Thank you so much for the thorough comparison and praise you shared for Gigapixel AI, Tony! We're so proud of our Face Recovery AI model and can't wait to see how it helps restore everyone's upscaled, low-resolution portrait photos!
I actually used Topaz to make a canvas print of my father in law for his funeral . From 80k JPG heavily cropped from a wedding reception environmental scene to a perfect 16x20 150 dpi canvas that was the centerpiece for the memorial service and now hangs prominently in my mother in laws foyer. I highly recommend it as well.
I actually used GigaPixel for 2 funerals as well. Both came to me to print out huge photos, but the photos they gave me were so low resolution (old smartphone pics in poor conditions). After sending them through GigaPixel, I then touched them up in Photoshop. The added detail made Photoshopping so much easier. The results were stunning especially after printing. They couldn't believe how good the results were. They regretted not taking professional studio style photos because realistically, many people only want studio style photos when it comes down to professional situations like for work or for funerals. It's kind of like insurance. You think it's an unnecessarily high expense until you actually need insurance. But the work I did made them seem as close to studio quality as you could get from very old smartphone pics.
I spent weeks testing all the major upscale and sharpening apps and came to the same conclusion you did - Gigapixel AI is the best of the bunch, particularly since you can choose 5 or 6 different algorithms and compare their results side-by-side in the app. This is particularly beneficial since an algorithm that worked great on one photo may not be the best choice for another photo. You're not stuck with one upscaling/sharpening method as with the other apps.
Thanks Tony, I read reviews of this and bought Topaz Gigaplxel AI a while ago. I am happy with it. No one had done such a great job of pointing out its limitations than you. That is a lot of work you did.
Topaz Gigapixel is great software. Amazing detail! Have several 40x60 prints on paper and metal hanging on the wall from A7RII, X-T4, and a stitched 5DIV pano
Just bought Gigapixel AI and it is absolutely worth every dime! Best $85 or so (after your discount) I've ever spent on photography equipment or software. Sure, it isn't perfect yet, but 9 times out of 10 the results are really gratifying. So glad I saw your video. Thanks Guys!
Gigapixel hands down the best to my eye. I wouldn't even pay anything for the first two. One didn't do much and the other was harsh. AI will just get better and better the more it "learns". I just got a pluggin from Waves that removes background noise from video with voice tracks. I can't even believe how well it works and I've been working with music and sound all my life. So the more I see from this AI technology, the more I have come to expect. And yet, each time I just get blown away at what is possible now. Perfect? No, but way better than what went before when you need it for specialized uses.
Speaking of cleaning up voice tracks, the new Voice Enhance feature in Final Cut Pro has changed how we shoot. I'm now much more comfortable filming in places with background noise (like loud ocean waves or lawn equipment). It can just completely eliminate that background noise and make it sound like we recorded in a studio. Amazing.
@@TonyAndChelsea I'm using Waves Clarity vx since I'm a PC guy and it sounds as if they both do the same thing. What amazes me is how the voice is largely uncolored and it simply removes the background noise. And you're right, removes cars and lawn mowers and whatever else. Astonishingly well. Enjoy your channel by the way.
I’ve been using Topaz’s products for a couple of years now. I shoot mainly wildlife (birds in flight), often requiring high ISO/shutter speeds. I also tend to crop quite heavily. Accordingly, my images can be noisy and not as high resolution as I’d like. However, DeNoise and Gigapixel are simply outstanding at correcting both. I also have Sharpen AI which is similarly incredible. My main RAW processing software is ON1 but, I’d never use its denoising, sharpening nor upscaling features despite them being incorporated within the ON1 package. The Topaz versions are all so much better (I’ve compared the results of each and also tried DXO ‘s Deep Prime). I’ve renewed my Topaz license every year as the number of updates they provide (along with superb customer support) is significant - they’re always improving. The highly talented Mark Smith introduced me to Topaz in one of his videos - I’d encourage anyone to try the free trials of all 3 programs, I’d be lost without them.
I bought all the Topaz AI software. I was blown away !!! I use Topaz for all my slides I scanned and brought new life the images. And I used Topaz Sharpening AI on my Nikon 50mm 1.2 AIS lens which is always been soft wide open and bam its mind blowing sharp when I put the images through Topaz AI Sharpening
Not sure about doing this on sentimental or potentially historically important prints. This may be a bit knit picky, but the fact that the program actually adds or looses textures and details, means that this is no longer a faithful reproduction or restoration of the original. To my mind, and in these particular circumstances, if the original was a bit blurred or indistinct then that's how it should remain, For everything else it seems great.
The question then remains if your brain can do a better mental restauration than an AI trained on millions of photos. It may still be able. But rather sooner than later, these AI tools will aquire what is called „superhuman“ capabilities. And then, only scientifically important content should remain untouched before further analysis.
@@falklumo Basically what I said although I did miss the scientific aspect. You must include images of historical importance, both national and personal in this too.
I'm a hobbyist, and I thinkTopaz has some great software for restoring old, low-res or scanned photos. Gigapixel AI does wonders for faces, IF there's enough information in the original, and if it's not obstructed or damaged. Sometimes, if the picture is too low-res out-of-focus, it guesses wrong about what the eyes or teeth should look like, and though it may be a pleasing image, it does not look like the person it is an image of. Shadows on the face can throw it off as well.
I use Gigapixel AI all the time to do just what you discussed -- restoration of old photos. It even significantly improves tiny images, such as three pictures I had that were basically thumbnails. All three were less than 10KB, but when Gigapixel AI corrected and upscaled them, they were perfectly usable as real photographs. I do agree, however, that the app does sometimes produce odd artifacts, some of which can be creepy. This is what I noticed about the Face Recovery feature. If you start with a very poor image, the face can end up looking like a lifeless "doll" face. Luckily, the percent face recovery slider can be lowered so as to keep from overdoing the adjustment. Or it can be turned off altogether (which is what I do sometimes). I will continue to use Gigapixel AI to restore my thousands of old, scanned photos. It's an amazing app that can turn even an old Instamatic picture from the 1960s into a nice looking image.
I shoot birds with a Canon R6 and the RF 100-500mm lens. Awesome lens but a bit short for a 20mp camera. I have used a combination of Topaz Gigapixel and Topaz Sharpen. I generally have more luck with the low resolution setting but I do have to play with the settings on each photo. Results are almost always amazing. I have stuck with the R6 for over a year even though I had originally planned to get an R5 but they were hard to come by when I was shopping so I bought the R6 for the AF. I have used the same workflow for old family pics with great results.
The Topaz suite is the reason I returned the A7iv and am continuing on with my D7200 and the many lenses, accessories and flash units that work IR with CLS and RT with YN622. The 5 star images from any shoot are few enough they can be processed with Gigapixel Ai, without any need for new equipment. For video my s21 ultra smartphone and Resolve 18 are all I need for the limited amount I do. Great video and happy to see you showing this and also your vids legitimizing smartphone cameras.
I played around with Topaz Gigapixel AI a year or so ago but just took the plunge recently. Most of my work is landscape and wildlife and I had some older photos I wanted help in resizing to get some decent wall prints. I was surprised after fiddling with the program for a while. The results were really pretty good. I haven't done much editing with portraits, but if you know what your doing, you'll find Gigapixel to be a program worth buying.
I got Gigapixel in a bundle when they had a sale, and I threw some old photos of friends and myself that were from the 90s and looked terrible. It worked AMAZING. However, in a few of them, you could see it was sourcing the eyes from elsewhere and it gave me big anime eyes, which made me laugh. But 9 out of 10 times, you couldn't really tell. The images looked GREAT. So now I go look for all those old images of celebs where back then 600x200 was "high res" and let Gigapixel do it's magic, and again, it's amazing. It's not 100% perfect, but it's it's like black magic voodoo.
Gigapixel also works very well with Apple's Photos App; in fact, the process is simpler than Photoshop. My old fuzzy scans of prints are all there so as to be backed up to Apple iCloud. It is very like using the App Remini which does the exact same thing on the iPhone but is a lot easier to use. It is a shame it is only the faces, if only AI could clean up necks torsos, and hands too.
I absolutely LOVE Gigapixel. Seriously. I create 3D artwork (often times for posters and sometimes as book covers). Though I have a really nice computer to render my images fast on, it makes the process even twice as fast as I don't have to render at the size in which the artwork will be placed on. I can render a 300 DPI 16x20 image in 20-30 minutes and turn it into a giant mural with Gigapixel (which would have taken a couple hours of render time if I had rendered at a mural size).😊 I too recommend this software.
I bought Gigapixel after trying it, I found it to be awesome for landscape and travel photos especially those taken with the old 350d but I found it better when processed in this order Denoise AI, Sharpen AI, and lastly Gigapixel AI, the difference can be massive!!!
Holy actual balls. I knew that ai upscaling would be a thing but I never saw it coming this soon. Last I checked, ai-upscaling was kinda "okay thanks" but this is ridiculous. Next thing it's gonna do is draw us photos based on text requests.
I have the full suite of Topaz products. The one i use all the time is DeNoise, both for removing noise and sharpening. The latest version does a really good job at both. Best to first remove any sharpening and clairty in C1 or lightroom before moving over to Denoise. The latest version is much faster, and thus i am more likely to use it within a workflow for pictures with minor benefits. It usually keeps it clean enough, where i can do further local clarity/sharpening if needed on an image. It also makes bokeh on a higher iso image melt better (when good to start with). I typiicaly use it now on anything over 800iso. Topaz Sharpen AI, i seldom use. Typically if i am, it means i am trying to recover an image, which means that most likely it is just for personal satisfaction. Sometimes it is like magic. It is also really slow (the other products have been greatly sped up, but not sharpen so much). There may be more for me to discover in Sharpen (?), however, for general purposes, the sharpening in Denoise is all i need. Denoise is also intelligent, i.e., only sharpening what is in focus. Gigapixel is an amazing product for upscaling. I use it in two ways. Sometimes i have an already good photo shot on a 42 pmx sensor, and i want to get the best possible (larger) print, so i will upscale it 2x with standard, and then adjust it in photoshop for 600dpi and final print size (typicaly bicubic reducer) before printing (canon pro printer). This replaces print sharpening for me, and i allow the Canon pro printing software to do the final automatic sharpening based on paper type (which is gentle). Also i will use gigapixel when using a photo from an a6300 that has been cropped (often at 4x). The other way i use it is to recover old photos. It is really amazing what it can do. For some kind of pics, it can take a 50 or 100kb compressed jpg and make it look like an original. For this i am often at 6x and experiment with different modes. The art mode often works best, particular with block colors. It is hit or miss with highly compressed faces with extreme upscaling. It might get part of the face correct, but grossly distort other parts (when there is not much to start with). It also does really good at removing jpg compression artifacts (i have some really old scans and 1 mpx images from the first nikon digital cameras). Topaz is getting better and better at keeping photos looking more natural after processing.
for wildlife I now put most shots through Topaz DeNoise AI. I'm not sure how it's doing it, but it seems to be able to recover what I saw in the viewfinder from the slightly soft noisy shot that the sensor saw. Absolutely incredible software
I got all four of the Topaz apps as a Christmas gift from my daughter. I have a large amount of film photos from scanned negatives going back to the 1970s. Playing with the Topaz software, Lightroom Classic (I have your book BTW) and Photoshop has given me these photos as I never had them before. I've found that Gigapixel is very useful for my wildlife photography when I crop in to far away images that are not the main subject of the photo... especially birds.
I agree that the new version of Gigapixel is quite amazing. I'm perhaps even more blown away by their Sharpen AI software which does a mind-blowing job of transforming a photo with super soft focus into one that looks naturally sharp. Nothing else I've tried comes anywhere close...
I'll give the rest of their suite a test because I'm so impressed with these results. I'm interested in the video processing tools for restoring some of our old instructional videos.
@@TonyAndChelsea I don't do video so can't speak to that (though I've heard great things) and definitely do try out Sharpen AI. My jaw hit the floor the first time I used it on an image that I thought was unsalvageable...it's like magic and the masking works great too!
For sure Gigapixel has something cool there but so far only for older pics. None of my pix taken with a modern camera has been useful. I have used Topaz Denoise AI a few times, that's kinda cool too. But I'm hoping this will come to video soon, that would be amazing.
I was asked to upscale a frame from my Sony a7Riv to the size of a large wall. Using GP AI simply blew me away - no detail was lost from the original and sharpness remained the same or better w/ no issues.
Been using Topaz for a couple of years or so and it works wonders. DeNoise is my goto to clean and lightly sharpen, and Sharpen AI if there are any major focus related issues to deal with. The Auto setting tends to auto detect issues well and do a good job, but manually selecting the alternative models is sometimes better. Highly recommended tools.
There's a fantastic application on Android called Remini that works extremely well and works miracles with old blurry photos. Don't know if it's available on IOS. Highly recommended.
Way back in the day I got the entire app suite by Topaz. And because of other tools, I sort of forgot about it. Then a couple of years ago the new AI tools became really popular, but IMO they were too expensive - I would not buy them. But Topaz hadn’t forgotten about me. You log in with your account and BOOM: free upgrades from back in the day for several of the tools, and a small fee for the rest, free 1 year maintenance. I got the whole AI-bunch for a bargain. I was really happy. Now, Gigapixel, Denoise and Sharpen are really every bit as good as they make them out to be. you can’t go wrong!
I've been using Gigapixel for over a year now, and the face recovery feature recently introduced really makes old photos come to life once more. Although more than once I got faces with glasses, as the AI deduced that the person was wearing them when in fact they didn't...
Yes, it’s great but not perfect. It’s “seen” faces where they are not and added a random detailed human face to the background of my photo before. Kinda freaked me out a bit when the rock identified as a person.
I see software like that quite critical. The way an AI works that it uses patterns it has learned from millions of other photos it was trained with. So it basically adds content that has not been on the actual photo. Of course every photo gets photoshopped, but during photoshopping you work with what is there, but never add content from other photos. The idea of taking a photo is showing the subject that actually is in front of your camera. Of course with AI a lot is possible, as we saw with the FaceApp for example. That is quite a dangerous path. You could give an AI a photo of a dressed person and it could create a nude photo of you. The AI did not really see their private parts, but if it was trained with millions of nude photos of other people, the AI would just "guess" how that person might look nude. I am sure sooner or later we will see such an AI and it will make people feel really uncomfortable. That is an extreme example, but those upscaling AIs already go into that direction. The AI can't see much detail of an eye, but it sees that it is blue. So it will just create a fake blue eye, because it knows how blue eyes look like. Especially with portraits that should be avoided. I wonder if paparazzi will use software like that. They often take photos from a mile away. Although they already have an 800mm lens plus a teleconverter, the subject still is tiny in the frame. So I imagine they will be very tempted to use an upscaling AI.
I used superres when a client came with her 340kb picture and she wanted 40x50cm print… it looked OK but the client was happy with it, all that matters🤣🤣
Remini does not rebuild the existing image, it replaces eyes, mouths, and noses from some database. It also makes no attempt to change anything that is not a face. That said, no one notices blurred details beyond a face.
@@onlysublime are you starting your workflow with a RAW file? If not, I’d suggest you do so. Use the RAW correction tab in Denoise and turn down the sharpen slider. Save the processed file as a Dng or Tiff then open that file in Sharpen. Turn down the Denoise slider here as you’ve already done that. If you intend using Gigapixel as well, save the Sharpened image as a Dng or Tiff, sending that to GP. Save the resultant file also as either Dng or Tiff. I’ve found that any cropping is best done in Gigapixel. Final image editing (colour, exposure, shadows, highlights etc) should be done after the Topaz treatment in your usual RAW processor - you should still have a fully editable Dng or Tiff to do this. Only convert to jpeg to post on line or share . These products are all fantastic but, if you’re still struggling, email Topaz’s customer support. They’ll put you right.
@@mikeyb9819 Hi, thanks for your input! I'll try out your steps. My normal workflow is this: RAW editing in LightRoom -> export as TIFF -> load into DeNoise AI for denoising and sharpening -> batch convert DeNoise AI results in Photoshop to sRGB (for Internet posting and distribution) and Adobe RGB versions (for archiving). I tried using DeNoise for denoising and Sharpen for sharpening but to be honest, I thought DeNoise did a better job of sharpening than Sharpen. The only time I try Sharpen AI now is for severe cases like very missed focus and even then, the results seem unnatural (either too crunchy or strange artifacts). I don't use Gigapixel AI for my images as I'm starting off with my Canon EOS R5 45 MP images which is plenty for me. What I use Gigapixel for is when I need a high resolution version of artwork so that I can convert it to a vector image. Or old photos.
Something I do with topaz is actually rescale the final result down to the size of the input image. I upscale a poor image by 2x/4x, then half the resolution with super sampling in photoshop to 0.5x or 0.25x, making it the original size again. The benefit is that it visibly cleans up the AI's errors while also still getting a sharper result, even at the same resolution. I've done this to a lot of my very very old jpegs (which were compressed to work with bad internet), not to upscale them, but to remove the artifacts and increase the general quality of them (at the same resulting resolution).
I started using the Topaz trio (giga, de noise,sharpen) around a month ago and every time I upload a old photo to the apps I get my mind blown, incredible software worth every penny
I find Pixelmator Photo does better upscaling than Lightroom. I regularly edit in Pixelmator when I want to increase apparent detail. The old rule where you can’t make up detail that isn’t there still applies. I suppose if software is really smart it could recognize the camera was a Nikon and just replace the logo on it, but that would not work for unknown subjects like people.
Like a lot of photographers, I started out shooting with a decent intro level camera using similarly situated glass, so this program is a great help in realizing the potential in much of the work that was better than I knew how to be. Couldn't agree with you more.
Topaz is like Star Trek magnify and enhance. It has been top of this game for years now with topaz ai and now with better faces its even better. Thansk from comparing Tony.
I used Topaz for a project, and found the same great results. If the image is already sharp, it didn't seem worth it to upscale. But a low res photo that wasn't sharp worked great. Thanks for the comparison.
GP is amazing. I kept my D7200 and just run the 4 and 5 star photos through GP as jpegs (from the NEF files) without even enlarging. (24mp is plenty) They come back clear, sharp, noise free, even CA free. It just works!
The Old Sage liked to tell us: get the best original you can. I think he still has the best hand here although some of this software could be very valuable to aid in editing older photos that have significant value. advancements in lens design and in image stabilization will likely make the Old Sage' admonishments hard to beat.
I have the bundle... It does amazing work but , as you saw, it can make up things on faces and artifacts on sharpening on textures and hair. Still very good.
Right now I had to decide between "upgrading" from my micro four thirds setup to some kind of full frame ecosystem but I decided instead to purchase a kit of cine primes instead and spend more on wireless follow focus. Why? because I can get super-fast lenses (T1.0) for a couple hundred each to get cinematic bokeh, and I can use sharpening apps to create productions that regular people will enjoy the quality of. These AI sharpening tools make a big difference to my strategy. I could shoot a wedding in 5K open gate video (in 4:3 aspect at 18MP per frame) and then extract any choice frames and run them through gigapixel to make them printworthy. Not quite the same a strobe lit portraits, but they complement them well. All I need to do is use continuous lighting everywhere. AI sharpening might not be a game changer but it is a force multiplier. I already did that for a client who I shot video for, and then she requested some stills from that video. Gigapixel made a huge difference and I got paid because of it.
Back in the fall of 2013 I worked on a project with my uncle (who passed in the fall of 2014) which he had started while I was still working. One of my daughters bought me an Epson v500 scanner. It was a godsend for me working with prints and negatives. It had software to repair prints that were in bad shape. That worked very well! The negative scanning (top and bottom scanning) was also very effective! I still have it and have plans for additional usage. I do have Topaz but it doesn’t include the Gigapixel ai feature. I am familiar with Adobe’s process for increasing resolution. Not great! Thanks for your episode today!
Hi Tony. I purchased the 3 Topaz apps 6 months ago. A friend started posting amazing wildlife photos that looked like a fro from the BBC had taken them. I asked him what size loan he had taken to upgrade his gear. Then he sent me some of the pre edited images and explained he had bought this software. What I’m finding most useful is the RAW denoise. I almost never use a tripod these days on holidays. I crank up the ISO to get the stutter speed I need then later run denoise AI on the raw file. This works partially well for blue hour landscape photos or when shooting fast moving wild life in low light. On some occasions in museums That are dark and don’t allow a flash or tripod I’ve taken 16 images hand held at 3200 ISO or even higher, denois AI the raw files then image averaged the 16 frames. The results are amazing, and I get those impossible pictures in my Canon T6s and budget lenses.
I have three main Topaz photo apps, Sharpen Ai, Denoise Ai and Gigapixel Ai. Been happy with all three even using the "auto" settings. But as you said, there have been a few instances where I needed tweak the final results using the apps sliders. However, the end results were better than what I started with so... all in all, very happy with Tppaz products
3:06 I’ve found enhance details to work for high MP cameras when moire on fences is a problem, but only the raw details checkbox. The super resolution checkbox adds a ton of color noise for no reason and makes the files huge.
I just used Gigapixel AI ..... WOW!!!! I need to use my passport photo for a VISA photo. I scanned in the Passport photo an it looked horrible. It was grainy and looked out of focus. I ran it through Gigapixel AI and it looks good. I'm amazed!!!!!
Hi, real talk, I bought Gigapixel last year and the 250% increase was absolute garbage. Random portraits would have horrifying results, eyes would have random splotches and English letters would turn into alien languages. I’d never recommend Gigapixel to anyone at any price, even for Black Friday sales.
Last time I looked at Gigapixel AI, it had something like 4 different AI-trained "models" that you could select from (plus some individually-tunable parameters). This is good because each model is (presumably) trained with a different set of photos, and will provide the best results for different kinds of image content. But how do you choose the best model for each of your images? Did you find you needed to try all 4 models, adjust each for the best output, and then pick the overall best result? Or did you find a way to pick just one model and thus speed up the process?
I wonder if it may be easier to fix the low res photo, because it's easier, and you may give a better chance for the AI to shine. Like if there's extra hair that you don't want, or weird tooth shape, it may be easier to clone a single pixel on the original than messing with complex detail on the output.
My use case would be to use it on old family photos I am converting to digital. But it is an enormous project and I would likely only do a s app percentage of them? So I haven’t pulled the trigger.
I personally like Topaz Sharpen AI better to sharpen old pictures rather than Gigapixel AI as it concentrates better in sharpening (fixing) old pictures. I use Gigapixel AI if the resolution (pixels) of the image is just not there and/or I need to print an image, but most of my images are used only online.
Picked up the Topaz Gigapixel + Denoise + Sharpen suite just recently and have been really impressed. Even just as a hobbyist I love the difference it makes to some of my shots. All those "I wish I'd had my bigger zoom when I took this so I didn't need to crop as much" shots, or with Denoise in particular, several birds and planes in flight shots where I'd had to crank the ISO up really high and ended up with great but very noisy shots. Not cheap obviously, especially for someone just doing it as a hobby, but at least as a perpetual licence it's a one time hit.
I bought Gigapixel and yes, it is the best of the bunch in my opinion, and cleans up many of the details in your photo, with what looks like more sharpened added detail texture from sometimes soft detail or blurred detail in the original. Plus many of us only have 24 MP cameras and not 45MP cameras, so upsizing for very large prints can also be useful, or as in your examples fixing low res from higher iso without flash ... or fixing cell phone images or archival family photos that people sometimes give me to edit, this can be useful.
Just had a play with some old b&w photos from the 1960s I was sent the other day. Topaz is amazing on faces! It is necessary to play with the settings a bit. (I should not say this but... I used the trial version on a hi-res monitor and took a screen capture...) Then into Affinity Photo to remove spots & blemishes.
Thank you, for sharing this! I have Remini for cell phones...OMG this is amazing. I have Iphone pro max 12, as great as it is the selfie images are just ok. But if you run a selfie through Remini, you can get an almost perfect picture. I have even uploaded older images to it to test out restoring them, and it works great.
I have Topaz Sharpen AI for sharpening faces on my scanned medium format film negatives. When it works it is amazing. When it fails, it fails hard. Probably unique to my machine but I experience a lot of software crashes.
Try to run it without any videos running while it’s processing or minimize them; a lot of the issues are around video card hardware acceleration I have a 5950x; 128gigs; 3080; all Samsung 980’s… and still get random issues but only if I have a UA-cam video going while it’s trying to save a file. Also be careful about un-zooming = more time = more resource heavy
@@07wrxtr1 thank you for the tips! I looked at the processing preferences and it was set to “Auto” i changed it to my video card for now and in 10min of fooling around with making a mask I had no crashes. If it gives me more problems I’ll next try setting it to “CPU”. I’ll make sure to not have UA-cam running in the background. I have a 2070 Super.
I bought all three Topaz products a couple of years ago, and I think they’re great. My go to is Topaz Denoise AI, as I’m usually out and about around sunrise when the light isn’t so good. I can’t say enough about this product, it’s awesome as far as I’m concerned. I’m an amateur photographer who took up photography during lockdown. (Canon 5D MKIII)
A slight tangent to your discussion but had you seen Jan Wegener's discussion on using combination of DXO and Topaz for denoising when shooting wildlife with extremely high ISO? Had you had any experience using DXO? Nice comparisons, thx for demo.
Thanx Tony, needed this real bad and like yesterday lol. I have watched your channel through the years, learned a-lot from your experience, insight and meticulous tests and comparisons.
I've been using the full suite of Topaz Labs tools for two years and I find that Topaz Labs Denoise AI and GigaPixel AI are better in more photos (95%) than ON1 Resize/Resize AI or NoNoise AI. I use ON1 PhotoRAW 2019-2022 versions with the full bundle of add-ons for ON1, but not the subscription version. I don't like being forced into a subscription ecosystem.
Personally I'm not looking for more detail, I think it's a bit unrealistic to expect there to be more detail in the enhanced image over the original. All I'm interested in is, can I enhance a say 12mp shot to 48mp and then print say an A1 sized print, and the quality / detail be the same as the original... As long as I can create large prints from a 12mp image I'm happy. At the end of the day, people who buy my prints will hang them on the wall, they won't be pixels peeping, so as long as the A1 48mp print looks as good as the A3 12mp print, that's all I care about.
For out of focus, blurry, old or new images Remini blows the doors off other apps for Facial Reconstruction. In my opinion others did not come close. I would upscale first if a really small image with one of these apps then run Remini. Note it is only a phone app now so I will transfer back and forth from PC. Would love it if they make a version for desktops!
So what do you do when there is something wonky. An old scanned photo of my dad's family looks great with Gigap, but in every mode, my grandfather's mustache is gone! In PhotoAi it did the same thing.
I haveTopaz Gigapixel AI - and I agree it's fantastic. I use it when I want to upscale pictures that were taken on my Google Pixel 6 Pro. I find I can get very acceptable A3 sized pictures that are easily good enough to sell. I typically use this in conjunction with Topax Sharpen and Topax DeNoise .
I love the Gigapixel AI. It is not perfect, but just think how much better it will be in the future. It is moving in the right direction. It really is AI
Very interesting comparison, it makes me wonder would you bother to make this comparison today. Is this even make sense to do it again are this things improved or maybe all the ai technology is rather pivoting in generative AI direction?
Interesting, I think Remini beats them all. It’s for phones only, but you transfer the image to your phone and the processed result back to your computer and away you go in your photo editing software. For facial features specifically, it doesn’t tackle anything else, Remini wins - and you get 5 free restorations per day….. beat that!
I've used Remini too. It can "restore" portrait images - meaning, expertly patch together complex facial related textures from it's library - the result is astonishing. Really like having an artist at your side. On the other hand, there are areas where Remini can't help - certain types of hair just come out as blotchy bits. It is also can't fix faces posed in certain angles. Again, I've used it both to great effect and to failure.
I bought the spare and the denoise.. so far I hate it. It seems like everything I put into the apps looks worse than what I started with. I was really disappointed in the product. I don't know I am doing something wrong or something is set up wrong. The photos I look worse than the original before I start. Then the final rendering are really bad.
Pixelmator Pro ML Super Resolution does OK - not great, but is a setting that should be compared to the 3 Apps here. The difference might be that Pixelmator has so many other great features you won't likely find in these others. Also Photoshop's Neural Filters………not any more perfect as any of these, but still a player. The point is that most photographers and artists already have super-feature-rich Photoshop and many Mac users have Pixelmator as well.
I purchased Topaz Sharpen AI, which works well but I found the process to be somewhat slow. I've used it for pictures I had from back when I shot with a Canon Powershot camera and the improvement was great, especially with removing noise in the photo. Other than the processing speed, I highly recommend Topaz AI.
I have a question: if Adobe “enhance” has “zero difference” between the before and after images, doesn’t that mean the following?: if I have a sharp, great, terrific image that prints “perfectly” at 18” on the long side…… if I ran the image through enhance and see NO DIFFERENCE on the monitor (more sharp/less sharp) shouldn’t that mean that I could print the “enhanced” image at 36” on the long side and see “no difference” in the print? Essentially, does Adobe enhance just take a sharp image and let you print it 2x as big (long side) and get the same sharp result as original? If so, is it really designed for just taking sharp images and allowing you to print larger Images?
Thank you so much for the thorough comparison and praise you shared for Gigapixel AI, Tony! We're so proud of our Face Recovery AI model and can't wait to see how it helps restore everyone's upscaled, low-resolution portrait photos!
I use Gigapixel with Pixel 6 Pro images - a fantastic combination for A3 sized prints
Kind of expensive. Bill Gates vibes.
I actually used Topaz to make a canvas print of my father in law for his funeral . From 80k JPG heavily cropped from a wedding reception environmental scene to a perfect 16x20 150 dpi canvas that was the centerpiece for the memorial service and now hangs prominently in my mother in laws foyer. I highly recommend it as well.
I actually used GigaPixel for 2 funerals as well. Both came to me to print out huge photos, but the photos they gave me were so low resolution (old smartphone pics in poor conditions). After sending them through GigaPixel, I then touched them up in Photoshop. The added detail made Photoshopping so much easier. The results were stunning especially after printing. They couldn't believe how good the results were. They regretted not taking professional studio style photos because realistically, many people only want studio style photos when it comes down to professional situations like for work or for funerals. It's kind of like insurance. You think it's an unnecessarily high expense until you actually need insurance. But the work I did made them seem as close to studio quality as you could get from very old smartphone pics.
I spent weeks testing all the major upscale and sharpening apps and came to the same conclusion you did - Gigapixel AI is the best of the bunch, particularly since you can choose 5 or 6 different algorithms and compare their results side-by-side in the app. This is particularly beneficial since an algorithm that worked great on one photo may not be the best choice for another photo. You're not stuck with one upscaling/sharpening method as with the other apps.
Thanks for sharing your results, Larry! I do like the side-by-side option Topaz gives you.
i donno if u heared about this but HitPaw Photo Enhancer is rly good soft
Thanks Tony, I read reviews of this and bought Topaz Gigaplxel AI a while ago. I am happy with it. No one had done such a great job of pointing out its limitations than you. That is a lot of work you did.
Topaz Gigapixel is great software. Amazing detail! Have several 40x60 prints on paper and metal hanging on the wall from A7RII, X-T4, and a stitched 5DIV pano
Just bought Gigapixel AI and it is absolutely worth every dime! Best $85 or so (after your discount) I've ever spent on photography equipment or software. Sure, it isn't perfect yet, but 9 times out of 10 the results are really gratifying. So glad I saw your video. Thanks Guys!
Gigapixel hands down the best to my eye. I wouldn't even pay anything for the first two. One didn't do much and the other was harsh. AI will just get better and better the more it "learns". I just got a pluggin from Waves that removes background noise from video with voice tracks. I can't even believe how well it works and I've been working with music and sound all my life. So the more I see from this AI technology, the more I have come to expect. And yet, each time I just get blown away at what is possible now. Perfect? No, but way better than what went before when you need it for specialized uses.
Speaking of cleaning up voice tracks, the new Voice Enhance feature in Final Cut Pro has changed how we shoot. I'm now much more comfortable filming in places with background noise (like loud ocean waves or lawn equipment). It can just completely eliminate that background noise and make it sound like we recorded in a studio. Amazing.
@@TonyAndChelsea I'm using Waves Clarity vx since I'm a PC guy and it sounds as if they both do the same thing. What amazes me is how the voice is largely uncolored and it simply removes the background noise. And you're right, removes cars and lawn mowers and whatever else. Astonishingly well. Enjoy your channel by the way.
@@BirdYoumans The account that contacted you is a spammer, not the same as This channel, please report them...
I’ve been using Topaz’s products for a couple of years now. I shoot mainly wildlife (birds in flight), often requiring high ISO/shutter speeds. I also tend to crop quite heavily. Accordingly, my images can be noisy and not as high resolution as I’d like. However, DeNoise and Gigapixel are simply outstanding at correcting both. I also have Sharpen AI which is similarly incredible. My main RAW processing software is ON1 but, I’d never use its denoising, sharpening nor upscaling features despite them being incorporated within the ON1 package. The Topaz versions are all so much better (I’ve compared the results of each and also tried DXO ‘s Deep Prime). I’ve renewed my Topaz license every year as the number of updates they provide (along with superb customer support) is significant - they’re always improving. The highly talented Mark Smith introduced me to Topaz in one of his videos - I’d encourage anyone to try the free trials of all 3 programs, I’d be lost without them.
I bought all the Topaz AI software. I was blown away !!! I use Topaz for all my slides I scanned and brought new life the images. And I used Topaz Sharpening AI on my Nikon 50mm 1.2 AIS lens which is always been soft wide open and bam its mind blowing sharp when I put the images through Topaz AI Sharpening
What settings do you use?I have the V4.1.0 and for some reason, I got better results with the earlier version.
Not sure about doing this on sentimental or potentially historically important prints. This may be a bit knit picky, but the fact that the program actually adds or looses textures and details, means that this is no longer a faithful reproduction or restoration of the original.
To my mind, and in these particular circumstances, if the original was a bit blurred or indistinct then that's how it should remain,
For everything else it seems great.
The question then remains if your brain can do a better mental restauration than an AI trained on millions of photos. It may still be able. But rather sooner than later, these AI tools will aquire what is called „superhuman“ capabilities. And then, only scientifically important content should remain untouched before further analysis.
@@falklumo Basically what I said although I did miss the scientific aspect.
You must include images of historical importance, both national and personal in this too.
I'm a hobbyist, and I thinkTopaz has some great software for restoring old, low-res or scanned photos. Gigapixel AI does wonders for faces, IF there's enough information in the original, and if it's not obstructed or damaged. Sometimes, if the picture is too low-res out-of-focus, it guesses wrong about what the eyes or teeth should look like, and though it may be a pleasing image, it does not look like the person it is an image of. Shadows on the face can throw it off as well.
I use Gigapixel AI all the time to do just what you discussed -- restoration of old photos. It even significantly improves tiny images, such as three pictures I had that were basically thumbnails. All three were less than 10KB, but when Gigapixel AI corrected and upscaled them, they were perfectly usable as real photographs. I do agree, however, that the app does sometimes produce odd artifacts, some of which can be creepy. This is what I noticed about the Face Recovery feature. If you start with a very poor image, the face can end up looking like a lifeless "doll" face. Luckily, the percent face recovery slider can be lowered so as to keep from overdoing the adjustment. Or it can be turned off altogether (which is what I do sometimes).
I will continue to use Gigapixel AI to restore my thousands of old, scanned photos. It's an amazing app that can turn even an old Instamatic picture from the 1960s into a nice looking image.
That's great! You should also test what DxO software does with noise. It's mindblowing
I shoot birds with a Canon R6 and the RF 100-500mm lens. Awesome lens but a bit short for a 20mp camera. I have used a combination of Topaz Gigapixel and Topaz Sharpen. I generally have more luck with the low resolution setting but I do have to play with the settings on each photo. Results are almost always amazing. I have stuck with the R6 for over a year even though I had originally planned to get an R5 but they were hard to come by when I was shopping so I bought the R6 for the AF. I have used the same workflow for old family pics with great results.
I just had a very good experience with Gigapixel restoring a 50 year old, heavily faded print. It was pretty amazing at restoring the face.
The Topaz suite is the reason I returned the A7iv and am continuing on with my D7200 and the many lenses, accessories and flash units that work IR with CLS and RT with YN622. The 5 star images from any shoot are few enough they can be processed with Gigapixel Ai, without any need for new equipment. For video my s21 ultra smartphone and Resolve 18 are all I need for the limited amount I do.
Great video and happy to see you showing this and also your vids legitimizing smartphone cameras.
I played around with Topaz Gigapixel AI a year or so ago but just took the plunge recently. Most of my work is landscape and wildlife and I had some older photos I wanted help in resizing to get some decent wall prints. I was surprised after fiddling with the program for a while. The results were really pretty good. I haven't done much editing with portraits, but if you know what your doing, you'll find Gigapixel to be a program worth buying.
I got Gigapixel in a bundle when they had a sale, and I threw some old photos of friends and myself that were from the 90s and looked terrible. It worked AMAZING. However, in a few of them, you could see it was sourcing the eyes from elsewhere and it gave me big anime eyes, which made me laugh. But 9 out of 10 times, you couldn't really tell. The images looked GREAT. So now I go look for all those old images of celebs where back then 600x200 was "high res" and let Gigapixel do it's magic, and again, it's amazing. It's not 100% perfect, but it's it's like black magic voodoo.
Gigapixel also works very well with Apple's Photos App; in fact, the process is simpler than Photoshop. My old fuzzy scans of prints are all there so as to be backed up to Apple iCloud. It is very like using the App Remini which does the exact same thing on the iPhone but is a lot easier to use. It is a shame it is only the faces, if only AI could clean up necks torsos, and hands too.
I absolutely LOVE Gigapixel. Seriously. I create 3D artwork (often times for posters and sometimes as book covers). Though I have a really nice computer to render my images fast on, it makes the process even twice as fast as I don't have to render at the size in which the artwork will be placed on. I can render a 300 DPI 16x20 image in 20-30 minutes and turn it into a giant mural with Gigapixel (which would have taken a couple hours of render time if I had rendered at a mural size).😊 I too recommend this software.
I bought Gigapixel after trying it, I found it to be awesome for landscape and travel photos especially those taken with the old 350d but I found it better when processed in this order Denoise AI, Sharpen AI, and lastly Gigapixel AI, the difference can be massive!!!
Holy actual balls. I knew that ai upscaling would be a thing but I never saw it coming this soon. Last I checked, ai-upscaling was kinda "okay thanks" but this is ridiculous. Next thing it's gonna do is draw us photos based on text requests.
Would have been nice to see test and results with the same photo 🤷🏽♂️
I have the full suite of Topaz products. The one i use all the time is DeNoise, both for removing noise and sharpening. The latest version does a really good job at both. Best to first remove any sharpening and clairty in C1 or lightroom before moving over to Denoise. The latest version is much faster, and thus i am more likely to use it within a workflow for pictures with minor benefits. It usually keeps it clean enough, where i can do further local clarity/sharpening if needed on an image. It also makes bokeh on a higher iso image melt better (when good to start with). I typiicaly use it now on anything over 800iso.
Topaz Sharpen AI, i seldom use. Typically if i am, it means i am trying to recover an image, which means that most likely it is just for personal satisfaction. Sometimes it is like magic. It is also really slow (the other products have been greatly sped up, but not sharpen so much). There may be more for me to discover in Sharpen (?), however, for general purposes, the sharpening in Denoise is all i need. Denoise is also intelligent, i.e., only sharpening what is in focus.
Gigapixel is an amazing product for upscaling. I use it in two ways. Sometimes i have an already good photo shot on a 42 pmx sensor, and i want to get the best possible (larger) print, so i will upscale it 2x with standard, and then adjust it in photoshop for 600dpi and final print size (typicaly bicubic reducer) before printing (canon pro printer). This replaces print sharpening for me, and i allow the Canon pro printing software to do the final automatic sharpening based on paper type (which is gentle). Also i will use gigapixel when using a photo from an a6300 that has been cropped (often at 4x).
The other way i use it is to recover old photos. It is really amazing what it can do. For some kind of pics, it can take a 50 or 100kb compressed jpg and make it look like an original. For this i am often at 6x and experiment with different modes. The art mode often works best, particular with block colors. It is hit or miss with highly compressed faces with extreme upscaling. It might get part of the face correct, but grossly distort other parts (when there is not much to start with). It also does really good at removing jpg compression artifacts (i have some really old scans and 1 mpx images from the first nikon digital cameras).
Topaz is getting better and better at keeping photos looking more natural after processing.
for wildlife I now put most shots through Topaz DeNoise AI. I'm not sure how it's doing it, but it seems to be able to recover what I saw in the viewfinder from the slightly soft noisy shot that the sensor saw. Absolutely incredible software
I agree 100%. All three Topaz apps are worth the money. DeNoise, Sharpen, and Gigapixel all have specific use cases and excel in those use cases.
Took you a long time to discover Topaz Gigapixel...have been using it for a long time.
:-)
I got all four of the Topaz apps as a Christmas gift from my daughter. I have a large amount of film photos from scanned negatives going back to the 1970s. Playing with the Topaz software, Lightroom Classic (I have your book BTW) and Photoshop has given me these photos as I never had them before. I've found that Gigapixel is very useful for my wildlife photography when I crop in to far away images that are not the main subject of the photo... especially birds.
I agree that the new version of Gigapixel is quite amazing. I'm perhaps even more blown away by their Sharpen AI software which does a mind-blowing job of transforming a photo with super soft focus into one that looks naturally sharp. Nothing else I've tried comes anywhere close...
I'll give the rest of their suite a test because I'm so impressed with these results. I'm interested in the video processing tools for restoring some of our old instructional videos.
@@TonyAndChelsea I don't do video so can't speak to that (though I've heard great things) and definitely do try out Sharpen AI. My jaw hit the floor the first time I used it on an image that I thought was unsalvageable...it's like magic and the masking works great too!
For sure Gigapixel has something cool there but so far only for older pics. None of my pix taken with a modern camera has been useful. I have used Topaz Denoise AI a few times, that's kinda cool too. But I'm hoping this will come to video soon, that would be amazing.
I was asked to upscale a frame from my Sony a7Riv to the size of a large wall. Using GP AI simply blew me away - no detail was lost from the original and sharpness remained the same or better w/ no issues.
The entire Topaz suite is exceptional. What it has done for old videos is remarkable. My only problem is I can’t get the sound on
We use all the topaz products at our print shop. When you have people asking you to print large from their cell phone pictures topaz is invaluable.
Been using Topaz for a couple of years or so and it works wonders. DeNoise is my goto to clean and lightly sharpen, and Sharpen AI if there are any major focus related issues to deal with. The Auto setting tends to auto detect issues well and do a good job, but manually selecting the alternative models is sometimes better. Highly recommended tools.
There's a fantastic application on Android called Remini that works extremely well and works miracles with old blurry photos.
Don't know if it's available on IOS. Highly recommended.
Way back in the day I got the entire app suite by Topaz. And because of other tools, I sort of forgot about it.
Then a couple of years ago the new AI tools became really popular, but IMO they were too expensive - I would not buy them.
But Topaz hadn’t forgotten about me. You log in with your account and BOOM: free upgrades from back in the day for several of the tools, and a small fee for the rest, free 1 year maintenance. I got the whole AI-bunch for a bargain. I was really happy.
Now, Gigapixel, Denoise and Sharpen are really every bit as good as they make them out to be. you can’t go wrong!
I’ve found all the Topaz programmes to be excellent
I've been using Gigapixel for over a year now, and the face recovery feature recently introduced really makes old photos come to life once more. Although more than once I got faces with glasses, as the AI deduced that the person was wearing them when in fact they didn't...
Yes, it’s great but not perfect. It’s “seen” faces where they are not and added a random detailed human face to the background of my photo before. Kinda freaked me out a bit when the rock identified as a person.
I see software like that quite critical. The way an AI works that it uses patterns it has learned from millions of other photos it was trained with. So it basically adds content that has not been on the actual photo. Of course every photo gets photoshopped, but during photoshopping you work with what is there, but never add content from other photos. The idea of taking a photo is showing the subject that actually is in front of your camera. Of course with AI a lot is possible, as we saw with the FaceApp for example. That is quite a dangerous path.
You could give an AI a photo of a dressed person and it could create a nude photo of you. The AI did not really see their private parts, but if it was trained with millions of nude photos of other people, the AI would just "guess" how that person might look nude. I am sure sooner or later we will see such an AI and it will make people feel really uncomfortable. That is an extreme example, but those upscaling AIs already go into that direction. The AI can't see much detail of an eye, but it sees that it is blue. So it will just create a fake blue eye, because it knows how blue eyes look like. Especially with portraits that should be avoided.
I wonder if paparazzi will use software like that. They often take photos from a mile away. Although they already have an 800mm lens plus a teleconverter, the subject still is tiny in the frame. So I imagine they will be very tempted to use an upscaling AI.
All the topaz software is really wonderful. I ended up buying their entire suite. The denoise & sharpen programs are also fantastic.
I’ll buy the rest next sale probably Black Friday
I used superres when a client came with her 340kb picture and she wanted 40x50cm print… it looked OK but the client was happy with it, all that matters🤣🤣
I know that this is going to sound weird, but Remini is still the winner in my book. Also, Topez Labs Sharpen AI isn't bad.
I have a hard time getting topaz sharpen to work well for me. I end up using the sharpening in topaz denoise. What am I doing wrong?
Remini does not rebuild the existing image, it replaces eyes, mouths, and noses from some database. It also makes no attempt to change anything that is not a face. That said, no one notices blurred details beyond a face.
@@onlysublime are you starting your workflow with a RAW file? If not, I’d suggest you do so. Use the RAW correction tab in Denoise and turn down the sharpen slider. Save the processed file as a Dng or Tiff then open that file in Sharpen. Turn down the Denoise slider here as you’ve already done that. If you intend using Gigapixel as well, save the Sharpened image as a Dng or Tiff, sending that to GP. Save the resultant file also as either Dng or Tiff. I’ve found that any cropping is best done in Gigapixel. Final image editing (colour, exposure, shadows, highlights etc) should be done after the Topaz treatment in your usual RAW processor - you should still have a fully editable Dng or Tiff to do this. Only convert to jpeg to post on line or share . These products are all fantastic but, if you’re still struggling, email Topaz’s customer support. They’ll put you right.
@@mikeyb9819 Hi, thanks for your input! I'll try out your steps. My normal workflow is this: RAW editing in LightRoom -> export as TIFF -> load into DeNoise AI for denoising and sharpening -> batch convert DeNoise AI results in Photoshop to sRGB (for Internet posting and distribution) and Adobe RGB versions (for archiving). I tried using DeNoise for denoising and Sharpen for sharpening but to be honest, I thought DeNoise did a better job of sharpening than Sharpen. The only time I try Sharpen AI now is for severe cases like very missed focus and even then, the results seem unnatural (either too crunchy or strange artifacts). I don't use Gigapixel AI for my images as I'm starting off with my Canon EOS R5 45 MP images which is plenty for me. What I use Gigapixel for is when I need a high resolution version of artwork so that I can convert it to a vector image. Or old photos.
Something I do with topaz is actually rescale the final result down to the size of the input image.
I upscale a poor image by 2x/4x, then half the resolution with super sampling in photoshop to 0.5x or 0.25x, making it the original size again.
The benefit is that it visibly cleans up the AI's errors while also still getting a sharper result, even at the same resolution.
I've done this to a lot of my very very old jpegs (which were compressed to work with bad internet), not to upscale them, but to remove the artifacts and increase the general quality of them (at the same resulting resolution).
I started using the Topaz trio (giga, de noise,sharpen) around a month ago and every time I upload a old photo to the apps I get my mind blown, incredible software worth every penny
I find Pixelmator Photo does better upscaling than Lightroom. I regularly edit in Pixelmator when I want to increase apparent detail. The old rule where you can’t make up detail that isn’t there still applies. I suppose if software is really smart it could recognize the camera was a Nikon and just replace the logo on it, but that would not work for unknown subjects like people.
Like a lot of photographers, I started out shooting with a decent intro level camera using similarly situated glass, so this program is a great help in realizing the potential in much of the work that was better than I knew how to be. Couldn't agree with you more.
Topaz is like Star Trek magnify and enhance. It has been top of this game for years now with topaz ai and now with better faces its even better. Thansk from comparing Tony.
Now they need to create an un-crop feature
@@Knowbody42 please report the fake account that responded to your message, they are spammers...
I used Topaz for a project, and found the same great results. If the image is already sharp, it didn't seem worth it to upscale. But a low res photo that wasn't sharp worked great. Thanks for the comparison.
All of the Topaz plugins this year have been above and beyond.
GP is amazing. I kept my D7200 and just run the 4 and 5 star photos through GP as jpegs (from the NEF files) without even enlarging. (24mp is plenty) They come back clear, sharp, noise free, even CA free. It just works!
The Old Sage liked to tell us: get the best original you can. I think he still has the best hand here although some of this software could be very valuable to aid in editing older photos that have significant value. advancements in lens design and in image stabilization will likely make the Old Sage' admonishments hard to beat.
I have the bundle... It does amazing work but , as you saw, it can make up things on faces and artifacts on sharpening on textures and hair. Still very good.
Right now I had to decide between "upgrading" from my micro four thirds setup to some kind of full frame ecosystem but I decided instead to purchase a kit of cine primes instead and spend more on wireless follow focus. Why? because I can get super-fast lenses (T1.0) for a couple hundred each to get cinematic bokeh, and I can use sharpening apps to create productions that regular people will enjoy the quality of. These AI sharpening tools make a big difference to my strategy. I could shoot a wedding in 5K open gate video (in 4:3 aspect at 18MP per frame) and then extract any choice frames and run them through gigapixel to make them printworthy. Not quite the same a strobe lit portraits, but they complement them well. All I need to do is use continuous lighting everywhere. AI sharpening might not be a game changer but it is a force multiplier. I already did that for a client who I shot video for, and then she requested some stills from that video. Gigapixel made a huge difference and I got paid because of it.
Back in the fall of 2013 I worked on a project with my uncle (who passed in the fall of 2014) which he had started while I was still working. One of my daughters bought me an Epson v500 scanner. It was a godsend for me working with prints and negatives. It had software to repair prints that were in bad shape. That worked very well! The negative scanning (top and bottom scanning) was also very effective! I still have it and have plans for additional usage. I do have Topaz but it doesn’t include the Gigapixel ai feature. I am familiar with Adobe’s process for increasing resolution. Not great! Thanks for your episode today!
Hi Tony. I purchased the 3 Topaz apps 6 months ago. A friend started posting amazing wildlife photos that looked like a fro from the BBC had taken them. I asked him what size loan he had taken to upgrade his gear. Then he sent me some of the pre edited images and explained he had bought this software. What I’m finding most useful is the RAW denoise. I almost never use a tripod these days on holidays. I crank up the ISO to get the stutter speed I need then later run denoise AI on the raw file. This works partially well for blue hour landscape photos or when shooting fast moving wild life in low light.
On some occasions in museums That are dark and don’t allow a flash or tripod I’ve taken 16 images hand held at 3200 ISO or even higher, denois AI the raw files then image averaged the 16 frames. The results are amazing, and I get those impossible pictures in my Canon T6s and budget lenses.
I have three main Topaz photo apps, Sharpen Ai, Denoise Ai and Gigapixel Ai. Been happy with all three even using the "auto" settings. But as you said, there have been a few instances where I needed tweak the final results using the apps sliders. However, the end results were better than what I started with so... all in all, very happy with Tppaz products
3:06 I’ve found enhance details to work for high MP cameras when moire on fences is a problem, but only the raw details checkbox. The super resolution checkbox adds a ton of color noise for no reason and makes the files huge.
I learn something new every video you put out!
I just used Gigapixel AI ..... WOW!!!! I need to use my passport photo for a VISA photo. I scanned in the Passport photo an it looked horrible. It was grainy and looked out of focus. I ran it through Gigapixel AI and it looks good. I'm amazed!!!!!
Hi, real talk, I bought Gigapixel last year and the 250% increase was absolute garbage. Random portraits would have horrifying results, eyes would have random splotches and English letters would turn into alien languages. I’d never recommend Gigapixel to anyone at any price, even for Black Friday sales.
Thanks Tony and Chelsea. Just came across an App for iPad called Pixelmator Photo that does the same thing. Outstanding for only 8 bucks.
Last time I looked at Gigapixel AI, it had something like 4 different AI-trained "models" that you could select from (plus some individually-tunable parameters). This is good because each model is (presumably) trained with a different set of photos, and will provide the best results for different kinds of image content. But how do you choose the best model for each of your images? Did you find you needed to try all 4 models, adjust each for the best output, and then pick the overall best result? Or did you find a way to pick just one model and thus speed up the process?
I'm saving this video for when I can afford to get one of those.
I wonder if it may be easier to fix the low res photo, because it's easier, and you may give a better chance for the AI to shine. Like if there's extra hair that you don't want, or weird tooth shape, it may be easier to clone a single pixel on the original than messing with complex detail on the output.
My use case would be to use it on old family photos I am converting to digital. But it is an enormous project and I would likely only do a s app percentage of them? So I haven’t pulled the trigger.
I personally like Topaz Sharpen AI better to sharpen old pictures rather than Gigapixel AI as it concentrates better in sharpening (fixing) old pictures. I use Gigapixel AI if the resolution (pixels) of the image is just not there and/or I need to print an image, but most of my images are used only online.
Picked up the Topaz Gigapixel + Denoise + Sharpen suite just recently and have been really impressed. Even just as a hobbyist I love the difference it makes to some of my shots. All those "I wish I'd had my bigger zoom when I took this so I didn't need to crop as much" shots, or with Denoise in particular, several birds and planes in flight shots where I'd had to crank the ISO up really high and ended up with great but very noisy shots. Not cheap obviously, especially for someone just doing it as a hobby, but at least as a perpetual licence it's a one time hit.
I bought Gigapixel and yes, it is the best of the bunch in my opinion, and cleans up many of the details in your photo, with what looks like more sharpened added detail texture from sometimes soft detail or blurred detail in the original. Plus many of us only have 24 MP cameras and not 45MP cameras, so upsizing for very large prints can also be useful, or as in your examples fixing low res from higher iso without flash ... or fixing cell phone images or archival family photos that people sometimes give me to edit, this can be useful.
20 years ago, Gigapixel would have been magic.
It's pretty incredible.
make sure to try out esrgan upscaling and experimenting with different upscale models and see how it stacks up in comparison to topaz gigapixel
That's cool! Thanks!
Just had a play with some old b&w photos from the 1960s I was sent the other day. Topaz is amazing on faces! It is necessary to play with the settings a bit. (I should not say this but... I used the trial version on a hi-res monitor and took a screen capture...) Then into Affinity Photo to remove spots & blemishes.
Thank you, for sharing this! I have Remini for cell phones...OMG this is amazing. I have Iphone pro max 12, as great as it is the selfie images are just ok. But if you run a selfie through Remini, you can get an almost perfect picture. I have even uploaded older images to it to test out restoring them, and it works great.
I have Topaz Sharpen AI for sharpening faces on my scanned medium format film negatives. When it works it is amazing. When it fails, it fails hard. Probably unique to my machine but I experience a lot of software crashes.
Try to run it without any videos running while it’s processing or minimize them; a lot of the issues are around video card hardware acceleration
I have a 5950x; 128gigs; 3080; all Samsung 980’s… and still get random issues but only if I have a UA-cam video going while it’s trying to save a file. Also be careful about un-zooming = more time = more resource heavy
@@07wrxtr1 thank you for the tips! I looked at the processing preferences and it was set to “Auto” i changed it to my video card for now and in 10min of fooling around with making a mask I had no crashes. If it gives me more problems I’ll next try setting it to “CPU”. I’ll make sure to not have UA-cam running in the background. I have a 2070 Super.
Yes, it seems to be unique to your PC. I am using Topaz bundle for quite a while (on Windows 10 pro) - never seen any glitch.
I bought all three Topaz products a couple of years ago, and I think they’re great. My go to is Topaz Denoise AI, as I’m usually out and about around sunrise when the light isn’t so good. I can’t say enough about this product, it’s awesome as far as I’m concerned. I’m an amateur photographer who took up photography during lockdown. (Canon 5D MKIII)
A slight tangent to your discussion but had you seen Jan Wegener's discussion on using combination of DXO and Topaz for denoising when shooting wildlife with extremely high ISO? Had you had any experience using DXO? Nice comparisons, thx for demo.
Thanx Tony, needed this real bad and like yesterday lol. I have watched your channel through the years, learned a-lot from your experience, insight and meticulous tests and comparisons.
Can you make another one of these video about noise reduction software/method ?!
And we can thank the folks at JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, for doing the first work on image enhancement programs in the 80's.
I've been using the full suite of Topaz Labs tools for two years and I find that Topaz Labs Denoise AI and GigaPixel AI are better in more photos (95%) than ON1 Resize/Resize AI or NoNoise AI. I use ON1 PhotoRAW 2019-2022 versions with the full bundle of add-ons for ON1, but not the subscription version. I don't like being forced into a subscription ecosystem.
Thank you for the video! How does it work for older low res photos of artwork?
I enlarged in Gigapixel AI a picture of my mom and then used Photoshop's neural filter Colorize. Not bad.
Personally I'm not looking for more detail, I think it's a bit unrealistic to expect there to be more detail in the enhanced image over the original. All I'm interested in is, can I enhance a say 12mp shot to 48mp and then print say an A1 sized print, and the quality / detail be the same as the original... As long as I can create large prints from a 12mp image I'm happy. At the end of the day, people who buy my prints will hang them on the wall, they won't be pixels peeping, so as long as the A1 48mp print looks as good as the A3 12mp print, that's all I care about.
For out of focus, blurry, old or new images Remini blows the doors off other apps for Facial Reconstruction. In my opinion others did not come close. I would upscale first if a really small image with one of these apps then run Remini. Note it is only a phone app now so I will transfer back and forth from PC. Would love it if they make a version for desktops!
So what do you do when there is something wonky. An old scanned photo of my dad's family looks great with Gigap, but in every mode, my grandfather's mustache is gone! In PhotoAi it did the same thing.
I haveTopaz Gigapixel AI - and I agree it's fantastic. I use it when I want to upscale pictures that were taken on my Google Pixel 6 Pro. I find I can get very acceptable A3 sized pictures that are easily good enough to sell. I typically use this in conjunction with Topax Sharpen and Topax DeNoise .
I love the Gigapixel AI. It is not perfect, but just think how much better it will be in the future. It is moving in the right direction. It really is AI
Very interesting comparison, it makes me wonder would you bother to make this comparison today. Is this even make sense to do it again are this things improved or maybe all the ai technology is rather pivoting in generative AI direction?
Thank you Tony! Super useful review! Will get the recommended software. You need to do more of this stuff as the AI age is here! 😮
I wonder which you think would think of GP now, one year later which is when I am writing this comment. Have they improved over the year?
Interesting, I think Remini beats them all. It’s for phones only, but you transfer the image to your phone and the processed result back to your computer and away you go in your photo editing software. For facial features specifically, it doesn’t tackle anything else, Remini wins - and you get 5 free restorations per day….. beat that!
I've used Remini too. It can "restore" portrait images - meaning, expertly patch together complex facial related textures from it's library - the result is astonishing. Really like having an artist at your side.
On the other hand, there are areas where Remini can't help - certain types of hair just come out as blotchy bits. It is also can't fix faces posed in certain angles. Again, I've used it both to great effect and to failure.
I bought the spare and the denoise.. so far I hate it. It seems like everything I put into the apps looks worse than what I started with. I was really disappointed in the product. I don't know I am doing something wrong or something is set up wrong. The photos I look worse than the original before I start. Then the final rendering are really bad.
Pixelmator Pro ML Super Resolution does OK - not great, but is a setting that should be compared to the 3 Apps here. The difference might be that Pixelmator has so many other great features you won't likely find in these others. Also Photoshop's Neural Filters………not any more perfect as any of these, but still a player. The point is that most photographers and artists already have super-feature-rich Photoshop and many Mac users have Pixelmator as well.
I purchased Topaz Sharpen AI, which works well but I found the process to be somewhat slow. I've used it for pictures I had from back when I shot with a Canon Powershot camera and the improvement was great, especially with removing noise in the photo. Other than the processing speed, I highly recommend Topaz AI.
be interesting to revisit this, as there have been lots of changes in AI
I have a question: if Adobe “enhance” has “zero difference” between the before and after images, doesn’t that mean the following?:
if I have a sharp, great, terrific image that prints “perfectly” at 18” on the long side…… if I ran the image through enhance and see NO DIFFERENCE on the monitor (more sharp/less sharp) shouldn’t that mean that I could print the “enhanced” image at 36” on the long side and see “no difference” in the print?
Essentially, does Adobe enhance just take a sharp image and let you print it 2x as big (long side) and get the same sharp result as original? If so, is it really designed for just taking sharp images and allowing you to print larger Images?
Tony, how did it handle B&W?? I have many B&W positives from my parents - how does Gigapixel handle those kinds of cheapie Kodak camera type shots?
Sorry I didn't try B&W but you could just grab the trial.
That’s my experience too. Also, Gigapixel AI makes a great result out of camera shake images.
Love Gigapixel ! Thanks a lot Tony !!!
It's like those portrait modes that make us more beautiful.
Been using Gigapixel for 2 years. It’s amazing