Topaz Adjust 5 Review

Desktop

The Topaz Adjust desktop looks like this and is quite intuitive to use, as there are no hidden panels:

There are presets for High Key, Low Key, HDR, Film Look, Stylized, and many many more. You may want to download an evaluation copy and see for yourself.

Adjustments Panel

New in Adjust 5 are not only many new presets but also quite a number of global and local adjustments which are accessed from the panel to the right of the preview image.

The effect of a preset you have applied can be fine tuned with these global and local adjustments, or you can forego presets and just adjust manually. We found it fastest to use one or more presets and then fine tune the result rather than adjusting manually from scratch. You can also apply finishing touches such as adding grain, a frame, vignetting, etc.

The three sets of adjustments are 1 Global Adjustments which work on the entire image, 2 Local Adjustments which are applied locally with a brush, and 3 Finishing Touches. These detailed adjustments can also be stacked by clicking Apply and then moving on to the next adjustment. This works much like layers in Photoshop except you cannot come back and readjust after you have committed a change with the Apply button.

Screenshots of the three sets of adjustments accessible from the right hand panel of the desktop:

Snapshots

In addition to the Undo and Redo buttons, you can save up to 99 snapshots of adjustments and go back and forth between these. Unfortunately, we found the snapshot function to be buggy when used in connection with stacked adjustments. Going back to a previous snapshot could result in an image with totally different adjustments than those we had actually made.