Whether or not they like this review, you are still the fairest and informative reviewer in town Anthony. And I think they should be impressed and thankful enough to keep you on the "squad", lol.
Haha thanks mate. I think the good thing is I've steered clear of becoming an ambassador for any company despite being asked by a few. That gives me the freedom to say what I want and pivot to whatever tools or gear I choose.
Well Anthony Skylum can't deny anything that you've said in this review, "honesty is the best policy" as they say and hopefully there will be improvements in the version in time to come. 👍😎
Absolutely. I've always said from day 1 of my channel, I'll never compromise the truth or how I feel about a product. I want people to know that what I say comes from me. I tell my kids regularly to live by the truth. I have to do the same 😀
Haha 😄 I needed handsome and suave to bring in the ladies. I have neither so I needed my wing man Dave! 😃 Equally surprised... I wasn't expecting you to be watching a photo upscaling vid 🤭😃
@@AnthonyTurnham you old charmer you 😜 those were the days eh! I watch quite a few of your vids mate, you’re getting quite the New Zealand twang now 😉 they’re always interesting though
Thanks for this comprehensive review. I really love Luminar Neo, and it has become my regular photo editor. I've added the HDR extension, which I like very much, as a free addition since I have Aurora HDR, but I don't enjoy how our friends at Skylum are pushing us to buy extensions without knowing what they can deliver. For example, I also have DxO Photo lab and their noise treatment is fantastic (and I can export in DNG, so without any information loss). Why should I pay for an extension that is lower in quality than what I can get by paying for DxO Photo Lab? Similarly, as the Luminar Sharpen AI extension is coming out, I checked with Topaz Sharpen AI, a self-standing application that also delivers DNG files. I cannot say how impressed I was with it and how some blurry photos (1/60e, low light) came out clean. I'm even using it with my other photos to get the small "crispy" addition. Skylum wants to play games with already big players on the field. I would understand if they would add as a complimentary addition to Luminar Neo to make this excellent software more appealing to new customers. However, asking to pay extra for lower-quality solutions doesn't seem to draw the path to a more professional software. However, I'm still looking forward to seeing if their aperture stacking extension will be worth trying.
Hi Eric. Thanks for the comments. Appreciated. Btw I did a vid on the focu stacking tool you may want to take a look at: ua-cam.com/video/1yWT5-E11Wk/v-deo.html
I compared Upscale 2x in Neo to Enhance/Super Resolution in Lightroom. Upscaled jpg's looked the same. But upscaled raws, which were exported in both jpg and tiff, were much better in Lightroom. The results in Luminar have much worse details and all the lines are jagged. This may be due to demosaicing algorithms in Luminar rather than scaling. And I thought it's Moritz Bleibtreu on the fist image :)
Good testing!!! Haha 😄 Moritz. Nah, that's my buddy Dave. Fun fact, Dave also famous in his own right for winning a bafta for the computer game The Room!
You're right in the fact that one tool isn't going to do it all unfortunately. Luminar is getting pretty close though with the addition of it's extensions. I've just created a tutorial for my architecture channel and I've gone from Lightroom to photoshop, to Lumenzia, to Luminar and ColorEfex pro. Eeek! There's so many tools to help us get our images just the way we want!
Hi Anthony! What happened to your right wrist, did you sprain it? 🙀 It seems that Topaz still leads the way when it comes to AI technology software! I also have difficulties using the existing portrait background removal tool in Luminar Neo, the refine brush tools are very crude, so I can never get the foreground/background accurate. 😾 By the way, did you manage to download the Raw files I mailed to you? Regards from Felix the Cat. 🐱
Been thinking about this review for a while. I suspect that Upscale will "upscale" any noise as well as other pixels. Hence the results Anthony got. I do know that a few years ago you had to use the Topaz apps in a particular order to get the best results - DeNoise, Sharpen then Gigapixel if I remember correctly. I will try to find a noisy photo (I have lots of them!) crop it, and do a few experiments. I guess that over time the Skylum products will get better as those of Topaz did.
I'll try again (couldn't get my comment to save). I carried out a little experiment based on comments above. Found a really noisy action photo taken at night with an Olympus EM5iii (micro four thirds). f4, 1/500 sec, iso 6400 @ 45mm. Guaranteed to be noisy! In Neo I cropped this photo, then did some basic editing in the develop tool - increased exposure, decreased highlights slightly, increased shadows and added some vibrance. Then I invoked Noiseless ai and Supersharp ai in that order. Exported the file as a TIFF and re-imported to Neo. Then invoked Upscale ai and increased size x4. After doing this I could not easily tell the difference in noise between the TIFF (after Noiseless and Supersharp) version and the Upscaled version when viewing at the same size on the screen. But, there was a huge improvement over the original file. Hope this helps.
Hi Anthony, whilst this Extension is straightforward, in my opinion I am not sure if it can be used to eg fit some of the photo sites' edge size requirements. I tend to use Photoscape X Pro for my work, and am happy with its options which so far are the best in my opinion that I have found. Thanks for demonstrating Luminar Neo Upscaling. Regards JB
Just a general comment on formats for saving - but relevant for increasing the number of pixels. You have previously recommended TIFF for saving as an 'intermediate' format. However, I find these produce very big images (16 bit of course). Have you ever tried PNG format as an alternative to TIFF? It is also lossless and can handle 16bits. It's advantage is that it has compression so is saves disk space. Perhaps this comparison would make a good video! Thanks Jim. PS love all your Neo tutorials - you have got the style and tone just right!
Nice point regarding png. However as I'm continuing my edit I don't want any compression. I want to carry on working on the highest quality possible. Also I'm not really worried about disk space as these intermediate save steps are temporary. They can be deleted once you're done with your edit. 😀
Hi Anthony. Really enjoyed your channel. Can you tell me what monitor you use for your photography edits. What do you recommend for a beginner looking to upgrade?
I completely agree with your comparison of Upscale Neo and Gigapixel, but I have one problem with Gigapixel: it often changes colours into something completely unnatural!
Thanks for that review. I was looking forward to trying the upscale extension with my 360 photos. Any suggestions on how to get better quality out of 360 photos which are obviously very large files?
Like you, really surprised at your results. However, it looks like you have only worked with JPGs which are already compressed. Have you tried with RAW or TIFF files?
Yes. The extensions are 'optional'. Unless you have a specific need or just like the idea of experimenting with focus stacking, hdr etc. I'd just stick with the base program.
I have a problem changing a sky in a photo, some parts don't change because many details in a giant wheel and wanna know if any technique to work around this problem?
Ouch. 22 years of scrunching my eyes into a view finder since that pic was taken obviously hasn't done me any favours. Thanks for the comment 🙏 Made me feel really good.
Thank you very much for this info. Maybe I'm wrong, but the Gigapixelversion looks a bit plasticy (skin) to me.... Maybe Neo will improve by new releases ? Wait and see 🙂
Hey mate. Yeah, it can do that if the settings aren't quite right. I literally fired them out without doing any refinements. I'm confident I could get a better result from Gigapixel.
Have you ever played with Remini? For people and faces it's incredible. Arguably not the photo or person you took any more but it still creates incredible results. It basically rebuilds a photo using AI and it's library of assets. It only seems to be a mobile app though and possibly questionable privacy T&C's.
Thanks for the video. I feel a little like a dog chasing its tail with all the options. I think I'll wait awhile until there's a clear winner... I can't afford to buy everything.
Wow. Ugh. Ick. I splurged on the early-bird deal fpr the complete Neo plugin package, and the upscale plugin (which I assumed would be in there) was a big reason for pulling the trigger. I'm REALLY hoping the'll pull something out of their hats before the beta goes live.
@@rather-reverend You could have a very good point there Mike! I'm waiting on the Windows version of Sharpen AI but as soon as I have it I'll do a test combining the results from all 3. Cheers for the very sensible suggestion.
@@AnthonyTurnham They should make theses easier to use with photoshop plugins. Anytime i try it everything go super slow. But it work fine when it's a stand alone app.
Ukrainian snake island features it seems to me. Luminar has supposed to be this revolutionary new AI competitor to Lightroom, Capture One, On1, DXO etc. In the end it turned out to be half finished host for selling extensions that are by and large half baked, since honestly it took TopazLabs so long to do something with Gigapixel in which they specialized in, and we are supposed to expect that some extension will do a lot better job. I don't think so. its the same story with other similar "AI" marketing online. Lot of AI upscaling programs out there. Most use open source, publicly available models that one can find online, they just add their own interface on top and try to sell it. Getting lazy. Background removers, noise reduction, up-scaling etc. Same thing with most companies. Just selling open source publicly available models with their own interface and branding. AI PNG Enlarger, HipPow PhotoEnhancer AI,, AI photo and art enhancer etc. Just to name few branded open sources solution on the market. I bet Luminar is using one of the same models with their interface and branding as well. That seems to be the scheme with Luminar for the foreseeable future. Sell open source extensions that are publicly available with their branding and using host Luminar applications as play store. We are seeing similar approach by other companies as well, and if they can get people on the subscription model they have them locked in and only invest very little in actual product development. Be aware.
luminar neo as such is basically a unfinished product with so many glitches...but now they are using their ambassadors like this and jimnix to hard sell their extensions....
Interesting point of view, but did you actually watch the video before posting the comment? This is not a positive review of Upscale AI. The opposite in fact? It's my opinion on a product that I feel is out performed by Topaz and I say as much so this is about as far from a hard sell as you can get. I welcome the comments, and also respect any disses that come my way, as long as they're true.
I find the Gigapixel image of your wife worse than the Neo one. Her skin is totally smeared and smudged and lost all the details. Gigapixel looks like a cheap smartphone photo with a smudgy beauty skin filter applied
Yeah, but bare in mind I didn't tweak any setting in Gigapixel. There's options for retaining detail, different algorithms to try and preservation of noise etc. All of which can be finetuned to deliver better results and get rid of the smeared look.
@@AnthonyTurnham ah, thanks for pointing it out. I guess we'll need to wait and see whether skylum will be able to improve their upscaler over time. Some customisation options for fine tuning would be also good.
The current best deal for Luminar Neo can be found here bit.ly/Luminar-NEO. You can try code ATNEO10 for an additional discount.
Thank you for a fair and honest review. Other reviewers have shied away from the comparison, stating that they will do it at a later day.
You're welcome Behram 😀
Whether or not they like this review, you are still the fairest and informative reviewer in town Anthony. And I think they should be impressed and thankful enough to keep you on the "squad", lol.
Haha thanks mate. I think the good thing is I've steered clear of becoming an ambassador for any company despite being asked by a few. That gives me the freedom to say what I want and pivot to whatever tools or gear I choose.
Well Anthony Skylum can't deny anything that you've said in this review, "honesty is the best policy" as they say and hopefully there will be improvements in the version in time to come. 👍😎
Absolutely. I've always said from day 1 of my channel, I'll never compromise the truth or how I feel about a product. I want people to know that what I say comes from me. I tell my kids regularly to live by the truth. I have to do the same 😀
Haha 😀 I wasn't expecting to see a 22 year old photo of me in this comparison. Cheers Ant!
Haha 😄 I needed handsome and suave to bring in the ladies. I have neither so I needed my wing man Dave! 😃
Equally surprised... I wasn't expecting you to be watching a photo upscaling vid 🤭😃
@@AnthonyTurnham you old charmer you 😜 those were the days eh!
I watch quite a few of your vids mate, you’re getting quite the New Zealand twang now 😉 they’re always interesting though
Yes sir it’s up 🤝
Thanks for this comprehensive review.
I really love Luminar Neo, and it has become my regular photo editor. I've added the HDR extension, which I like very much, as a free addition since I have Aurora HDR, but I don't enjoy how our friends at Skylum are pushing us to buy extensions without knowing what they can deliver.
For example, I also have DxO Photo lab and their noise treatment is fantastic (and I can export in DNG, so without any information loss).
Why should I pay for an extension that is lower in quality than what I can get by paying for DxO Photo Lab?
Similarly, as the Luminar Sharpen AI extension is coming out, I checked with Topaz Sharpen AI, a self-standing application that also delivers DNG files.
I cannot say how impressed I was with it and how some blurry photos (1/60e, low light) came out clean. I'm even using it with my other photos to get the small "crispy" addition.
Skylum wants to play games with already big players on the field. I would understand if they would add as a complimentary addition to Luminar Neo to make this excellent software more appealing to new customers.
However, asking to pay extra for lower-quality solutions doesn't seem to draw the path to a more professional software.
However, I'm still looking forward to seeing if their aperture stacking extension will be worth trying.
Hi Eric. Thanks for the comments. Appreciated. Btw I did a vid on the focu stacking tool you may want to take a look at: ua-cam.com/video/1yWT5-E11Wk/v-deo.html
I also have DxO Photolab 6 Elite and yes the noise treatment is fantastic!! Also sharpen is much better than in Luminar Neo. Happy New Year!
I compared Upscale 2x in Neo to Enhance/Super Resolution in Lightroom. Upscaled jpg's looked the same. But upscaled raws, which were exported in both jpg and tiff, were much better in Lightroom. The results in Luminar have much worse details and all the lines are jagged. This may be due to demosaicing algorithms in Luminar rather than scaling.
And I thought it's Moritz Bleibtreu on the fist image :)
Good testing!!! Haha 😄 Moritz. Nah, that's my buddy Dave. Fun fact, Dave also famous in his own right for winning a bafta for the computer game The Room!
Thank you for the video. I still have Topaz until Neo improves.
Every Single product of Topaz is better than Luminar, but Topaz feels less complete than Luminar, it's like you got to have both.
You're right in the fact that one tool isn't going to do it all unfortunately. Luminar is getting pretty close though with the addition of it's extensions. I've just created a tutorial for my architecture channel and I've gone from Lightroom to photoshop, to Lumenzia, to Luminar and ColorEfex pro. Eeek! There's so many tools to help us get our images just the way we want!
Hi Anthony! What happened to your right wrist, did you sprain it? 🙀 It seems that Topaz still leads the way when it comes to AI technology software! I also have difficulties using the existing portrait background removal tool in Luminar Neo, the refine brush tools are very crude, so I can never get the foreground/background accurate. 😾 By the way, did you manage to download the Raw files I mailed to you? Regards from Felix the Cat. 🐱
Hi! Sorry to miss this comment initially! Just written back via email. Thanks for the Raw files :) Just downloaded them now.
Been thinking about this review for a while.
I suspect that Upscale will "upscale" any noise as well as other pixels. Hence the results Anthony got. I do know that a few years ago you had to use the Topaz apps in a particular order to get the best results - DeNoise, Sharpen then Gigapixel if I remember correctly. I will try to find a noisy photo (I have lots of them!) crop it, and do a few experiments.
I guess that over time the Skylum products will get better as those of Topaz did.
I'll try again (couldn't get my comment to save).
I carried out a little experiment based on comments above. Found a really noisy action photo taken at night with an Olympus EM5iii (micro four thirds). f4, 1/500 sec, iso 6400 @ 45mm. Guaranteed to be noisy!
In Neo I cropped this photo, then did some basic editing in the develop tool - increased exposure, decreased highlights slightly, increased shadows and added some vibrance. Then I invoked Noiseless ai and Supersharp ai in that order. Exported the file as a TIFF and re-imported to Neo. Then invoked Upscale ai and increased size x4.
After doing this I could not easily tell the difference in noise between the TIFF (after Noiseless and Supersharp) version and the Upscaled version when viewing at the same size on the screen. But, there was a huge improvement over the original file.
Hope this helps.
Hi Anthony, whilst this Extension is straightforward, in my opinion I am not sure if it can be used to eg fit some of the photo sites' edge size requirements. I tend to use Photoscape X Pro for my work, and am happy with its options which so far are the best in my opinion that I have found. Thanks for demonstrating Luminar Neo Upscaling. Regards JB
Just a general comment on formats for saving - but relevant for increasing the number of pixels. You have previously recommended TIFF for saving as an 'intermediate' format. However, I find these produce very big images (16 bit of course). Have you ever tried PNG format as an alternative to TIFF? It is also lossless and can handle 16bits. It's advantage is that it has compression so is saves disk space. Perhaps this comparison would make a good video! Thanks Jim. PS love all your Neo tutorials - you have got the style and tone just right!
Nice point regarding png. However as I'm continuing my edit I don't want any compression. I want to carry on working on the highest quality possible. Also I'm not really worried about disk space as these intermediate save steps are temporary. They can be deleted once you're done with your edit. 😀
Hi Anthony. Really enjoyed your channel. Can you tell me what monitor you use for your photography edits. What do you recommend for a beginner looking to upgrade?
Hi mate. I believe you'll find monitor info in the description :)
Does the discount code for Gigapixel still work? Tried to purchase it, but no where was a place for the discount code. Thanks in advance
Hi. Topaz have decided to keep their pricing without any discounts. A shame for us, but it's still great value at the retail price.
I completely agree with your comparison of Upscale Neo and Gigapixel, but I have one problem with Gigapixel: it often changes colours into something completely unnatural!
How interesting. In the 3 years I've been using Gigapixel I would say that, for me, color changes were rare and not frequent at all.
@@librarycollection3795 It happened on faces and colorful birds, it turned brown into a reddish hue.
looks like Gigapixel is doing upscale and denoise and..... i will try upscale and denoise in Luminar too, maybe this helps to get rid of some "errors"
You're right. It does do de-noise at the same time. It also sharpens too.
Nice AT! 🤩👍 Hopefully Skylum fix the result by release…
Thanks for that review. I was looking forward to trying the upscale extension with my 360 photos. Any suggestions on how to get better quality out of 360 photos which are obviously very large files?
WAIT ANOTHER TWO TO THREE YEARS :) :( I will have to do the same; although patience is not my best friend :(
Like you, really surprised at your results. However, it looks like you have only worked with JPGs which are already compressed. Have you tried with RAW or TIFF files?
I did a bit of work with raw files and the results were better.
Are they charging $ for this (and all extensions) Anthony?
Yes. The extensions are 'optional'. Unless you have a specific need or just like the idea of experimenting with focus stacking, hdr etc. I'd just stick with the base program.
What about upscaling Raw ?
Good question. I'll dig a little deeper into the results....
I have a problem changing a sky in a photo, some parts don't change because many details in a giant wheel and wanna know if any technique to work around this problem?
Samarain. Please send the photo to anthonyeditsyourphotos@gmail.com If I can make the time I'll take a look for you.
Wow, I didn't know being a photographer was such a hard life 🤣🤣🤣
Ouch. 22 years of scrunching my eyes into a view finder since that pic was taken obviously hasn't done me any favours. Thanks for the comment 🙏 Made me feel really good.
@@AnthonyTurnham haha, only joking buddy, you should see me. I look like I ate my previous self!!
@@AnthonyTurnham :) exactly the same feelings after 54 years; I started with a 4*5 inch Graflex
Thank you very much for this info. Maybe I'm wrong, but the Gigapixelversion looks a bit plasticy (skin) to me.... Maybe Neo will improve by new releases ? Wait and see 🙂
Hey mate. Yeah, it can do that if the settings aren't quite right. I literally fired them out without doing any refinements. I'm confident I could get a better result from Gigapixel.
@@AnthonyTurnham Thx a lot :-) btw: I like NZ very much. Visited in 88/89 travelling around for 2 months 🙂
Annoying that i downloaded a trial and that Upscale is not included. Thanks for the review though. Ive been trying vanceAI that was surprisingly good.
The trial is for the editing software rather than the AI extensions.
Could you drop the photo into noiseless to clear them up?
Yes, indeed you could.
Have you ever played with Remini? For people and faces it's incredible. Arguably not the photo or person you took any more but it still creates incredible results. It basically rebuilds a photo using AI and it's library of assets. It only seems to be a mobile app though and possibly questionable privacy T&C's.
Gigapixel works the same when using the face recovery option, though I do often have better results with Remini but only the Android version.
@@SimonNemeth I wonder why they don't bring a proper PC/Apple program out for it?
@@Speak_Out_and_Remove_All_Doubt I agree. The web app is not all that great.
Thanks for the video. I feel a little like a dog chasing its tail with all the options. I think I'll wait awhile until there's a clear winner... I can't afford to buy everything.
Hi Robert. Yes there are certainly many options for the discerning photographer these days. I get it, it certainly can be overwhelming!
WAIT ANOTHER TWO TO THREE YEARS :) :( I will have to do the same; although patience is not my best friend :(
Wow. Ugh. Ick. I splurged on the early-bird deal fpr the complete Neo plugin package, and the upscale plugin (which I assumed would be in there) was a big reason for pulling the trigger. I'm REALLY hoping the'll pull something out of their hats before the beta goes live.
Yeah this one isn't super strong imho but I've been impressed with the other extensions though.
@@AnthonyTurnham Could it be you're supposed to use it in concert with the new sharpening and denoising plugins?
@@rather-reverend You could have a very good point there Mike! I'm waiting on the Windows version of Sharpen AI but as soon as I have it I'll do a test combining the results from all 3. Cheers for the very sensible suggestion.
WAIT ANOTHER TWO TO THREE YEARS :) :( I will have to do the same; although patience is not my best friend :(
Will you show us the sharpen ai ?
I will once I have a Windows version. Currently only the Mac beta has been released.
@@AnthonyTurnham They should make theses easier to use with photoshop plugins. Anytime i try it everything go super slow. But it work fine when it's a stand alone app.
thanks for the review - though coupons expired
Which one? If it's for NEO I think it's only working for the subscription. Topaz should still work though...
@@AnthonyTurnham Hi, tried it for Gigapixel but it said No
Ukrainian snake island features it seems to me. Luminar has supposed to be this revolutionary new AI competitor to Lightroom, Capture One, On1, DXO etc. In the end it turned out to be half finished host for selling extensions that are by and large half baked, since honestly it took TopazLabs so long to do something with Gigapixel in which they specialized in, and we are supposed to expect that some extension will do a lot better job. I don't think so. its the same story with other similar "AI" marketing online. Lot of AI upscaling programs out there. Most use open source, publicly available models that one can find online, they just add their own interface on top and try to sell it. Getting lazy. Background removers, noise reduction, up-scaling etc. Same thing with most companies. Just selling open source publicly available models with their own interface and branding. AI PNG Enlarger, HipPow PhotoEnhancer AI,, AI photo and art enhancer etc. Just to name few branded open sources solution on the market. I bet Luminar is using one of the same models with their interface and branding as well. That seems to be the scheme with Luminar for the foreseeable future. Sell open source extensions that are publicly available with their branding and using host Luminar applications as play store. We are seeing similar approach by other companies as well, and if they can get people on the subscription model they have them locked in and only invest very little in actual product development. Be aware.
luminar neo as such is basically a unfinished product with so many glitches...but now they are using their ambassadors like this and jimnix to hard sell their extensions....
Interesting point of view, but did you actually watch the video before posting the comment? This is not a positive review of Upscale AI. The opposite in fact? It's my opinion on a product that I feel is out performed by Topaz and I say as much so this is about as far from a hard sell as you can get. I welcome the comments, and also respect any disses that come my way, as long as they're true.
I find the Gigapixel image of your wife worse than the Neo one. Her skin is totally smeared and smudged and lost all the details. Gigapixel looks like a cheap smartphone photo with a smudgy beauty skin filter applied
Yeah, but bare in mind I didn't tweak any setting in Gigapixel. There's options for retaining detail, different algorithms to try and preservation of noise etc. All of which can be finetuned to deliver better results and get rid of the smeared look.
@@AnthonyTurnham ah, thanks for pointing it out. I guess we'll need to wait and see whether skylum will be able to improve their upscaler over time. Some customisation options for fine tuning would be also good.
My upscale doesn't create a new folder.