went BACK into Topaz and decided to mask the background. First, it took not seconds or even tens of seconds to draw the preview - it took over a MINUTE just to get a preview from a normal D850 image in Photoshop.
Once I did, I started masking, selected the Object ALL, and started cleaning up. this is painful. It’s extremely slow, the edge detection didn’t work every well, but eventually I decided it was “good enough” and sent it through Stabilize again. Churned for a long time - well over a minute, and eventually Topaz disappeared…
Where is my output image or layer? There’s no way Topaz would ever MODIFY an existing Photoshop layer, right?
If it didn’t return to Photoshop it means you had an error. Please go to Help- Graphics info., press Copy and paste the info here. Also activate the logging under the help menu.
Application & Version: Topaz Sharpen AI Version 2.2.1
Operating System: Windows 10 Version 2009
Graphics Hardware: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT
OpenGL Driver: 3.3.14757 Core Profile Forward-Compatible Context 20.11.2 27.20.14501.18003
CPU RAM: 32680 MB
Video RAM: 8176 MB
Preview Limit: 8000 Pixels
I ran both Denoise and Sharpen again this morning. It APPEARS Topaz takes whichever layer I have selected, so I can send any one layer. I’m guessing this is a Photoshop limitation.
I ran Sharpen, sending a single layer, and had it do “Stabilize”. This was a smaller and simpler image, since it was only the subject portion of the whole image. Took around 60 seconds to do the sharpening and get back to Photoshop. I checked at high magnification to saw that Sharpen DID sharpen the layer. I was expecting a new layer, but this works as long as the user knows Topaz is going to modify their pixel-bearing layer rather than returning a new layer.
Ran Denoise with the same layer. Took about 22 seconds to process, came back to Photoshop, and it too had modified the layer.
It appears both are working.
There are ways to work around the limitation of modifying the layer, so now that I know they’re actually changing the existing layers, I can workaround the limitations.
I’ve attached the files, but I don’t believe there are any errors.
2020-12-05-08-28-7-Main.txt (59.2 KB) 2020-12-05-08-28-7-QML.txt (23.1 KB)
