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03-03-2021, 12:00 PM   #16
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I've been using Topaz Sharpen for months, both professionally and at home. I have zero complaints with it, and find it far more effective with less effort than Adobe's selective focus.

As a related comment I have Topaz's entire suite of AI programs (and a subscription) and each of them is valuable for certain tasks. But Gigapixel and Sharpen are the two I most often use, and several times a week.

03-03-2021, 12:59 PM   #17
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QuoteOriginally posted by gatorguy Quote
I've been using Topaz Sharpen for months, both professionally and at home. I have zero complaints with it, and find it far more effective with less effort than Adobe's selective focus.

As a related comment I have Topaz's entire suite of AI programs (and a subscription) and each of them is valuable for certain tasks. But Gigapixel and Sharpen are the two I most often use, and several times a week.
Thanks for the additional feedback. All good stuff! I have just learned that the newest version of my present software, Corel PSP, now has AI tools for sharpening and noise reduction. I will upgrade my older version to the new one, then compare how it's tools compare to Topaz. If not up to it, I will buy Topaz. Hoping to be able to expand the capabilities of my modest K5ii. Not expecting to turn it into a full-frame equivalent, but if I can get the print sizes I want out of it I will be happy.
04-10-2021, 11:27 AM   #18
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QuoteOriginally posted by Viking42 Quote
Hoping to be able to expand the capabilities of my modest K5ii.
I've made large prints from images captured on a K-5 without problems, what size are you looking to print?

FWIW, I've started a PF group for Topaz users. I've only started using the software, but I've been impressed with both the ease of use and the results so far. I'll be posting examples as I work through some recent K-1 acquired images, as well as older K-5 or other digital captrues, as well recovering as some scanned photos. The link is in my signature block.
04-10-2021, 12:31 PM   #19
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QuoteOriginally posted by robgski Quote
I've made large prints from images captured on a K-5 without problems, what size are you looking to print?

FWIW, I've started a PF group for Topaz users. I've only started using the software, but I've been impressed with both the ease of use and the results so far. I'll be posting examples as I work through some recent K-1 acquired images, as well as older K-5 or other digital captrues, as well recovering as some scanned photos. The link is in my signature block.

Thanks for the feedback. I will check out your new group -- I saw your intro post on that, but haven't looked recently.

I will likely be printing mostly 11x14 size, and up to 16x20. If I can do 20x24 for really special images, then I would be very happy, but I am a bit sceptical that the K5ii can go that big. It would be great to hear your experience with print sizes from your K5.

FYI, I have some good glass -- DA 12-24; DA* 50-135; and a bunch of carefully curated and quite sharp manual focus primes and zooms (both Pentax and 3rd party...Vivitar Series 1, for example). I shoot a lot with a tripod or monopod. So I am confident that I am getting the best out of the camera in terms of optics and technique.

Subject matter ranges from nature and landscapes, to urban and architecture. Good sharp, detailed, noise-free images are important to me. As is tonal depth (actually this is primary in my mind, more important than anything else).

Looking forward to exploring your new group, and participating if I end up getting Topaz.

Regards,
Svend

04-10-2021, 12:53 PM   #20
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QuoteOriginally posted by Viking42 Quote
It would be great to hear your experience with print sizes from your K5.
I have printed several images from my K-5 at 16x20, and I am very pleased with the results. and they were mostly SOOC, between ISO 80 and ISO 400. Now that I am using the Topaz AI suite, I should try those images and see if the results are that much better.

Only you can decide if the results are good enough for you, though. You can try Topaz AI for free for 30 days, I recommend you try before you buy.
04-10-2021, 01:08 PM - 1 Like   #21
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Good one! Sounds promising, esp. if you're getting that size straight out of camera.

I looked at your examples in your new group -- very impressive. Particularly the black and white crop. It retained a very natural, gentle contrast, and does not have that harsh etched look that over-sharpening often creates. Very nice indeed!
05-14-2021, 11:43 AM - 1 Like   #22
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More experience with Topaz sharpen AI.

Surprisingly, sharpened output quality of Topaz sharpen AI is even better if no sharpening was applied at raw to tiff (or jpeg) conversion provided as input. Any sharpening done on files before going through Topaz sharpen AI decrease the potential for high quality / halo free sharpening.

05-14-2021, 03:03 PM   #23
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QuoteOriginally posted by biz-engineer Quote
More experience with Topaz sharpen AI.

Surprisingly, sharpened output quality of Topaz sharpen AI is even better if no sharpening was applied at raw to tiff (or jpeg) conversion provided as input. Any sharpening done on files before going through Topaz sharpen AI decrease the potential for high quality / halo free sharpening.
Topaz most recent recommendations are NoiseAI before anything else, followed by SharpenAI, and if you intend to use Gigapixel too then save it for last, tho there is an exception as noted in this Q&A.
Gigapixel AI - Where Does it Fit in My Workflow? ? Topaz Help Center

Going back a couple of years they had a suggested workflow that included other Topaz software in addition to those three AI programs.
The Ultimate Workflow for Topaz Labs AI Software – Topaz Labs
05-14-2021, 06:02 PM   #24
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I’ve been tempted by the occasional offers in the forum, but haven’t tried it yet.
I would have to run it on my old(we) laptop (Dell XPS15 icore7 w/ NVidia graphics) , so concerned about he usability.
What kind of hw are you guys using?


05-15-2021, 12:44 AM   #25
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QuoteOriginally posted by photoaki Quote
What kind of hw are you guys using?
Intel i7-8550 @ 2Ghz., 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Intel UHD Graphic 620 the lousy part of the system
Most important for image processing is to have lots of RAM and a high performance graphic card.
When image processing software use the graphic card hardware acceleration, image processing is quite fast even with large files.

Sharpen AI is very slow process anyway, but once sharpening and noise reduction parameters are defined and assigned to each image file, the processing can be postponed in a batch, e.g run at night.

---------- Post added 15-05-21 at 09:50 ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by gatorguy Quote
Topaz most recent recommendations are NoiseAI before anything else, followed by SharpenAI, and if you intend to use Gigapixel too then save it for last, tho there is an exception as noted in this Q&A.
I've used Gigapixels AI, and seen Denoise performance. But I decided to use only Sharpen AI due to Gigapixel introducing some fake textures and Sharpen AI already able to reduce noise. I get the best quality output by up-sampling to final size (@ 300 PPI), no sharpening applied, then sharpen AI. Most often most effective for me , is the stabilize mode (it corrects subject motion blur, effects of camera shake or shutter shock blur, superior to unsharp mask method) and apply noise reduction (it is also possible to add grain).

---------- Post added 15-05-21 at 09:54 ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by photoaki Quote
I’ve been tempted by the occasional offers in the forum, but haven’t tried it yet.
I've missed the offer on the forum, unfortunately. When discounted, it's not expensive for the job it does, in my opinion, but it's a slow to process software, I only apply to selected files for making large prints.
05-15-2021, 09:27 PM   #26
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QuoteOriginally posted by biz-engineer Quote
Intel i7-8550 @ 2Ghz., 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, Intel UHD Graphic 620
Yours is a lot faster than mine, so would have to plan for night duty for sure.
Might give Topaz a go, played with a lot of other packages, but found the learning curve is steep. Just don’t seem to have the patience to become proficient.


05-17-2021, 10:20 AM   #27
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QuoteOriginally posted by photoaki Quote
Yours is a lot faster than mine, so would have to plan for night duty for sure.
Might give Topaz a go, played with a lot of other packages, but found the learning curve is steep. Just don’t seem to have the patience to become proficient.
When I first started Topaz DeNoise, it was on a laptop about two generations older than yours, with integrated graphics. It took almost 2.5 minutes to process and export a 24 MP K3 II file (yay for delayed batch processing), but the bigger issue was the preview and manipulation. Unless I was zoomed way in, updating the preview was slow. You can disable automatic preview updates, and the preview only processes the viewable area (which is why zooming in helps). I did find that if I tried to zoom all the way out on that system, it would freeze due to my limited 8 GB of RAM.

My new system has an i5-8400 that will export in about a minute if I force CPU processing (an option in the program), or 15-20 seconds if I process on my Nvidia 1060 3GB card. I can also now view the entire image in the preview if I want.

Topaz offers a free trial. It used to be 30 days free, but I think they recently changed it to remove the time limit in lieu of adding their own watermark to the images. There's almost no learning curve too. It's just 3 option on the method of noise removal, and 4 slider settings for each.

As for when to use it, I recently stopped putting it at the front of the line. I prefer running my RAWs through RAW Therapee first, making my color and lens corrections, exporting as tiffs, then running those tiffs through DeNoise. It's said I'll sacrifice a little noise reduction, but that's more than offset by the better color results and less artifacts by using RT for capture sharpening. If I do have a high ISO/noisy photo, I may run it both ways to compare, but it's handling regular noise this way just fine so far.
05-17-2021, 12:35 PM   #28
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QuoteOriginally posted by photoaki Quote
I’ve been tempted by the occasional offers in the forum, but haven’t tried it yet.
I would have to run it on my old(we) laptop (Dell XPS15 icore7 w/ NVidia graphics) , so concerned about he usability.
What kind of hw are you guys using?
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
32GB DDR4 XMP Ram
512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (boot drive) plus 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s
AMD Radeon RX 5700 8GB

Not the highest specs, but decent and plenty speedy. Both Gigapixel and SharpenAI process quickly so I've been very pleased with their software.
05-17-2021, 05:58 PM   #29
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QuoteOriginally posted by Mooncatt Quote
When I first started Topaz DeNoise, it was on a laptop about two generations older than yours, with integrated graphics. It took almost 2.5 minutes to process and export a 24 MP K3 II file (yay for delayed batch processing), but the bigger issue was the preview and manipulation. Unless I was zoomed way in, updating the preview was slow. You can disable automatic preview updates, and the preview only processes the viewable area (which is why zooming in helps). I did find that if I tried to zoom all the way out on that system, it would freeze due to my limited 8 GB of RAM.

My new system has an i5-8400 that will export in about a minute if I force CPU processing (an option in the program), or 15-20 seconds if I process on my Nvidia 1060 3GB card. I can also now view the entire image in the preview if I want.

Topaz offers a free trial. It used to be 30 days free, but I think they recently changed it to remove the time limit in lieu of adding their own watermark to the images. There's almost no learning curve too. It's just 3 option on the method of noise removal, and 4 slider settings for each.

As for when to use it, I recently stopped putting it at the front of the line. I prefer running my RAWs through RAW Therapee first, making my color and lens corrections, exporting as tiffs, then running those tiffs through DeNoise. It's said I'll sacrifice a little noise reduction, but that's more than offset by the better color results and less artifacts by using RT for capture sharpening. If I do have a high ISO/noisy photo, I may run it both ways to compare, but it's handling regular noise this way just fine so far.

That‘a my biggest concern right there — long delays in previewing and screen updates.
Need to have the right tool for the job.
Thanks for the feedback!




---------- Post added 05-17-2021 at 08:04 PM ----------

QuoteOriginally posted by gatorguy Quote
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
32GB DDR4 XMP Ram
512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD (boot drive) plus 1TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s
AMD Radeon RX 5700 8GB

Not the highest specs, but decent and plenty speedy. Both Gigapixel and SharpenAI process quickly so I've been very pleased with their software.

Haven’t kept up with benchmarks in a long time, but I would reckon that the i7 and NVidia on mine could do ok in comparison.
But the 32GB RAM and the SSD would kill mine.

I haven’t upgraded mine because I run Linux and it took a long time to get it the way I wanted (suspend, hibernate work great now along with everything else). Adding RAM would require expanding the swap partition among other things. Too lazy to undertake the project.
05-18-2021, 02:58 PM   #30
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QuoteOriginally posted by biz-engineer Quote
Sharpen AI is very slow process anyway, but once sharpening and noise reduction parameters are defined and assigned to each image file, the processing can be postponed in a batch, e.g run at night.
A good graphics card is a must. On my (10 year old) machine with NVidia GeForce 1050 Ti it takes typically about two minutes to render a 20 megapixel image.

In their latest (3.0.3) release of Sharpen Topaz have changed the AI models, trying to get more speed out of it. They have succeeded, but Sharpen now gives bad halos at times, making it pretty much unusable. The previous version (2.2.4) was slower but gave much better results. In both there is a difference in how details are rendered between CPU and GPU rendering - easy to see by looking at the difference in PS.

Also, the suggested defaults are usually too high, unless you like your shots oversharpened to death. It is quite remarkable what Sharpen can do though. Most of my recent shots taken with the little Panasonic TZ100 have been processed with Sharpen.

All in all, the Topaz packages seem to be very much 'work in progress'.
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