[35mmfilmfan]

Installed it, tried to run it, it gave error message regarding Open GL. Uninstalled it.

[mee]

The deal with cataloging is that you can still buy a standalone license for Lightroom. If they go to subscription-only I bet that will motivate potential competitors.

Perhaps.

Affinity (Photo) folk have already mentioned they are coming out with a D.A.M. eventually. I'm hoping more arrive on the market shortly.


That said, about Topaz Studio... It is slow on my PC. Incredibly slow. I run an i5 4690 with 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 950 with 2GB of GDDR5 on Win10/64bit.

It is showing it's age in being a young piece of software right now.

That and I don't really like the rendering it does on my DNG files out of my K-1. I can get decent results, but it seems to require more work than I can get out of LR6 and Nik tools.

I think part of the issue is the software is limited due to the locked 'pro' modules... and the other is just how the software behaves (notably, the highlights slider is doing some undesirable rendering to highlights here and exposure doesn't seem to really punch as it does in LR or Nik tools)

Hopefully it will mature, because I can see the idea behind it and I like it in general. Still not getting me to give up LR..

I think Luminar and their HDR software are more interesting.. but I am curious just how well it will behave on a Windows box, since they're otherwise a Mac-centric software company.

[mee]

Btw there is some background telemetry you can disable in the options screen.

[SBeck]

Perhaps.

That said, about Topaz Studio... It is slow on my PC. Incredibly slow. I run an i5 4690 with 16 GB of RAM and a GTX 950 with 2GB of GDDR5 on Win10/64bit.

It is showing it's age in being a young piece of software right now.

I have an AMD FX-9590 processor and R9 290X.... it's extremely fast on my computer. It probably greatly benefits from graphics acceleration.


Also note that there is already an update that has been pushed out for Topaz Studio.

[Fenwoodian]

I also installed Topaz Studio on my laptop. It is slower and has less capacity than does my desktop computer.

On my laptop, Topaz Impression will not run at all. But it did work just fine on my larger/faster/newer desktop computer. Impression requires some modern fancy card that my older laptop does not have.

However, the standalone version of Topaz Studio works well on my older laptop as do all of my other Topaz plugins that I've installed in it (with the exception of Topaz ReMask of course).

[Fenwoodian]

Can it run the NIK plugins?

It looks like Adobe has opened the door for competition with their subscription-only licensing. Good to see some new choices coming on to the market.

Matt, I just downloaded the NIK plugins. I tried to install them in Topaz Studio.

To make a long story short - you can't do it!

[mee]

I have an AMD FX-9590 processor and R9 290X.... it's extremely fast on my computer. It probably greatly benefits from graphics acceleration.


Also note that there is already an update that has been pushed out for Topaz Studio.

Eh it should work fine on my setup.. I have far more advanced software that hits the GPU and runs without issue. I'm also between recommended and optimal listings on the sys reqs on the Topaz site for this software. So I still suspect the code isn't optimized too well.. and there seem to be some bugs (such as in the installer) that I noticed. It is young code.

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Last edited by mee; 05-25-2017 at 09:25 PM.

[jlstrawman]

Runs fast on my Lenovo T430, I5, 12MB of ram, SSD, and integrated graphics. Also a new update this morning when I checked. Nice, basic program.

[Fenwoodian]

The last few days I've been playing with the new Topaz Studio.

Unfortunately, it will NOT resize your photos (not even when saving).

So, I guess that I'll still need to keep my copies of PhotoShop and Adobe Elements if for nothing else than resizing images.

Also, it seems to work a bit slower then I'm used to when editing JPG fine files from my K1.

Had a couple of strange "crashes" while using Topaz Studio that shut down my computer. Not sure the exact cause.

Topaz has a nice B&W plugin called "B&W Photo Effects" ($60). I purchased something they call "B&W Adjustment" for $15. The adjustment version is pretty lame, no value to me at all - I would not recommend it to you.

Dave

[mee]

The last few days I've been playing with the new Topaz Studio.

Unfortunately, it will NOT resize your photos (not even when saving).

So, I guess that I'll still need to keep my copies of PhotoShop and Adobe Elements if for nothing else than resizing images.

Also, it seems to work a bit slower then I'm used to when editing JPG fine files from my K1.

Had a couple of strange "crashes" while using Topaz Studio that shut down my computer. Not sure the exact cause.

Topaz has a nice B&W plugin called "B&W Photo Effects" ($60). I purchased something they call "B&W Adjustment" for $15. The adjustment version is pretty lame, no value to me at all - I would not recommend it to you.

Like I said, it is young code. It should improve over time. At this point I would shelve it and give it time to mature.

Better option should be coming at the end of the year with MacPhun Luminar. It will probably be around 70 USD though but no modular buying of parts of the code... you get it all.

[Fenwoodian]

Like I said, it is young code. It should improve over time. At this point I would shelve it and give it time to mature.

Better option should be coming at the end of the year with MacPhun Luminar. It will probably be around 70 USD though but no modular buying of parts of the code... you get it all.

.
Makes sense. There are a few other minor "bugs" that just are not right with this new software. I think I'll hold off a while before I use this Topaz Studio as my main image editing software.

I'll wait to see if expected upcoming software updates correct these many "niggles".

[Fenwoodian]

.
Folks, my computer was crashing so much and so very S L O W, that I decided to uninstall Topaz Studio. Since doing so, no more crashes and my computer is operating fast and normally again.

[clackers]

Works for me, but it's slow.

I'll continue using Lightroom (that I'm very happy with), but may try out some of the Masking features in Studio in the future.

[RobA_Oz]

Interesting development. I'm a little surprised at the "running slow" comments. I suspect they may have developed it for Mac OS in the first instance, as I haven't noticed any such problems running it on my 8-year-old 13" MacBook Pro. It's not quite at the stage of replacing CS5 for me, but it's clearly on the way to challenging some of the others.

[Fenwoodian]

I felt challenged to find out what went wrong...

So, I downloaded and installed Topaz Studio a second time. the main software still had a few minor bugs, but nothing major.

Then I reinstalled each of my many Topaz plugins, and tested each one out before downloading the next plugin. All worked fine (albeit a bit on the slow side) with one exception.

After downloading the latest version of Topaz Detail and installing it, I tried a few times to sharpen small jpg files using this plugin in Topaz Studio. Each time my Windows computer would crash.

So my computer crashing problem was caused by Topaz Detail. I deleted Topaz Detail and the crashing problem disappeared.