Topaz Denoise, Sharpen and Gigapixel

[Clovishound]

Well, I am working my way through the programs. I have already posted some on this subject, and thought I should create a new thread on it.

I am finding the programs to be a mixed bag. Worth the money, but they don't work well on all subjects and situations from my limited experience. I find that Sharpen AI is the least impressive of the three, and the one I had the highest hopes for. Here is a photo I picked because it wasn't quite sharp. I appears that the camera locked onto something other than the eye of the bird. It's not too badly out of focus, but too soft for use. It's not a terribly worthy picture for anything other than a test of the software. I ran it through the Sharpen AI software as an unprocessed NEF file. I then imported the Sharpened image and the original image into Lightroom and cropped them. One thing I noticed was that after running it through Sharpen AI, the image had substantially less contrast. I ended up adjusting the contrast, shadow and highlights to get the two photos to match as closely as I could by eye. I bumped up the sharpening in Sharpen to 50% to increase sharpness. I tried higher, but it started looking funky.

Here's the cropped, otherwise unedited image.

And here is the image after running it through Sharpen AI, and adjusting contrast, highlights and shadows.

 

[Clovishound]

I finally decided to see what would happen if I used the sharpen slider in LR on both images.

I'll let you decide on how well the program worked on this image. Just for reference, this is the full, unedited image.

Here is the unprocessed image with the sharpness slider at 116. For reference, LR automatically sharpens to 40 and maxes out at 150.

And now the image that was processed first in Sharpen AI, and then the slider in LR to 116.

 

[Woodyg3]

Note how much better the feather and eye detail are in the Sharpen AI processed shot.

 

[Fred Kingston]

Send me the NEF file? [email protected]

 

[Clovishound]

Tried, Email wouldn't let me send a file over 25 MB. LR and PS wouldn't let me resize and save as an NEF. At least I couldn't see a way to do that.

I did try Gigapixel on the image and ended up with this. No additional sharpening or editing in LR other than crop. Art was the only option that seemed to sharpen significantly.

 

[Clovishound]

Thought I would try Sharpen AI on something else. I picked an out of focus BIF that suffered from motion blur.

Here is the image processed (badly, I didn't spend much time on it) in LR. I did add some sharpening to the bird only.

And here it is after running through Sharpen AI and then editing in LR. Note: this image was much easier to edit than the original.

The Sharpen AI version wouldn't do for a large print, but would be sufficiently sharp for an internet post. The first would not, even if I spent more time editing it to something better, the face is just too soft. As you can see by the cropped images, I didn't run the file through Denoise AI. Sharpen does some noise reduction, which I'm sure helped overall.

Cropped:

 

[Clovishound]

Well, I see that the bundle I have entitles me to download Photo AI. I have a 16 GB stick of RAM coming tomorrow for my computer, so I may have to download and try it. Maybe this weekend, if I get the RAM installed.

 

[Fred Kingston]

There's a special user forum for that product, set up on their web site. Be sure to register there... they have a Road map thread that outlines where they're going with the product as well as a new thread every Thursday afternoon when they push a new update out...

 

[blackstar]

...
Here is the image processed (badly, I didn't spend much time on it) in LR. I did add some sharpening to the bird only.
...
And here it is after running through Sharpen AI and then editing in LR. Note: this image was much easier to edit than the original.
...

Must you edit the image in LR after running Sharpen AI? Edit what except sharpening in LR? IMO, from what you presented Topaz Sharpen AI looks impressive on that BIF image in full size. Not as much in crop though. How effectively does Sharpen AI perform in jpeg? (or does it even work on jpeg?) Are the sharpening results comparable for raw and jpeg? Thanks for sharing.

 

[Fred Kingston]

Sharpen, Denoise and Gigapixel are refined tools... They're not full-blown Editors... They use a plugin to move between LR and the apps. If all you want to do is Denoise, or Sharpen, they're also stand-alone programs... You still need an editor to do other things... Yes, they work on Jpeg files, but not as well as RAW... Don't forget...these are using AI to analyze the image.... the more data you have, the better AI works... Jpegs are compressed file formats... compression is a process of discarding data in favor of size...

 

[Clovishound]

Do you have to edit in LR? No, but most RAW images I get really need at least a little help to look decent. Some need a lot. Shooting in RAW pretty much presupposes that you are going to post process, and as Fred said these programs pretty much only denoise and sharpen. RAW files almost always require adjustments to many different components of the image. Yes, I could apply a profile in camera and shoot in JPEG, but I prefer to shoot in RAW and then adjust post processing. I have a lot more control that way. That works for me. You may have a different process that works for you. In the end it is about the image you end up with, and your enjoyment of the process and product.