Image Recovery Using Topaz AI Plugin

[Ken Abrahams]

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I couldn't find any threads or posts for the Topaz AI software and Post Processing so here it is.

Every now and again I might come across an image that needs recovery because of camera movement (pre image stabilisation) or slight mis focus and grainy exposures.

I was skeptical for a very long time and eventually purchased the software to test myself. Initially it was purely for recovery purposes and not like some image makers who are using the software on every second image. Recently my friend starting using denoise option in Lightroom on every single image whether he was using his apo lenses or very good S lenses. I tried to explain to him that with some images the De Noise function doesn't do anything to help the image and that its best to go without denoise adjustment. 

The same goes with Topaz AI. When perusing files from my SL 601 recently I have found the lack of image stabilisation created motion blur and grainy images at higher iso's. The image shown here was from a wedding back in 2017, hand held at 1/25 - 1/60 second and at 3200 ISO. The image was marked as rejected back then however with Topaz it came up a treat. Now I am sounding like the advertisements and recommendations for Topaz on social media! I am sure if the software was good as they say, many photographers including here on the Forum would gladly purchase if it meant improving image quality. I have found that it works very well most of the time and definitely requires the use of the sliders and manually adjusting values compared with leaving that to the auto function.

Topaz greatly improved the image however I was left with more aberrations in the way of white specs appearing in the extreme shadows. The rest of the image was very good indeed so once open in Photoshop, I used the dust and scratches filter clear the artefacts from there. I was so impressed with the final image (and mainly thanks to the shadow areas which help to hide any artefacts) I messaged the the friend who was a part of this image back in 2017, when she was married on the beach. The response was a bit surprising from her when she offered to pay me to apply the filter fix to all the images I supplied back then. I had to think about her limited knowledge of such filters and decide that she wasn't making a statement about the quality of images I supplied seven years ago (I am sure). I did explain that the AI filter application was only used in "some cases". Where images previously rejected (by me) could now be restored to an acceptable standard. I emphasised the camera movement, focus issues, subject movement and high iso values may create such an unusable image and that is where I might use Topaz.

Best]

Ken A        

 

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[jankap]

TOPAZ is already known here. I have tried several apps (programs) of them. For my purposes - not professional, print size A3+ - the TOPAZ Photo AI is the best. They update the programs very often. Questions are answered immediately (time zone!).

Your picture is very nice. Perhaps you should have given the OOC picture too.😉

[Ken Abrahams]

Thanks Jankap, yes I suspect everyone knows the Topaz app here on the forum, its just that I couldn't find any mentions of its use here. Perhaps that is because the fine image quality of Leica lenses or that it's just not a topic anyone finds interesting? Thank you for adding some comments Jankap. 

[Ken Abrahams]

Screen shot of DNG 

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[LocalHero1953]

I use Topaz, and I think @jaapvdoes as well. A search for 'Topaz' in the forum pulls up quite a lot. I started this thread a couple of years ago comparing Topaz to the then new Lightroom Denoise AI - the latter was better in my results.

I now prefer Lightroom for denoise, which covers most of my needs. Most of my shots are with stabilised cameras and lenses, so camera shake is not normally a problem. I occasionally dip into Topaz to turn a reject from subject movement into a usable option - in my case it is almost always movement of the face (eyes, eyebrows and lips reveal it badly). I find it works well if you select the correct mode, and works best when the motion blur is not excessive, when it can turn a noticeable fault into one that no one will notice online.

I've been expecting Adobe to come up with a better AI sharpening tool along the same lines, so I can drop my Topaz subscription. I recently compared LR's AI Denoise and AI Super Resolution against Topaz, in case Adobe had sneaked sharpening in without telling us, but neither had anything like the capability of Topaz sharpening.

A notional advantage of Lightroom is that it creates a new DNG file, whereas Topaz returns a TIFF. The LR outcome is a bit misleading, as the new DNG is not a sensor raw data file, and its denoise actions are not non-destructible, except by retaining the original DNG. In general though, rather than keep two large image files, I delete the original DNG and retain the new DNG. Illogically, when editing with Topaz, I retain both DNG and new TIFF as a stacked image in LR. I really need to find a common sense approach to this!

 

Edit. You posted your original just as I was typing. That's an excellent recovery of a great memory. I am sure LR AI Denoise would do as good a job, though. For batch editing (I may have 500 images to process from a theatre performance), I run AI Denoise on any image taken above ISO 800 on my SL2-S. The Q2 is much noisier, and its noise is more ugly, so I use it less, and would inspect each image when I do use it.

Edited October 18, 2024 by LocalHero1953

[jaapv]

However I find that Topaz Photo AI is the next step up. Not only is the denoising better and more controllable, it has a number of other very usable controls for contrast, colour, etc.  It appears that this is a game of leapfrog. Not forgetting DXO PureRaw. At the moment Photo AI is the first step in my workflow for most images. 

[LocalHero1953]

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7 minutes ago, jaapv said:

However I find that Topaz Photo AI is the next step up. Not only is the denoising better and more controllable, it has a number of other very usable controls for contrast, colour, etc.  It appears that this is a game of leapfrog. Not forgetting DXO PureRaw. At the moment Photo AI is the first step in my workflow for most images. 

I must make a similar comparison with Topaz Photo AI - which I use for sharpening now, though the link I referred to above was for the older Denoise AI. Speed is also important to me. Lightroom recently chewed through 500+ images in about 90 minutes, which is good enough for daytime use. Any longer and I'd have run it overnight. 

[hansvons]

1 hour ago, LocalHero1953 said:

In general though, rather than keep two large image files, I delete the original DNG and retain the new DNG. Illogically, when editing with Topaz, I retain both DNG and new TIFF as a stacked image in LR. I really need to find a common sense approach to this!

I keep the original DNG and the Tiff.

Photo AI is a great little tool when results with other applications are not convincing and one looks for an alternative. This alone makes it worth keeping. The upressing is best in class, I find. I believe it‘s only a question of time a bigger fish buys them out. Photo AI already works seamlessly with C1.

[250swb]

4 hours ago, jaapv said:

However I find that Topaz Photo AI is the next step up. Not only is the denoising better and more controllable, it has a number of other very usable controls for contrast, colour, etc.  It appears that this is a game of leapfrog. Not forgetting DXO PureRaw. At the moment Photo AI is the first step in my workflow for most images. 

Have you tried the new denoise in Photoshop 2025 (Filters>Camera Raw Filter>Detail)? It opens the image as a new . dng and the corrections are live as you move the slider rather than having to guess from trial and error or experience the amount you need. It works like a dream now.

Edited October 18, 2024 by 250swb

[Jeff S]

Besides the thread link provided by LocalHero, there have been various other related discussions and software comparisons…

 

 

 

 

[SrMi]

Note that the recent updates have improved AI Denoise's practicality:

- The additional denoised DNGs are much better compressed and take much less space

- ACR can apply AI Denoise non-destructively and without an additional DNG.

[jaapv]

1 hour ago, 250swb said:

Have you tried the new denoise in Photoshop 2025 (Filters>Camera Raw Filter>Detail)? It opens the image as a new . dng and the corrections are live as you move the slider rather than having to guess from trial and error or experience the amount you need. It works like a dream now.

That is much like DXO then. No I left for Africa before I even knew that PS25 was out. Looking forward to trying it out. 

[SrMi]

2 hours ago, 250swb said:

Have you tried the new denoise in Photoshop 2025 (Filters>Camera Raw Filter>Detail)? It opens the image as a new . dng and the corrections are live as you move the slider rather than having to guess from trial and error or experience the amount you need. It works like a dream now.

If you turn on Technology Preview in ACR, AI Denoise will not create an additional DNG file. Instead, the denoise slider works in the same way as the old manual NR slider.

[250swb]

1 hour ago, SrMi said:

If you turn on Technology Preview in ACR, AI Denoise will not create an additional DNG file. Instead, the denoise slider works in the same way as the old manual NR slider.

Sorry I should have said 'as if' another .dng file because it puts the image back into ACR where denoise works. So a TIFF file will be treated 'as if' a .dng file. You don't need to turn on anything in ACR if you are running 2025, if you open a file in Photoshop 2025 (not Lightroom) and go to Filters>Camera Raw Filter>) it opens the file you are working on and allows a full preview of denoising as if it was the .dng file. The slider does not work in the same way as the old slider in which you had to guess the amount of denoise in ACR because it now works live, and equally denoise could not previously be applied retrospectively in Photoshop by a simple opening the file in the ACR filter. If there was anything other than a manual slider for denoise I never found it.

[LocalHero1953]

9 hours ago, LocalHero1953 said:

I must make a similar comparison with Topaz Photo AI - which I use for sharpening now, though the link I referred to above was for the older Denoise AI. Speed is also important to me. Lightroom recently chewed through 500+ images in about 90 minutes, which is good enough for daytime use. Any longer and I'd have run it overnight. 

Here is a shot lit with mixed low lighting at the back of a concert hall, taken at ISO 25000. SL2-S + 90-280SL @90.

In order:

1. SOOC - I adjusted the white balance after this
2. Final image after running through Adobe AI Denoise at 50% (chosen as the best option for denoising 200 images as a batch. The area between the pillars to the left has been masked off to warm up the temperature and reduce Exposure and Highlights. I should have darkened the 'blue' coat centre bottom, but overlooked it.
3. The image with the same adjustments as 2 except that it has been run through Topaz Photo for denoise (no face recovery, no sharpening). Topaz's automatic choice was the Normal model, but this was quite inadequate. The Extreme model made a mess of the player's face, so this is the Strong model, with some adjustments to achieve an acceptable result. There is a fine balance between denoise doing a good job of removing noise and turning an area into mush - the recover fine detail slider helps a bit, but not muc.

My aim was not to do too much image-specific local adjustment, though I made an exception in the case of the mask because I liked the image. But basically I want a denoise tool which I can run in batch mode.

My conclusion is that Topaz Photo denoise doesn't offer a great deal more than Adobe's denoise, although Adobe has no equivalent (yet) of the useful Sharpen and Face Recovery. Topaz's denoise appears to require very careful fine tuning, to remove noise but not wash out detail entirely - turning to mush seems to be a characteristic of Topaz - I haven't seen it to the same extent with Adobe, where turning up the slider makes everything a bit plastic. Choose your evil.

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[SrMi]

6 hours ago, 250swb said:

Sorry I should have said 'as if' another .dng file because it puts the image back into ACR where denoise works. So a TIFF file will be treated 'as if' a .dng file. You don't need to turn on anything in ACR if you are running 2025, if you open a file in Photoshop 2025 (not Lightroom) and go to Filters>Camera Raw Filter>) it opens the file you are working on and allows a full preview of denoising as if it was the .dng file. The slider does not work in the same way as the old slider in which you had to guess the amount of denoise in ACR because it now works live, and equally denoise could not previously be applied retrospectively in Photoshop by a simple opening the file in the ACR filter. If there was anything other than a manual slider for denoise I never found it.

To clarify, if you do not have the technology preview turned on in ACR's settings, you will not see the new Denoise UI (screen grab below), and ACR will create a second DNG with AI Denoise applied to the original. With the technology preview turned on, you will see the new UI (checkbox instead of a button), and AI Denoise will not create a second DNG.

 

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[SrMi]

In previous tests, I found that both DxO and Topaz Photo AI produced worse results than Adobe's Denoise AI.

Today, I made a quick comparison between LR's AI Denoise and Topaz Photo AI (applied on exported TIFF):

- Adobe has one setting (slider), while Topaz has four settings (three sliders and a button-set). Having more tuning knobs is worse unless necessary. After all, it is called AI and not manual NR.

- In default settings, Topaz creates more artifacts. See examples below (200% screen grabs).

On the other hand, if you do not use Adobe or DxO as a demosaicing tool in your post-processing chain, I believe Topaz is the only tool that can apply AI NR to an exported TIFF.

With Topaz, it is also possible to apply NR to the raw file. I have not looked into it.

As an Adobe user, I use Topaz Photo AI mainly for sharpening.

Topaz:

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Adobe:

[Ken Abrahams]

21 minutes ago, SrMi said:

In previous tests, I found that both DxO and Topaz Photo AI produced worse results than Adobe's Denoise AI.

Today, I made a quick comparison between LR's AI Denoise and Topaz Photo AI (applied on exported TIFF):

- Adobe has one setting (slider), while Topaz has four settings (three sliders and a button-set). Having more tuning knobs is worse unless necessary. After all, it is called AI and not manual NR.

- In default settings, Topaz creates more artifacts. See examples below (200% screen grabs).

On the other hand, if you do not use Adobe or DxO as a demosaicing tool in your post-processing chain, I believe Topaz is the only tool that can apply AI NR to an exported TIFF.

With Topaz, it is also possible to apply NR to the raw file. I have not looked into it.

As an Adobe user, I use Topaz Photo AI mainly for sharpening.

Topaz:

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Adobe:

Totally go along with what you say and describe here. What I have experienced is that the use of either of the applications seems to be image dependant. Sharpening of images is my primary use of either Adobe Denoise and or Topaz AI. I will always check the preview window at 100% in the Adobe PS or Bridge/ACR and will only use the function if shows a useful difference from the dng. I have tried to use face recovery in Topaz AI and although it shows good recovery with some images, on the whole it is shocking what it can do to slightly blurred images. The sliders in TPZ AI are very useful to bring things back to an acceptable standard especially if I know that I will be adding grain or darkening the image which help disguise these added artefacts. The facial recovery aspects are useable to the degree that those viewing the completed image know nothing about image aberrations and the photographers techniques to remove or hide aberrations in their images. In saying that, sometimes I cannot see any leftover or added artefacts by the app - at all!!

I go with the rule that "if I can see the aberrations, they are there and others will see them too", the same goes for halos from masking. I will get great results from Adobe denoise if it shows a good promise in preview window and then follow through with ACR sharpening at the end of working my image too. These two edits used together mostly produce fantastic results. I wont however use this dual applications if I am going to use Silver Efex, only the first denoise step gets applied. 

I use Topaz AI on the dng file sometimes and others I may only use ACR sharpening in the end stage and defer any pre sharpening/recovery because the Leica lens and photograopher have done their job to produce a very sharp image.

Ken   

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[LocalHero1953]

Topaz Photo face recovery has another issue in that the drop off to the surrounding area can be very sharp. A hand held up to the face can be 'recovered' and sharp where near or across the face, but goes blurred very quickly where it extends away, and looks clunky. I'm sure this can be corrected, with care, but, as pointed out above, the term 'AI' ought to mean this extra step is not needed.

[wparsonsgisnet]

I recently felt the need to do some noise reduction.

I am using an M(240) and photographing dance in theater lighting with a 35mm fle lens.  I process with Capture One; I've been using it since it came with my M8.  

I recently shot a dance where the lighting was quite dim.  My shots at 6400 are pretty noisy -- not a surprise.

So, I ran a test using Topaz Photo AI.  It did reduce the noise but changed the color definition in a disappointing way.  I can't show that image because I use the SW in test mode and can't save the image.

I then tried NR in Capture One and find the results about equivalent to the NR from topaz -- and the color much more to my liking.  All I did was move the luminance setting in the Noise Reduction panel from 50 to 100.  Here are the results.

The first pic is with the luminance at the default setting of 50; the second, at 100.  Changing the other NR settings did not improve things.  

Sorry the images are so small.  I hope you can see the differences I can on my screen.

Best to all,  Bill

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