DaveNewman
Senior Member
£69 (UK) just for that 1 item i feel is very expensive, thats my issue with it..... £69 includes that 15% off
Topaz Denoise AI - It works
- Thread starter BackdoorArts
- Start date
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Is Topaz expensive? It ain't cheap. But there are always discount codes.
Here's the way I look at it...
I bought ON1 back in version 8. They put out 8.x and asked me to pay for it. I griped and they gave me a free upgrade. They upped to 9 and I had to pay. I didn't.
I bought NiK back before Google bought it and gave it away. Now even though I have receipts from back in the day DxO wants me to buy it again with no promise of free future upgrades. No thanks.
I use Lr/Ps and pay monthly to keep it active and get the upgrades as they come in. It's a chunk of change every year but they have made consistent improvements over time that I'm more than happy with so they keep my business.
Topaz? I bought their bundle a while back when it was on sale. It saved me 40% on each tool individually and even though I knew I would barely use some of them the bundle cost saved me enough where it was a break even. Now when they introduce a new product if I want it I can repurchase the bundle and they prorate the price at the bundle price minus everything I already have, so I'm saving more. Better than that from a price perspective, never once have I been asked to pay for the latest version. Buy once use forever. I'm OK with that.
Better than that, after 9 years of shooting and trying this and trying that I now have tools that have utterly streamlined my workflow for wildlife. No more do I have to wonder if this would have been better if I'd used Nik Dfine for noise instead of ACR, the first thing I do with every image no matter the ISO is to run it thru Denoise. To date I've not found any of the artifacts that I used to get from other denoise functions if I choose to ramp up the structure.
If you're finding that it's "no better than Lightroom" then you haven't had to deal with extremes - and that's perfectly OK. If you're exposing right then under nominal conditions you're probably not going to see much of a difference. But when you've maxed out ISO and lighting conditions have forced you to underexpose by a couple stops then you're going to be fighting the image not just to get rid of the noise but to keep it gone every time you tweak the lighting. Been there, got the shots no one has seen because of it. But now I'm going back through time and reprocessing stuff that just could not be processed in the day. Some of that has been improved in the tools I've used, but when I look in the layer stack of the PSD file that didn't quite work and see all the adjustments that I find myself no longer needing to do, I'm considering the couple hundred bucks I've spent on these products to have more than paid for in time spent with each image.
Here's the way I look at it...
I bought ON1 back in version 8. They put out 8.x and asked me to pay for it. I griped and they gave me a free upgrade. They upped to 9 and I had to pay. I didn't.
I bought NiK back before Google bought it and gave it away. Now even though I have receipts from back in the day DxO wants me to buy it again with no promise of free future upgrades. No thanks.
I use Lr/Ps and pay monthly to keep it active and get the upgrades as they come in. It's a chunk of change every year but they have made consistent improvements over time that I'm more than happy with so they keep my business.
Topaz? I bought their bundle a while back when it was on sale. It saved me 40% on each tool individually and even though I knew I would barely use some of them the bundle cost saved me enough where it was a break even. Now when they introduce a new product if I want it I can repurchase the bundle and they prorate the price at the bundle price minus everything I already have, so I'm saving more. Better than that from a price perspective, never once have I been asked to pay for the latest version. Buy once use forever. I'm OK with that.
Better than that, after 9 years of shooting and trying this and trying that I now have tools that have utterly streamlined my workflow for wildlife. No more do I have to wonder if this would have been better if I'd used Nik Dfine for noise instead of ACR, the first thing I do with every image no matter the ISO is to run it thru Denoise. To date I've not found any of the artifacts that I used to get from other denoise functions if I choose to ramp up the structure.
If you're finding that it's "no better than Lightroom" then you haven't had to deal with extremes - and that's perfectly OK. If you're exposing right then under nominal conditions you're probably not going to see much of a difference. But when you've maxed out ISO and lighting conditions have forced you to underexpose by a couple stops then you're going to be fighting the image not just to get rid of the noise but to keep it gone every time you tweak the lighting. Been there, got the shots no one has seen because of it. But now I'm going back through time and reprocessing stuff that just could not be processed in the day. Some of that has been improved in the tools I've used, but when I look in the layer stack of the PSD file that didn't quite work and see all the adjustments that I find myself no longer needing to do, I'm considering the couple hundred bucks I've spent on these products to have more than paid for in time spent with each image.
Whiskeyman
Senior Member
Very good information and tutorials, Jake. Thank you!!
WM
WM
Whiskeyman
Senior Member
Jake, thank you again for this thread. I am a registered user of the previous versions of TL Denoise and was able to download the AI version as an upgrade. Not so much with their products that changed titles for the same functionality. I look forward to doing some work with the new AI version of Denoise. Has anyone used their new masking software, and does it work well enough over the earlier versions to warrant the upgrade? (Of all of the TL products I've purchased, I remember using the masking software the most.)
WM
WM
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
I don't do a lot of masking and I wasn't thrilled with their older version so I didn't bother to upgrade. Photoshop has gotten so good with the Select Subject option that whatever masking I need to do can be accomplished with that and the select/mast function. I'm guessing folks who do more studio work and compositing might know better.
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BackdoorArts
Senior Member
I don't do a lot of masking and I wasn't thrilled with their older version so I didn't bother to upgrade. Photoshop has gotten so good with the Select Subject option that whatever masking I need to do can be accomplished with that and the Refine Mask (or what ever it is now) function. I'm guessing folks who do more studio work and compositing might know better.
Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
Topaz DeNoise AI: Color Me Converted
Some days ago after having mused on this thread a bit I decided to revisit Topaz DeNoise AI and, after finding a discount code that brought the cost down to something I could swallow/not have the lovely and charming Mrs. Fish giving me dirty looks about, I bit the bullet and purchased a license. Installation goes smoothly and things are chugging along just fine. At this point I'm thinking version 2.0 is doing a pretty decent job, especially considering the size of the typical D850 raw file. Life is good.
*Time Passes*
So now I'm a few days in to learning the ins-and-outs of DeNoise - while practicing proper social distancing and working from home - when a couple DeNoise updates come along (v2.1.1 and v2.1.2) and just like that everything goes sideways. Hard. Image previews are choppy and slow to refresh, some of the buttons are not working, I'm getting weird color shifts in my image files on output and processing any image at all is taking seven to eight MINUTES. Ugh!! I check and see the GPU is not being utilized nearly as much with this version, often less than 5%, while the CPU is being hammered at +90%. Weird. Status = Sad. I do some research and find I'm not the only one complaining about these particular problems with these updates. I revert back to version 2.0 and all is well again: CPU ~60% utilization, GPU ~85% utilization and everything working as it should.
Then someone suggests a settings re-calibration ("Reset" button, found under File/Preferences) might make things right for me with 2.1.2 so I update, re-calibrate and... Lo and behold, the magic works! The calibration took a few seconds and suddenly 2.1.2 is tearing up noise in the largest raw files I could find quickly (91MB!) like a chainsaw through wet toilet-paper*. Faster even than vanilla 2.0 I'm thinking. Status = Joy!
.....
*No toilet-paper was harmed in the making of this post.
Some days ago after having mused on this thread a bit I decided to revisit Topaz DeNoise AI and, after finding a discount code that brought the cost down to something I could swallow/not have the lovely and charming Mrs. Fish giving me dirty looks about, I bit the bullet and purchased a license. Installation goes smoothly and things are chugging along just fine. At this point I'm thinking version 2.0 is doing a pretty decent job, especially considering the size of the typical D850 raw file. Life is good.
*Time Passes*
So now I'm a few days in to learning the ins-and-outs of DeNoise - while practicing proper social distancing and working from home - when a couple DeNoise updates come along (v2.1.1 and v2.1.2) and just like that everything goes sideways. Hard. Image previews are choppy and slow to refresh, some of the buttons are not working, I'm getting weird color shifts in my image files on output and processing any image at all is taking seven to eight MINUTES. Ugh!! I check and see the GPU is not being utilized nearly as much with this version, often less than 5%, while the CPU is being hammered at +90%. Weird. Status = Sad. I do some research and find I'm not the only one complaining about these particular problems with these updates. I revert back to version 2.0 and all is well again: CPU ~60% utilization, GPU ~85% utilization and everything working as it should.
Then someone suggests a settings re-calibration ("Reset" button, found under File/Preferences) might make things right for me with 2.1.2 so I update, re-calibrate and... Lo and behold, the magic works! The calibration took a few seconds and suddenly 2.1.2 is tearing up noise in the largest raw files I could find quickly (91MB!) like a chainsaw through wet toilet-paper*. Faster even than vanilla 2.0 I'm thinking. Status = Joy!
91MB raw files? No problem!
And I have to admit, while getting the most out of DeNoise has come with a bit of learning curve (at least for me) it's proving more valuable than I first thought it would. I used to think digital noise was purely related to high ISO but I've learned it's not so much an ISO issue as it is an overall exposure issue. So currently I'm going back through a lot of previous shoots and finding DeNoise is removing a lot more noise than I even realized was there to BE removed. Shots that I didn't really think suffered from being noisy often look significantly "cleaner", for lack of a better word, after being passed through DeNoise and with a retention of fine that is surprising and distinctly different than what I can achieve with Sharpening. Of course I've had to adjust my workflow, again, but c'est la vie, eh?
.....
*No toilet-paper was harmed in the making of this post.
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BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Re: Topaz DeNoise AI: Color Me Converted
Thanks for that, Paul. I had not yet updated and when I checked to see what version I was on I was prompted to update and didn't.
Thanks for that, Paul. I had not yet updated and when I checked to see what version I was on I was prompted to update and didn't.
Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
Re: Topaz DeNoise AI: Color Me Converted
And allow me to reiterate using Reset has everything running smoothly post-updates; but if you don't want to fix what isn't broken, I don't blame you. I also don't know if Mac users are affected by these problems, or a whole new set of problems for that matter, so waiting things out may be the safest bet.
Thank you for your very helpful posts that got me to re-consider DeNoise AI.
And allow me to reiterate using Reset has everything running smoothly post-updates; but if you don't want to fix what isn't broken, I don't blame you. I also don't know if Mac users are affected by these problems, or a whole new set of problems for that matter, so waiting things out may be the safest bet.
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Re: Topaz DeNoise AI: Color Me Converted
As a Mac user I'm not sure I want to figure it out. As good as 2.0 is, it's slower than the last 1-dot version I used and I cannot tolerate the slowness of Sharpen which still somehow seems acceptable to Topaz, so I'll stick with what ain't broke for a while.
As a Mac user I'm not sure I want to figure it out. As good as 2.0 is, it's slower than the last 1-dot version I used and I cannot tolerate the slowness of Sharpen which still somehow seems acceptable to Topaz, so I'll stick with what ain't broke for a while.
Whiskeyman
Senior Member
Topaz Labs now has a 30% off sale for another day or two. I used Jake's link and got an additional 15% off of the discounted price. (Thank you, Jake!) Adjust AI ended up costing me less than $50.
This should work for any of the Topaz Labs currently offered at the sale price. You do need to go to the Topaz website through Jake's link and note the discount code in the link to get the additrional 15% off. (You'll enter the code when checking out.)
Wayne
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Thanks for letting me know. I'm currently in a "discussion" with them about what I have not received for promoting their product with my link. I've got 3 names and now a 4th who will vouch for using the link. We'll get it worked out.
Oh, and thanks for the PM recommendation. There's a wax seal I need to break in a few minute.
Whiskeyman
Senior Member
Wayne, thanks for promoting this. I decided to get Denoise AI and Adjust AI although this laptop doesn't have enough processing power to handle them. But the price was good especially after Jake's promo code.
Jake, you can add me to your list of people using the code. The email address I used is a generic one, but I just checked out within the past 10 minutes. Thanks for the discount code.
As I mentioned to Wayne, I won't be using either just yet since this laptop doesn't have the processing power to handle them. But I do have a different device to use whenever I decide to get it set up.Whiskeyman
Senior Member
Wayne, thanks for promoting this. I decided to get Denoise AI and Adjust AI although this laptop doesn't have enough processing power to handle them. But the price was good especially after Jake's promo code.
Jake, you can add me to your list of people using the code. The email address I used is a generic one, but I just checked out within the past 10 minutes. Thanks for the discount code.
I'm pleased to have helped you out, Cindy. After all, isn't that what this site/forum is really about? I hope it ends up being worth it for you.
And thanks to Jake again for helping another member out!
Wayne
Andy W
Senior Member
@BackdoorArts You can add me to the list as well.
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
OK, so I think I may be getting to the bottom of what's going on. Every once in a while I get a weird and seemingly genuine email that "Anafore LLC" has sent me $10 via Paypal. The think is it goes to an email that does not have a Paypal account associate with it. When I got the first I did some searching and ran across some posts that suggested it was a fishing scam. I got another one today and I looked hard at the links and they all go straight to a genuine paypal.com login page. When I was offered the affiliate link I was never asked to provide how-to-pay information, so the assumption was that it would accrue to my Topaz ID and could be spent there. Now I'm thinking they have all disappeared as payments to a non-existent paypal address. I've confirmed that the referral site the link leads to (referralcandy.com) is affiliated with the LLC in the emails I'm getting, so two mysteries solved.
I've got a ticket in to Topaz to see if I can get this straightened out, and hopefully get the funds that have already been paid out and likely lost in the ether (according to the email I got today this payment disappears on Feb 4).
Thanks for keeping me posted when you've used the link. If I lose out on some of these so be it, but at least it'll work going forward. And y'all got the discount, which is what really matters.
I've got a ticket in to Topaz to see if I can get this straightened out, and hopefully get the funds that have already been paid out and likely lost in the ether (according to the email I got today this payment disappears on Feb 4).
Thanks for keeping me posted when you've used the link. If I lose out on some of these so be it, but at least it'll work going forward. And y'all got the discount, which is what really matters.
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