Denoise AI or Photo AI - Which Should YOU Use?
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- Опубліковано 23 жов 2022
- In this tutorial, I run the same image through Topaz Labs Denoise AI and Topaz Labs Photo AI to see which might do a better job.
* I think I made mistake using an image that had as much noise as the image I used in the video did. I may do another video using an image that has a more "normal" amount of higher ISO noise - an image that one might want to print and share. That might give one a better indication as to which application is right for them.
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Thank you!
In this tutorial, I run the same image through Topaz Labs Denoise AI and Topaz Labs Photo AI to see which might do a better job.
My personal experience with PhotoAI vs the three separate products is that "PhotoAI" tends to work better on low quality images but not so on better quality images that need individual type adjustments. PhotoAI just doesn't offer enough control over the "corrections" and I have had to undo the PhotoAI adjustments and open the images in either Denoise or Sharpen ai separately to get results that are not weird.
I’ve been using Photo AI on several thousand scanned family photos, some going back to the 1880s. I’ve been really impressed with the software, particularly in pictures where all the main features are clear. It adds real improvements to faces without making them seem artificial. I’ve showed the results to family members and the general results are “It looks fine” - until I show them the original, when they are impressed. The ability to tone down the result makes it very flexible. When I have pictures from the same camera/film etc, I batch process about 20. It works reasonably quickly because these scans are usually less than 10mb each.
Thanks very much for your excellent work. I use Topaz Denoise all the time and have found it a great product. In this kind of lighting set up I will take two spot metered shots, one of the dark area and one of the light area. The two shots are edited in LR for the basics of H,S,W and B and then combined in Aurora HDR then, back to LR for completion final editing and perhaps a trip to Topaz Denoise for clean up. The combination usually comes out very well.
Thank you for an excellent and informative review with a good, tough example. You can get rid of a lot of that color noise by using color noise reduction in Lightroom before editing in Denoise or Photo AI. I find turning off sharpening, as you did, while leaving on color noise reduction in Lightroom before opening in Topaz gives best results almost all the time with Topaz Denoise AI.
Consider "light" balancing (a histogram that is balanced) your image in LR first with sharpening and luminosity and color noise adjustments and then move to Topaz.
In one or two of your examples, the stone base on the left had clear stone grain, before the programs treated the area as noise. In another image, the detail of the fabric in the shorts being worn by the young woman on the right, walking in the midst of the of the columns, was quite clear, but not after the AI programs got through with their chosen renderings. To a certain degree it seems to be a matter of personal taste and the photographer's choice of how the image should be presented. To someone who has underexposed his share of images, I thought both programs were capable of saving the image, but Denoise had more tools to make fine adjustments with, and would likely be the "go to" program for editing difficult images with exposure and noise problems, if you were faced with more than a handful to try to fix.
Thanks Anthony, this is a helpful tutorial! I have one question though: Why did you always have to revert back to Lightroom? Can the Topaz Studio be used as a stand alone (to denoise, sharpen, etc.) without having Lightroom installed? (I'm aiming for minimal post processing, as I'm just a serious amateur and do photography just for fun.) Thanks again!
I use denoise for landscapes. I have found the "low light" setting to consistantly be the best. "clear" takes a long time to render and the standard tended to over do the contrast/sharpening on brighter rocks etc and so looked over processed. It does a great job on drone images too.
Do you apply your edits within LR prior to exporting to Denoise (or Photo AI)? If not, does that mean you have to do all your image editing using a TIF rather than RAW?
I agree with Tony Blackwell below! I have been testing Photo AI for a couple of weeks and it does an outstanding job in taking an old, bad, dull, blurry image and making it VERY usable.... However a well shot photo often times does not have much improvement. I suppose one could say "well, that's reasonable" because why would you need much correcting on a good image to begin with???? And the Gigapixal sharpening in Photo AI seems terrific. But they are different animals, different tools, all together and depending on what you need to enhance (I have a LOT of old photos from my grandfather back in the 1930's) and Photo AI does a wonderful job on them. With my own, more recent shots using a newer camera but high ISO, Denoise and Sharpen AI usually do the trick very well..... Use the right tool for the right job and you'll come out with the best results! Just ask the Snap-On Tool Man!!!! LOL!!!!
Thank you for an informative demonstration. Regarding the image, I would denoise it unprocessed, including not increasing the exposure. I suspect DeNoiseAI uses noise models in its analysis, which make assumptions of the additive noise from the camera. Processing the image first then deonising it may lead to less than optimal results.
Hey Anthony what you do to get the mouse smooth like that? 120hz monitor?
Thanks this tut made up my mind, I'll stick with the individual apps. Have you tried sending an image into denoise without any edits and just use raw, vs sending it in with the edits and choosing what looks best for the image. It is my understanding per Topaz site, its always best to send as raw with no edits. Most importantly as you did without any sharpening or noise reduction in LR.
Thanks. I had the individual apps so Photo AI was free. The latter seems like the obvious choice ("one-stop shopping") but I've wondered if there's a difference in results between using them individually or in Photo AI (I prefer DxO/Windows to Adobe/Mac). I assume that Photo AI (which is obviously a WIP) will improve over time, but I'm very pleased (mostly) with the results so far. I've not seen that strange residual noise you did and that may have to do with the particular image/file or another factor. In any case, I'd send a bug report to Topaz, as they (like DxO) seem interested in customer feedback. If that underlying texture is being misinterpreted as noise, then perhaps you can use the masking tools (obviously still in development) to try and exclude those areas from the NR. Also, you may simply have an image/file that's very difficult to process, as it's throwing curve balls at an AI system that lacks (as do most AI systems) the human ability to see what looks "off," relying on an algorithm that can't see the forest for the trees (which is why we can't trust autonomous systems to handle every situation--see 737 Max MCAS). If I wanted to "save" this image, I'd probably try blurring/darkening/vignetting/cropping those problem areas as they're not essential to the image.
In my experience with Denise AI and Photo AI, I get better results when I apply color denoise in Lightroom and then moving to Denise AI or Photo AI.
Does anyone know if Topaz will keep supporting both products or if the plan is to drop the separate programmes and move forward with Photo AI.
Anthony. don't the little up pointing arrows in the the filmstrip images mean that Lightroom has a problem with the edits done in an external editor? I believe that you need to click on the arrow & decide which edits to use.
thanks for the comparison. I don't know if this is important but Topaz has released a few updates for Photo AI. I see you were using version 1.0.2. The current is now 1.0.6.
I already subscribe for DeNoise, Shapren, Gega, and Masking. I have no reason to "upgrade" to Photo AI. I use DeNoise 100% of photos and use others on rare occasions.