Digital Light & Color

Jonathon -

Do you have any before /after photos using the Topaz plug-ins? Any thoughts
or suggestions? Tips?

Given your excellent work, I trust you for an unbiased opinion.

Thanks!

John P

Topaz Denoise AI is the plug-in I use the most -- in most cases it does a very good job of removing noise from high-ISO images. Topaz Sharpen AI can also be of use in recovering detail from images that are a little soft from motion or other types of blur. I don't really use the others but I have been meaning to do some experiments with Gigapixel AI for upsizing images for printing, but I don't generally print images large enough for it to matter. It might be good for enlarging cell phone photos however. My one caveat is that if you push them too far and try to create too much new detail, you may get artifacts.

In any case, you can try them for free on your own images and decide if they are worth the money.

Here is a small crop from a much larger image shot in low light at ISO 2000 and the result of running it through Denoise AI (Severe Noise setting) with sliders at their default values.

Here is a link to an article that compares noise reduction across a number of different products, including Topaz Denoise AI.

https://fstoppers.com/originals/image-n ... are-493510

The article is ok, but take into account that the article is nearley 2 years old and the tools might have improved.
I downloaded the raw and developed it with DxO 6 and DeepPrime XD and received a very good result (from my point of view).
Problem: DeepPrime XD needs a strong CPU or graphic-card.
Presumable all tools might have improved in the meantime.

I didn't realize the article was so old. I did my own test on what are probably the two best noise reduction programs: Topaz Denoise AI and DxO Deep Prime XD. I spent some time playing with the Topaz sliders -- maybe someone who understands it better could do a better job. For DxO, I just used the default settings.

While both did a good job of removing the noise, I was surprised to see how much more image detail was preserved by DxO.
Original
Topaz
DxO

Not sure how it compares, but I had a good experience with Neat Image (the older version) - once I understood what the noise fingerprint and the removal adjustments do, it could target the noise accurately, mostly preserving the details that mattered. It was easy to understand how the algoritm worked and intervene in the right places to correct it.

I just tried the NeatImage 9.0 on the same file and it was not able to remove nearly as much of the noise, although I may not be using it to its full potential.

Winfried wrote: ↑December 5th, 2022, 9:27 am The article is ok, but take into account that the article is nearley 2 years old and the tools might have improved.
I downloaded the raw and developed it with DxO 6 and DeepPrime XD and received a very good result (from my point of view).
Problem: DeepPrime XD needs a strong CPU or graphic-card.
Presumable all tools might have improved in the meantime.

Since I started to use Dxo PhotoLab to develop my RAW files a few years ago, I don't use anything else anymore. No need for NeatImage either. I often export as .dng from PhotoLab and use the RAW conversion of PWP7, because it uses the HSV or HSL color space and (in my experience) preserves bright colors better than RGB. And if you use "expand to full range" it is a convenient, adaptive way of doing your first curves edit. I switch off any noise reduction or sharpening in PWP7. The optical corrections of Photolab do an excellent job for sharpening, if your camera/lens combination is supported.
As Winfried commented, Photolab needs a powerful CPU or GPU. For DeepPrime or DeepPrime-XD the GPU is essential. Without the GPU, I need a few minutes for the RAW conversion of a 25MP image, with an AMD Ryzen 2700X 8 core/16 thread CPU. But, although DP-XD is the best, for lower-ISO images the Prime noise reduction option in DxO PL is (in my opinion) sufficient and is a lot faster (seconds) without the use of the GPU.