A.I. Gigapixel by Topaz - a test drive

pforsell

Senior Member
I shot an image with an ancient Nikon D1H. The original image is 2.7 mpix. Then I tried the Photoshop CC "Preserve Details 2.0", OnOne Raw 2018 Resize (nee Genuine Fractals) and finally AI Gigapixel. I increased the image size 200% to 10.5 mpix.


What is obvious is that none of the resizing tools is able to extract any real details - see the text on the battery, it is illegible. The upsizing methods invent fake details either by using fractals or a neural network with a huge image library, but the fakeness is obvious. The final line is: there's no substitute for more pixels. Better to either use another camera or do multi-image stitching. I'll save my monies and pass these utilities.


It's disappointing the "neural net" AI Gigapixel didn't recognize the Varta Battery and replace the mushy text with a sharp copy from the allegedly "huge image library." If it had managed to provide readable sharp text, I'd given my 100 bucks. But as it is, sorry, no go.


None of the images looks like a real 10.5 mpix photo to me. The positive thing is all the uprezzing methods were quick at this small size, about 2 seconds to go from 2.7 to 10.5 mpix.


Nikon D1H, 85mm f/1.4D, ISO 200, 1/5s, tripod, remote release.

No white balancing, no noise processing, no sharpening, no contrast or color tweaking.

I don't think this forum allows 4000x2624 size images, and I believe the forum software will recompress the images very hard-handedly anyway so that it would be impossible to see any difference in the images. Therefore I provide a link to a page containing the full size images for those interested.


Here you go: Full size images

When you're in that page, click on an image, then "100% zoom" in the upper right corner, and you can navigate all the images with ease, and draw your own conclusions.
 

mikew_RIP

Senior Member
I will admit to getting out of my depth with this but,you started with a low MP image from an old but good for its time sensor which would lack fine detail for the programs to work with, would your results have been any better working with a modern high MP sensor and enlarging a section of the image?.
I have played with this and agree well certainly Photo shop preserve detail 2 is a bit lacking but this is one i played with from the EM1MK11 and 40-150 f2.8 and TC to 200%,the rest of my editing ability is lacking so that may have some bearing on the result and i only take pictures to record a moment in time, which to me is the point of photography for an amateur like myself.

P6180106full.jpg


P6180106up.jpg
 

pforsell

Senior Member
I will admit to getting out of my depth with this but,you started with a low MP image from an old but good for its time sensor which would lack fine detail for the programs to work with, would your results have been any better working with a modern high MP sensor and enlarging a section of the image?.
I have played with this and agree well certainly Photo shop preserve detail 2 is a bit lacking but this is one i played with from the EM1MK11 and 40-150 f2.8 and TC to 200%,the rest of my editing ability is lacking so that may have some bearing on the result and i only take pictures to record a moment in time, which to me is the point of photography for an amateur like myself.

Yes, I started with a very low megapixel image in an attempt to increase the image size to be printable at something like 12x8 inches at 300 dpi. A very modest goal, but I'm not sure the AI GP really delivers, nor any of the other methods either. The end results are either too fake or too blurry.

I also tried with a D3X image and increased a 24 mpix image to 390 mpix (400%). The end result is a 780 megabyte file and the operation took 7 minutes.

That would be about 7 feet wide picture at 300 dpi. Nobody does that though, as billboards are viewed from afar and 100 or even 75 dpi is more than enough. 24 mpix can do that without uprezzing.

In my humble opinion these uprezzing tools either don't live up to the hype, or are just gimmick solutions looking for a problem. YMMV.

But I will have a keen eye on them, computational photography is here to stay. Perhaps v2.0 with a billion image library behind it will be better?

In the future one only has to draw a crude sketch of a Taj Mahal on paper, photograph it, and use A.I. Enhance v9.0 to get a beautiful real photo (composite) of Taj Mahal with amazing sunset, kissing swans and milky way as a backdrop.
 

pforsell

Senior Member
Have you seen this review from Northlight Images?

Yes, that was one of the advertisements that I saw on dpreview and one that gave me the incentive to download the demo. Did you see this on the page you linked: "Use our 15% discount code ‘Northlight’ for a specially reduced price if you buy."

Fake, paid "customer" testimonials are the rage of the viral social media marketing. Nothing new there really. It neatly underlines the Sturgeon's Law that 90% of everything written in the net is garbage.

Try it yourself if you're interested, you'll be the judge and arbitrator. I already did that and walked away. YMMV.
 

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Contributor
I use ON1 Resize 10 for enlarging. Even when the newest Photoshop version came out, ON1 Resize 10 edged it out a little when I did my own comparison. When using Photoshop for enlargements, I even went up in size by 10% increments rather than by going to the full size in one step. With ON1 Resize 10, I did the enlargement all in one step without going up in increments.

ON1 Resize 10 is terrific. I think there is a newer version available now though.
 

govindvkumar

New member
I have tried the Topaz AI Gigapixel with their fee 30 day trial version. I have been using photoshop for my image enlargement needs. I had done a comparison with photoshop too and the results are pretty good.

AI-Gigapixel-Output.jpg

You can see more Before After images and review samples here: Topaz AI Gigapixel Review
 

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