The Truth Revealed: Lightroom Denoise AI vs Topaz AI (ROUND 2)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2023
- In the round 1 video, I talked about how Lightroom Denoise AI and Topaz Denoise AI could handle an image with medium noise. In this video, I take an owl image taken at ISO 20000 and see how each of the products do.
With all the talk about AI and the inclusion of it in products like Lightroom and Topaz, can it really perform like everyone is saying. Is Lightroom AI just as good as Topaz AI?
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the bird's eyes looked perfectly fine to me and in fact, detail looked better in the LR version. Personally, I'm not worried about noise at 200%. That's pixel peeping and very unreleastic.
I don't normally use 200% when checking for critical focus or detail. The only reason I used 200% was so you could see it on the TH-cam video. LR had a ton less detail. I apologize if that did not come out on the video. Even at 100% you could see the issues. However, sometimes Topaz does struggle with the exact look I am going for and I use LR for the noise reduction and then sharpen with Topaz or even do the entire image in LR. It is not a video against LR. I love it as an app and use it all the time. In the first video I also talked about realistic noise and detail. LR has more realistic noise. It is just a matter of taste and preference.
@@MatthewCuda My general and limited experiences with Lighroom AI NR is that it removes noise as good as Topaz, but not as good as DXO, but it does "soften" the image somewhat in comparison to both DXO and Topaz. Topaz tends to oversharpen, DXO is better in this respect, although I personally turn all sharpening off in DXO Pure RAW2 (I see no need to upgrade to v3 to be honest).
My workflow tends to using DXO Pure RAW2 in Lightroom Classic as my very first step. I very rarely use Topaz Denoise AI, although if I do, it tends to be on something like a ISO12800 or 25600 image, and I've typically stuffed it in the field and underexposed the shot. Very rarely do these shots come out looking good. I find 12800 is the upper limit on my R3 and 6400 and lower produce consistently better results.
@@MatthewCudaLR always sharpens denoise for me. This video sounds almost like a topaz sponsorship for me lmfao
You asked what we thought of LR DeNoise. In my workflow I primarily work with photos that need improvement. They are in large batches, often digitized from slides or negs or shot on early DSLR's, Point and Shoots, Bridge Cams or phones. Starting with jpegs means Denoise can't work on them anyway, but occasionally there is a RAW file so I give it a try, but directly from within Lightroom, not sending it to Photoshop. I have compared the results to JPEGS I get back from Photo Ai, and the latter wins hands down, every time. The jpegs returned from TPAi are cleaner and sharper that the DNG's from Denoise ...by far. the other thing is the file size.
RAW File: 33,157 KB Dimensions 4000 x 6000
DNG File: 432,141 KB Dimensions 683 x 1024
Topaz JPG: 2,950 KB Dimensions 4001 x 6000
Topaz is enlarging that 683 x 1024 crop to the size it delivers and the Topaz generated JPG looks considerably better than the Lr Denoise DNG!
In my example above the RAW file is uncropped. Both the DNG and the Topaz JPG represent a 60% Crop. I have Topaz set to return an image that is 4000px on the short side ...which is even more revealing. I honestly see no reason to work with Tiffs and DNG's when the JPG files look great, print up just fine, would be returned as such to the client anyway. Whatever compression algorithm Topaz uses is extremely good for my purposes. I just wish AutoPilot still worked in batch mode which it definitely does not.
If Adobe would buy Topaz and incorporate it into LR with a true Autopilot function. That would solve everything. Alternately, sure Adobe's engineers could figure out what Topaz is doing and create something similar for LR and PS. I am down to doing most processing in LR now anyway so things are progressing fast at Adobe. I couldn't have done that a year ago when Topaz Photo Ai had Autopilot working. Lightroom's ability to mask on image and apply the same masking in 100 others ...with Ai figuring out subjects, eyes, backgrounds, clothes, hair, teeth etc., is fabulous. That is true Ai working, not like Topaz now ....where every image I want to use ...needs individual editing in Topaz.
Yeah, it wins in almost every scenario. There have been a very small percentage of mine that looked better in LR but there are a few. Most likely in those scenarios, it is because I ran into a model that hasn’t been fleshed out by topaz.
Love your way 😍
Which one would you recommend for print-on-demand t-shirt tasks?
As someone else pointed out, I immediately notice the feathers on the underside of the birds body, and how much more detail there was in Lightroom, than the one from Topaz. I don't know if you made adjustment to Topaz, if it could render that better also. Definitely the background noise is better in Topaz. I also was getting slow speeds with rendering on Lightroom. There were adjustments to how it was going about it's work that could be adjusted to speed things up. However I still thought it was too slow and upgraded my whole system. Although top of the line in the day it was slow by today's standards. Made a huge improvement across the board.
All good observations. There are times where I actually use Lightroom over Topaz and then in topaz finish it up with a round of sharpening. Yes, you can bring back the details and even do it will selective denoise in Topaz. It just depends on how much time you want to spend on an image. I keep the comparisons brief and more apples to apples I did as little extra work as possible.
Thanks for the reply! @@MatthewCuda
at 4:17 under the bird's wing on the right...LR had much more detail than topaz. One other thing....since I upgraded my GPU to a higher spec LR is taking 15 sec to complete a DNG. I think it's still going to be a juggling act to find out which version suits a particular image. I have to say I love the topaz products but at the end of the day it's about which tool works best for each image. Good vid, thanks for making it :)
I think a lot of people think videos like this are confirmation biased, but the reality is that much of this is personal preference. Right now I like what I am seeing from Topaz, but that isn't to say that next year, Lightroom doesn't take first place. Anyone that follows me, knows that I am not afraid to switch to what works better. Like switching from Canon to Sony when Canon couldn't get their act together. Now Canon is closing the gap, so who knows what the future brings. I love all the competition because it benefits us.
@@MatthewCuda very much so :)
I would only naturally assume that if I am using the Lightroom denoise feature that I would also go to the detail panel and sharpen. Unless I missed something, you didn't do that.
Yes that is what I would do.
Good video but you were a little hard on Lightroom :)
I do tend to be harder on LR, because I feel like they are the bigger and stronger contender. I expect them to put out amazing denoise and I challenge them on it. Also, by no means do I think Topaz is perfect. They also have some needs. I am a huge fan of Lightroom and I love to see the competition and I also can't wait to see how they better their AI in the coming years.
Very bad comparison, the Topaz image has little noise left but will look horribly when printed because of the lack of noise. You should seek help ridding yourself of that allergy, The Lightroom processed image looks way more consistent and thus in my eyes much better. It will also print much better because it will not be susceptible to posterisation due to the interaction of the noise reduced areas with the error diffusion process the printer goes through to correctly apply the color...
If you watch the first video, I talk about the different preferences in noise and how it affects the realism. This is the second in a series. Also, you have total control over Topaz when it comes to how much noise it removes. I also have prints made from Topaz with fairly heavy noise reduction and they look great. But, I fundamentally disagree with how Lightroom treats a high noise image and this is just one image of many.
@@MatthewCuda I have tried myself and Topaz is completely baloney what it treats how because it thinks it's part of the subject and what it doesn't deem part of the subject - this shows up clearly in changes in the error diffusion that is applied during the printing process (if you didn't spot the glaring mistakes before already)... And you have no control whatsoever what detail needs to be preserved because it's fur or scales of the subject for example.
@@karlgunterwunsch1950 what iso are you using. It isn’t a miracle worker
@@MatthewCudaI am using all sorts of ISO settings, well beyond what I previously thought possible on my R7. And Topaz is the worst of the lot in comparison because the AI is as dumb as f... and tries too hard to identify a subject - which reliably fails with my macro photography subjects...
@@karlgunterwunsch1950 I do not have any of these issues with Topaz. It does a wonderful job masking my subjects. Again, it comes down to your needs and personal preferences. Once in a while, Topaz doesn't give me the look I am going for and I have to use other methods, but that is to be expected with any software. It isn't like you just set it and forget it.