In Topaz, you can use the Photo Enhance tool with a 1X scale to let the application apply an upscale and then downscale it back to the original resolution. This lets the application draw additional details during the upscale, but squash them down to improve the appearance of fine detail like skin pores and fabric. It's like a little touch of extra seasoning to the edit.
In a world of bs TH-camrs, this guy is helpful and polite. Breathe of fresh air. Personally, I use Topez along with many other programs to edit photos.
@@Filmfix_officialI’ve been using photoshop as a hobby. And looking at the prices for the programs it’s just crazy. Can’t believe I have to pay over 100$ monthly just for fun 🤦♂️ it’s travesty 😒
This is very interesting and helpful! The trouble is with the apparently 'better' processors they are actually just replacing facial parts with AI derived 'cut and paste's from a database - presumably 'morphing' the shapes into place driven by whatever key lines the algorithm can pull out of the original image. So whilst the result is pleasing to the eye (generally) the result is an impression or likeness only of the original. The real proof of how good these algorithms are is in how they treat non-structured areas of an image, for example the areas that appear abstracted to the human eye - like the blurry transition of hair to the background in the 1st photo. The AI models failed on the detailed jewellery for the same reason - essentially not able to workout the three-dimensionality of the abstracted textures. If it was a 2d surface texture not in perspective they (the AIs) would probably be able to replace with a closer facsimile. So it would seem the job of a good photo-retoucher is still secure for high-end commercial work.
So AI is not correcting, but replacing. thus this is another way to make a phoney image. it does not work just with the photo data, but steals from other images, totally phoney.- shameful
I have found the Photo Restoration filter in Photoshop Beta can be very effective, especially if the photo has scratches or creases. Topaz is outstanding for facial recovery. In some photos I recover the faces in Topaz Photo AI and then process in the PS Restoration filter, turning off the recover faces slider. The combination can have great results. Batch processing in Topaz has been a great addition to the software.
YES!!! I've done basically the same thing and the combination of Neural filters, skin smoothing, photo restoration etc. can work to improve visual quality overall.Then using Topaz to finalize - BUT sometimes I use Topaz first... it just depends on the image and what the problem is!!! The PS Neural filters CAN... and I emphasis "CAN"... radically improve certain problems. BUT NOT ALWAYS! The Skin Smoothing can really improve radical light and dark areas of the face evening them out to a normal shading! Colorize can make a terrible skin color more natural for further tweaking. Using them all makes a big difference with Topaz wrapping it all up!!!!!
For me, it's the same. Topaz is a professional tool. I use it often. It has its quirks. But generally, it understands what you're getting at. So, it will not produce teeth(?!) out of nowhere. Spooky and silly. So yeah, I completely concur with you and how you approach these AI's. Fotor, by the way, is a great tip for deep-restoration. Really happy with that find :). Tnx!
I use Topaz and I'm absolutely satisfied with it (after I upgraded my computer... replaced the graphic card and with that also the PSU and now it works perfectly)
@@MrWiseinheart MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDRR6 192-Bit HDMI/DP PC I corresponded with GeForce and that was the only size I could fit in (and my technician still hat to make some minor changes to get it in)
@@premierdesignsolutionsllc8425 that's awesome I've been wanting to upgrade, good to hear that a 3060 is sufficient enough, everybody else is saying you got to have at least a 3080 to 3090.
I would love to see a test where you take a sharp imagine, blur it (or decrease the resolution) and then try to restore it. So we can compare how close it looks to the original "ground truth". When I tried to upscale faces of people that I know, a lot of these tools created something that doesn't look like these people at all. Just because the image looks sharp and high quality, doesn't mean anything. Obviously the software has to invent detail at some point, but some tools do a better job at this than others.
The thing is not all blurs are equal, mathematical blurs like area average and Gaussian blur for example are not the same as an original lens blur from an actual camera lens. So for the purposes of your test, it would be better to take a digital photo both in focus and the out of focus of your subject matter - then test with the blurred one. That would be a interesting ground truth as such. Also comparing black and white/ monochrome versus color too. Then compare the way texturing (skin etc) is between the color and the mono images.
with Topaz you have to check what selection it made for "faces" and "subject" to see what it will act on (sharpen, noise removal). You can adjust those selections, as well for better results.
I'm a HUGE fan of Topaz and this comparison is excellent.Yes, Remini did an excellent job in some areas of the images, but pretty much fell down in others. Maybe future versions will improve that. The price of Remini might be fine for Pros who do a lot of retouching for big bucks, but for a little guy like me... IT'S EXPENSIVE!!!!! LOL!!!
Holy shit, you're almost at 5m subscribers. And look at your sweet studio! I remember when you were so much smaller but I suppose everyone can appreciate your efforts. Good for you!
Topaz sometimes performs better in their other apps for this. Topaz Denoise or Topaz Gigapixel. I hope Photo AI versions in the future will improve on skin texture. What I love about Photo AI is the speed and easy user interface. The full Topaz package has been so useful for me. The Video Ai is great also
In 2022 I edited some old photos with Remini. It did okay but since they seem to replace features, especially the eyes, with AI generated images I ended up with some photos where the person was not recognizable as that person. Last summer I started using Topaz Photo (after being impressed with Topaz Video). The results seem more natural. Since Remini just deals with the face it sometimes looks like the subject is wearing a mask.
I have not tried topaz in a while. I will try it again. Remini is my favourite. I mostly use it as final touch. What I do like is you can take the final touch and if it is too much you can simply lower the opacity to get just the right amount. All that said, I don't like the price because I don't use it enough to justify the high cost, so I will work it using the phone version, then mail it to my desktop. lol
The first version of Topaz Photo AI that was out a year ago was disappointing to me in most images like these, but the second version out in late 2023 is a huge improvement in the ability to control and tweak the adjustments. Well worth a trial. It's expensive, though, at full price. (Good Black Friday sale.)
Thank you for your hard work. Very interesting comparison. It looks like different approaches - everything but Topaz is perhaps using a generative AI to make what it thinks is there and matching it as best as possible to the original whereas Topaz is trying to work with the pixels it has in the original image.
Remini all the way! I use it to save pics I may love but just missed focus. I then add it to other editors and use de noise. Also use luminar and it's skin softening slider. Gets rid of most of that annoying line it leaves. And it's free. I've compared it to topaz many times, and topaz doesn't compare. The whole point here is getting the soft/out of focus faces fixed. And it's by far clear that Remini does the best job. One time it did add an eyeball to someone who had his eyes closed. That one was no good. But that was almost 2 years ago and it's improved since then.
I love Remini, but absolutely hate their new subscription system. $10/week is simply too much (at least for my frequency of use). If it was $10/month I'd be much more inclined to keep the subscription open rather than save up a bunch of images, process them all at once, then cancel before the week's through.
I have Topaz Photo AI, and you can select an area for sharpening or noise reduction. You can also choose to include neck and hair in face recovery. It does occasionally do weird things with the eyes, especially if the image was really blurry. My sister is Irish, and in one picture (she was squinting) it gave her Japanese eyes.
Been using the Remini mobile app for a couple years now, and I've had to stop. It used to be amazing - but now I've noticed it is totally beautifying the subjects. Which is not cool. It's removing wrinkles, overly smoothing skin, and adding what looks like make-up. It gives you 3 versions with different intensities, but I would be embarrased to change someone's face this drastically. Additionally - it only seems to affect faces. Everything else just become smoother and smudgy. Not good.
I feel like you can use certain aspects of the different ai's and Frankenstein a good image. For example, use remini to recover parts of the eyes or face, use a high-pass filter. Use topaz for button's shoulders etc.
These “defects” (noise and blur) look unnatural. Did you in fact start from quality photos and degrade them artificially? In which case I’d say it gives an unrealistic edge to the algorithms. Next time use actually worn out or bad photos.
I haven't updated Topaz Sharpen and Topaz Denoise in a while, I am probably way behind. And I don't have Topaz Photo (although some tests were enthusing). I have noticed that denoising before sharpening was really important, and choosing the right type of Denoise also matters a lot. Noise itself leads to falls detail that Sharpen will turn into fake features. And the wrong Denoise setting creates patterns in Sharpen. I like the lens correction of DXO Pureraw, I have sometimes used Pureraw to correct and denoise a photo first, then output into a tiff and let Topaz Sharpen work with that. Sometimes that's a lot better. I suspect that mixing and matching of these apps would produce different results as well. Very nice test!
Topaz stopped updating Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI in 2023 and are focusing all their coding efforts now on Photo AI, Video AI, and Gigapixel AI. Photo AI has gotten a lot better in version 2 out in late 2023. Users thought they'd abandoned Gigapixel AI too but Topaz just came out with an upgrade version in January 2024 and will be adding more big improvements, they say, in April. Gigapixel AI is for upscaling images taken at low-res (such as on early digital cameras) or heavily cropped. Photo AI can do this also.
These tools are advancing rapidly in effectiveness, and BTW, doing further tweaking than shown here, either within the app or in another app, can give even better results. These days I regret deleting some earlier digital images that I deemed too far "out of focus" or noisy to ever have hope of saving.
considering which week we get improvments of "that's impossible" to "now everyone does it perfectly" some few years from now having a actual real photo will take a actual camera. These things are sure get implemented as AI enhancement on phone cameras. Real photos will become a niche even more, and people already talk about how the sky is always bluer on phone photos.
Wonder what happens if you put the image through more than one program. For example, adjust it with Topaz, then correct that adjusted image with one of the others. Worth a shot.
The interesting thing to me is that I think the best result of all would be a handmade comp using all of the source images combined. They each have their good areas, if you wanted the ultimate quality you could take bits and pieces from each.
Topaz like some of the others just target the face. Thats why its called face recovery. If you look close at face and the border where it cleans up the image and where its still blury. You can see what looks like a box around the cafe. Under the hood, the box is where it auto detects a border and creates a box to target the face to focus its work. It doesn’t always get it right depending on how bad the image it. If we could get some manual control over the auto detect so we could help the AI along a bit, that would be great. Maybe instead of a box, be able to manually trace along the face and hair to make sure it fixes everything. I think Topaz and a few of the others got some but not all of the hair because it was to properly detected. It does a great job but can use an option to help it along if its detection misses something.
Denoise in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw is excellent, on par with Topaz. Sharpening is a different story. Sometimes in Topaz, faces can get a little plastic.
I have hundreds of pictures I need to try and use this with old family photos. Is it best just to get Photoshop since I could do a month to month subscription? Or is Topaz better ??? Thank u
I actually use Topaz AI and Luminar Neo together. I start with Topaz AI for noise reduction and sharpening and upscaling if needed and save to DNG format and then do my final processing in Luminar Neo.
Nice video. The progress has been amazing in this type of software. There is more work to be done, but I'm sure it will continue to improve. I use Topaz AI and it works great at times, but not all the time. At least it doesn't add things that were not in the original photo like those others.
I use Topaz Photo AI. I love it, though it's not quite perfect. It does a pretty amazing job with photos I would ordinarily toss in the trash bin. I believe in time, it will improve as it learns. Updates are often and with each come improvements.
I have topaz, and I like the noise removal a lot. I have two powerful GPUs and it works very fast on my high res images. Sharpening can be a problem with fur, so be careful. If I have a picture with cats or squirrels or things of that nature that are blurry, I generally don't even try to sharpen them. And be sure to turn off face detection for cats or you will get crazy faces. It ,might be an interesting test to try sharpening with animals with fur and animals with feathers to see what tools work best.
There are other important factors. Sometimes what you have is a scan of a photographic print that has the texture of some fabric backing the print visible at the finest level of detail -- which of the tools will automatically remove those regularly-patterned lines?
I suspect this is true of some of the other apps too, but the reason Fotor doesn't improve e.g. the buttons is that it is specifically a "Face Unblur" tool. It would be nice if it had more fine-grained control, but OTOH, Fotor is relatively cheap even for the pro version (~39.99/yr).
Possibly the best video for comparing de bluer software, I am a Skylume user, but it does lack in this dept, so looking for an alternative, I think I've found it now. Thanks.
Wonderful video! How come you did not include Photoshop Neural Restore ? It does a great job, although it only works on the face (mostly). In any case THANKS!
If I did a macro shoot of a coin, that turned out blurry in certain parts, what software would be the best to rectify it? I tried Topaz Photo AI 3.0.3, and it had quite a good result, but interested in exploring more. Thanks!
An algorithm does not re-discover lost details, it makes them up as it goes; so you just have to hope that your memory is even blurrier to make yourself believe it's true to the original. (Granted that if you could feed the right algorithm with a great number of blurred photos it could add authentic, original details.)
Great video. I bought the Topaz. But it's not easy to use. Everything looks plastic. So I have to spend as much time as before, or perhaps even more, adding noise and imperfections, etc, to get rid of that plastic look from portraits and many materials. And the end results are not always better, anyway. But with a more skilled hand, it might be very much more useful than I now find it.
@@thelucabrazzi Sorry, Sir, I have no good software, filters or macros for it; I use manual techniques roughing up the pixels, using the standard Photoshop palette of tools. We need a pro's answer as to how to generalise the procedures using plug-ins or macros to get a tool usable for fast processing. Sorry.
Topaz looks the most natural. For instance, when a person stands closer to the camera, we expect a little different compared with persons who stand in another area. Thus, topaz seems the best. I am trying out On1 and Liminar neo, and certainly On1 seems to create an HDR picture that does not at all look natural.
Good video ... I am a long time Topaz (all products) and PS / LR user ... these do well on restoring old / poorer shots ... have tried multiple times to use Neo to compare but always with poor results ...
So, basically, those applications that are adding features like teeth (e.g., Fotor) 5:11 aren’t really “de-blurring” the photo, they’re creating a version that _could_ be the photo in some alternative universe. It’s not like some algorithm could “work backwards” from the blurry photo to the source-the teeth _aren’t there._ It almost feels like the app is fooling the user.
I liked Topaz and Fotor the best, but I feel like Topaz gives you more options to get it even better than you have it here. I feel like Fotor won over all...but I also get the feeling that with some tinkering, I can probably get Topaz to match Fotor.
Thanks so much for this comparison Unmesh. Really appreciate these videos you do, and the depth you dig into it. Really good to see how much flexibility some tools lack, and to what extent you need to tweak the settings to Topaz. The third image with the young girl dancing is a great example of how thuch tools can be valuable - rescuing a shot that was otherwise lovely if not for missed focus. Do you think the upscaling features of Topaz are worthwhile for stills too? You didn't include that in the video where you featured Upscayl.
Well, if I really wanted to recover a blurred image, I'd probably use more than one of these tools and then merge the results in PS to get the best each one can give. Hopefully they'll be better in a few years.
so why do you think adobe and photoshop does not develop this more ? It seems there are some amazing apps for phone apps , im just wondering why adobe does not have more photoshop plug ins
Seems like the best way to go about doing a real photo restoration is to composit a few of these results together since none of them do the whole job by themselves
many thanks for doing the comparison & sharing results, I think case by case, depending on photo and final application/results needed then all these have merit.
All night I've been working on restoring old pics of our family album and next day there's a video from you about it 😂 ok so I'll have to do that again 😂
You must realize, it's not "recovering", because you don't have a time machine to return the lost information. The AI is a realistic recreation, but like a docu-drama the fine details may be untrue. (as they are literally obtained from the training data of other people's photos!)
Been wondering about the utility of these various apps for a while. Thank you! Would enjoy gaining a better understanding of, and overlap, of the various Topaz apps. Personally, I find their various offerings confusing.
Thank you for this very informative presentation. At this time it looks to me that there is no real winner. It all depends - on many things that are difficult to predict. It all depends on the original file on which we work how well the software can cope with it.
I’d like to see more about how apps do with non-face content. It looks like Topaz would be the best but I have several old, mis-focused images I’d like to fix, but they don’t have faces in them.
On1 noise and sharpening isn't designed to recover extremes like this. They have a separate Face Recovery feature. Mind you, I find it makes everyone look like a different person, much like most of the other programs. For me, that makes them useless. I'm sure we'll get closer in the coming years.
Hey Unmesh bro, I know you're always looking for ideas to make new vids. Well you already did one about wacom tablet setup for retouching, what about making a setup for vectorial work and update the content anyways? Keep doing awesome 🎉
I like using Topaz Photo AI, but my biggest complaint with the program is when it improves the face, it does an amazing job, but the rest of the surrounding skin (neck, chest, arms) look horrible.
In Topaz, you can use the Photo Enhance tool with a 1X scale to let the application apply an upscale and then downscale it back to the original resolution. This lets the application draw additional details during the upscale, but squash them down to improve the appearance of fine detail like skin pores and fabric. It's like a little touch of extra seasoning to the edit.
Great tip!
Gigapixel?
@@madmehtabintegrated into topaz
@@madmehtab Sorry I meant to say that's in PhotoAI. I haven't used GigaPixel in a while but I think it's possible there as well.
The same i do for fotor. First upscale then back to original and then all the other
In a world of bs TH-camrs, this guy is helpful and polite. Breathe of fresh air. Personally, I use Topez along with many other programs to edit photos.
Is it free?
@@Filmfix_officialI’ve been using photoshop as a hobby. And looking at the prices for the programs it’s just crazy. Can’t believe I have to pay over 100$ monthly just for fun 🤦♂️ it’s travesty 😒
This is very interesting and helpful! The trouble is with the apparently 'better' processors they are actually just replacing facial parts with AI derived 'cut and paste's from a database - presumably 'morphing' the shapes into place driven by whatever key lines the algorithm can pull out of the original image. So whilst the result is pleasing to the eye (generally) the result is an impression or likeness only of the original. The real proof of how good these algorithms are is in how they treat non-structured areas of an image, for example the areas that appear abstracted to the human eye - like the blurry transition of hair to the background in the 1st photo. The AI models failed on the detailed jewellery for the same reason - essentially not able to workout the three-dimensionality of the abstracted textures. If it was a 2d surface texture not in perspective they (the AIs) would probably be able to replace with a closer facsimile. So it would seem the job of a good photo-retoucher is still secure for high-end commercial work.
True but in some cases there's not enough information to recover and that's the best option
So AI is not correcting, but replacing. thus this is another way to make a phoney image. it does not work just with the photo data, but steals from other images, totally phoney.- shameful
I belong to a few photo editing, photo repair groups on FB and several people use AI apps and it generally makes my shirk back in horror.
I have found the Photo Restoration filter in Photoshop Beta can be very effective, especially if the photo has scratches or creases. Topaz is outstanding for facial recovery. In some photos I recover the faces in Topaz Photo AI and then process in the PS Restoration filter, turning off the recover faces slider. The combination can have great results. Batch processing in Topaz has been a great addition to the software.
YES!!! I've done basically the same thing and the combination of Neural filters, skin smoothing, photo restoration etc. can work to improve visual quality overall.Then using Topaz to finalize - BUT sometimes I use Topaz first... it just depends on the image and what the problem is!!! The PS Neural filters CAN... and I emphasis "CAN"... radically improve certain problems. BUT NOT ALWAYS! The Skin Smoothing can really improve radical light and dark areas of the face evening them out to a normal shading! Colorize can make a terrible skin color more natural for further tweaking. Using them all makes a big difference with Topaz wrapping it all up!!!!!
@@BURTBROWN Topaz If I pay for 199$ it's mean I can use all the time right ? it's not subscription for 1 year
@@ratchas.5405 Yes you own it along with 1 years worth of upgrades
updates
For me, it's the same. Topaz is a professional tool. I use it often. It has its quirks. But generally, it understands what you're getting at. So, it will not produce teeth(?!) out of nowhere. Spooky and silly. So yeah, I completely concur with you and how you approach these AI's. Fotor, by the way, is a great tip for deep-restoration. Really happy with that find :). Tnx!
I use Topaz and I'm absolutely satisfied with it (after I upgraded my computer... replaced the graphic card and with that also the PSU and now it works perfectly)
Are you running a RTX 4090?
@@MrWiseinheart MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 3060 12GB GDRR6 192-Bit HDMI/DP PC I corresponded with GeForce and that was the only size I could fit in (and my technician still hat to make some minor changes to get it in)
@@premierdesignsolutionsllc8425 that's awesome I've been wanting to upgrade, good to hear that a 3060 is sufficient enough, everybody else is saying you got to have at least a 3080 to 3090.
@@premierdesignsolutionsllc8425 About how long does it take to process one picture (say, a 20 Mpix PNG) with it? Thank you!
I would love to see a test where you take a sharp imagine, blur it (or decrease the resolution) and then try to restore it. So we can compare how close it looks to the original "ground truth". When I tried to upscale faces of people that I know, a lot of these tools created something that doesn't look like these people at all. Just because the image looks sharp and high quality, doesn't mean anything. Obviously the software has to invent detail at some point, but some tools do a better job at this than others.
The thing is not all blurs are equal, mathematical blurs like area average and Gaussian blur for example are not the same as an original lens blur from an actual camera lens. So for the purposes of your test, it would be better to take a digital photo both in focus and the out of focus of your subject matter - then test with the blurred one. That would be a interesting ground truth as such. Also comparing black and white/ monochrome versus color too. Then compare the way texturing (skin etc) is between the color and the mono images.
100% this!
Smart thinking! Thanks @@Seafox0011
with Topaz you have to check what selection it made for "faces" and "subject" to see what it will act on (sharpen, noise removal). You can adjust those selections, as well for better results.
I'm a HUGE fan of Topaz and this comparison is excellent.Yes, Remini did an excellent job in some areas of the images, but pretty much fell down in others. Maybe future versions will improve that. The price of Remini might be fine for Pros who do a lot of retouching for big bucks, but for a little guy like me... IT'S EXPENSIVE!!!!! LOL!!!
Remini is for people who use cell phones for this type of work? It's not for serious photographers.
No doubt this is one of the best videos you have ever made. This video is useful for everyone. 🙏Thanks and hope to make another video like this.
Holy shit, you're almost at 5m subscribers. And look at your sweet studio!
I remember when you were so much smaller but I suppose everyone can appreciate your efforts.
Good for you!
Topaz sometimes performs better in their other apps for this. Topaz Denoise or Topaz Gigapixel. I hope Photo AI versions in the future will improve on skin texture. What I love about Photo AI is the speed and easy user interface. The full Topaz package has been so useful for me. The Video Ai is great also
In 2022 I edited some old photos with Remini. It did okay but since they seem to replace features, especially the eyes, with AI generated images I ended up with some photos where the person was not recognizable as that person. Last summer I started using Topaz Photo (after being impressed with Topaz Video). The results seem more natural. Since Remini just deals with the face it sometimes looks like the subject is wearing a mask.
I have not tried topaz in a while. I will try it again. Remini is my favourite. I mostly use it as final touch. What I do like is you can take the final touch and if it is too much you can simply lower the opacity to get just the right amount. All that said, I don't like the price because I don't use it enough to justify the high cost, so I will work it using the phone version, then mail it to my desktop. lol
The first version of Topaz Photo AI that was out a year ago was disappointing to me in most images like these, but the second version out in late 2023 is a huge improvement in the ability to control and tweak the adjustments. Well worth a trial. It's expensive, though, at full price. (Good Black Friday sale.)
Thank you for your hard work. Very interesting comparison. It looks like different approaches - everything but Topaz is perhaps using a generative AI to make what it thinks is there and matching it as best as possible to the original whereas Topaz is trying to work with the pixels it has in the original image.
Audio quality top notch.
I'm gonna have to go with Topaz overall, but yeah, maybe combining with Fotar. I agree. Thanks for a very useful comparison.
Remini all the way! I use it to save pics I may love but just missed focus. I then add it to other editors and use de noise. Also use luminar and it's skin softening slider. Gets rid of most of that annoying line it leaves. And it's free. I've compared it to topaz many times, and topaz doesn't compare. The whole point here is getting the soft/out of focus faces fixed. And it's by far clear that Remini does the best job. One time it did add an eyeball to someone who had his eyes closed. That one was no good. But that was almost 2 years ago and it's improved since then.
I love Remini, but absolutely hate their new subscription system. $10/week is simply too much (at least for my frequency of use). If it was $10/month I'd be much more inclined to keep the subscription open rather than save up a bunch of images, process them all at once, then cancel before the week's through.
I have Topaz Photo AI, and you can select an area for sharpening or noise reduction. You can also choose to include neck and hair in face recovery. It does occasionally do weird things with the eyes, especially if the image was really blurry. My sister is Irish, and in one picture (she was squinting) it gave her Japanese eyes.
Been using the Remini mobile app for a couple years now, and I've had to stop. It used to be amazing - but now I've noticed it is totally beautifying the subjects. Which is not cool. It's removing wrinkles, overly smoothing skin, and adding what looks like make-up. It gives you 3 versions with different intensities, but I would be embarrased to change someone's face this drastically. Additionally - it only seems to affect faces. Everything else just become smoother and smudgy. Not good.
I feel like you can use certain aspects of the different ai's and Frankenstein a good image.
For example, use remini to recover parts of the eyes or face, use a high-pass filter. Use topaz for button's shoulders etc.
You are the best youtuber of all. Really sweet, good tips, smiling, and speak really well !
These “defects” (noise and blur) look unnatural. Did you in fact start from quality photos and degrade them artificially? In which case I’d say it gives an unrealistic edge to the algorithms. Next time use actually worn out or bad photos.
It would have be a perfect video if you included a comparison with the neural filters of Photoshop.
I haven't updated Topaz Sharpen and Topaz Denoise in a while, I am probably way behind. And I don't have Topaz Photo (although some tests were enthusing). I have noticed that denoising before sharpening was really important, and choosing the right type of Denoise also matters a lot. Noise itself leads to falls detail that Sharpen will turn into fake features. And the wrong Denoise setting creates patterns in Sharpen. I like the lens correction of DXO Pureraw, I have sometimes used Pureraw to correct and denoise a photo first, then output into a tiff and let Topaz Sharpen work with that. Sometimes that's a lot better. I suspect that mixing and matching of these apps would produce different results as well.
Very nice test!
Topaz stopped updating Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI in 2023 and are focusing all their coding efforts now on Photo AI, Video AI, and Gigapixel AI. Photo AI has gotten a lot better in version 2 out in late 2023. Users thought they'd abandoned Gigapixel AI too but Topaz just came out with an upgrade version in January 2024 and will be adding more big improvements, they say, in April. Gigapixel AI is for upscaling images taken at low-res (such as on early digital cameras) or heavily cropped. Photo AI can do this also.
Your videos keep my anxiety down for whatever reason.
Topaz is the best to me cuz it doesn't change the original facial feature too much.
These tools are advancing rapidly in effectiveness, and BTW, doing further tweaking than shown here, either within the app or in another app, can give even better results. These days I regret deleting some earlier digital images that I deemed too far "out of focus" or noisy to ever have hope of saving.
considering which week we get improvments of "that's impossible" to "now everyone does it perfectly" some few years from now having a actual real photo will take a actual camera. These things are sure get implemented as AI enhancement on phone cameras. Real photos will become a niche even more, and people already talk about how the sky is always bluer on phone photos.
This is a lovely comparison. I think i liked Canva's results the most. But ofc over time most of these options may show their strengths. :)
Wonder what happens if you put the image through more than one program. For example, adjust it with Topaz, then correct that adjusted image with one of the others. Worth a shot.
Topaz is the only one of these I would accept.
I do Weddings, and playing around with online-only software is amateurish.
The interesting thing to me is that I think the best result of all would be a handmade comp using all of the source images combined. They each have their good areas, if you wanted the ultimate quality you could take bits and pieces from each.
Literally if only I had this last night. I had to say 'good enough' and send to print. I'm trying these out when I get home.
Topaz like some of the others just target the face. Thats why its called face recovery. If you look close at face and the border where it cleans up the image and where its still blury. You can see what looks like a box around the cafe. Under the hood, the box is where it auto detects a border and creates a box to target the face to focus its work. It doesn’t always get it right depending on how bad the image it. If we could get some manual control over the auto detect so we could help the AI along a bit, that would be great. Maybe instead of a box, be able to manually trace along the face and hair to make sure it fixes everything. I think Topaz and a few of the others got some but not all of the hair because it was to properly detected. It does a great job but can use an option to help it along if its detection misses something.
Denoise in Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw is excellent, on par with Topaz. Sharpening is a different story.
Sometimes in Topaz, faces can get a little plastic.
I have hundreds of pictures I need to try and use this with old family photos. Is it best just to get Photoshop since I could do a month to month subscription? Or is Topaz better ??? Thank u
I actually use Topaz AI and Luminar Neo together. I start with Topaz AI for noise reduction and sharpening and upscaling if needed and save to DNG format and then do my final processing in Luminar Neo.
Nice video. The progress has been amazing in this type of software. There is more work to be done, but I'm sure it will continue to improve. I use Topaz AI and it works great at times, but not all the time. At least it doesn't add things that were not in the original photo like those others.
I use Topaz Photo AI. I love it, though it's not quite perfect. It does a pretty amazing job with photos I would ordinarily toss in the trash bin. I believe in time, it will improve as it learns. Updates are often and with each come improvements.
Topaz is the only professional product I've seen so far.
I have topaz, and I like the noise removal a lot. I have two powerful GPUs and it works very fast on my high res images. Sharpening can be a problem with fur, so be careful. If I have a picture with cats or squirrels or things of that nature that are blurry, I generally don't even try to sharpen them. And be sure to turn off face detection for cats or you will get crazy faces. It ,might be an interesting test to try sharpening with animals with fur and animals with feathers to see what tools work best.
I've seen some improvement using Photoshop Neural filter Photo Restore. I think that this may be quite useful in the future.
There are other important factors. Sometimes what you have is a scan of a photographic print that has the texture of some fabric backing the print visible at the finest level of detail -- which of the tools will automatically remove those regularly-patterned lines?
I suspect this is true of some of the other apps too, but the reason Fotor doesn't improve e.g. the buttons is that it is specifically a "Face Unblur" tool. It would be nice if it had more fine-grained control, but OTOH, Fotor is relatively cheap even for the pro version (~39.99/yr).
Possibly the best video for comparing de bluer software, I am a Skylume user, but it does lack in this dept, so looking for an alternative, I think I've found it now. Thanks.
Does this software only work on portraits? What about landscapes and cityscapes?
combine fotor and topaz, then colorize in ps, that will be ultimate combo quality
Wonderful video! How come you did not include Photoshop Neural Restore ? It does a great job, although it only works on the face (mostly). In any case THANKS!
Hi Unmesh, you could also have a compare with Magnific AI you had already tested in a previous video. Sometimes better than Remini or Topaz
If I did a macro shoot of a coin, that turned out blurry in certain parts, what software would be the best to rectify it?
I tried Topaz Photo AI 3.0.3, and it had quite a good result, but interested in exploring more. Thanks!
I'm curious to see what platform would work best for landscape?
An algorithm does not re-discover lost details, it makes them up as it goes; so you just have to hope that your memory is even blurrier to make yourself believe it's true to the original. (Granted that if you could feed the right algorithm with a great number of blurred photos it could add authentic, original details.)
Great video. I bought the Topaz. But it's not easy to use. Everything looks plastic. So I have to spend as much time as before, or perhaps even more, adding noise and imperfections, etc, to get rid of that plastic look from portraits and many materials. And the end results are not always better, anyway. But with a more skilled hand, it might be very much more useful than I now find it.
I thought it looks too much myself and I've got 10,000 old photos of family to try and clean up. What would you suggest to use?
@@thelucabrazzi Sorry, Sir, I have no good software, filters or macros for it; I use manual techniques roughing up the pixels, using the standard Photoshop palette of tools. We need a pro's answer as to how to generalise the procedures using plug-ins or macros to get a tool usable for fast processing. Sorry.
I am a big Topaz fan. I do not like subscriptions or web-based apps because many times I edit on my laptop in the mountains with no internet.
On1 NoNoise AI - did you ever click on the Apply button on the screen? Seems to me that the filters won't work unless you apply them.
Topaz looks the most natural. For instance, when a person stands closer to the camera, we expect a little different compared with persons who stand in another area. Thus, topaz seems the best.
I am trying out On1 and Liminar neo, and certainly On1 seems to create an HDR picture that does not at all look natural.
Awesome comparison. I'm also interested in which is best for non-faces, like buildings, cars, etc.
Good video ... I am a long time Topaz (all products) and PS / LR user ... these do well on restoring old / poorer shots ... have tried multiple times to use Neo to compare but always with poor results ...
Very informative video Unmesh, one question, doesn't Photoshop or Lightroom have anything to compare with this?
So, basically, those applications that are adding features like teeth (e.g., Fotor) 5:11 aren’t really “de-blurring” the photo, they’re creating a version that _could_ be the photo in some alternative universe. It’s not like some algorithm could “work backwards” from the blurry photo to the source-the teeth _aren’t there._ It almost feels like the app is fooling the user.
I liked Topaz and Fotor the best, but I feel like Topaz gives you more options to get it even better than you have it here. I feel like Fotor won over all...but I also get the feeling that with some tinkering, I can probably get Topaz to match Fotor.
I'm surprised with Canva... great video!
Canva and Fotor
I'm really glad that I didn't switch my Luminar Neo to the subscription model. The added features all seem a bit undercooked.
Thanks so much for this comparison Unmesh. Really appreciate these videos you do, and the depth you dig into it. Really good to see how much flexibility some tools lack, and to what extent you need to tweak the settings to Topaz. The third image with the young girl dancing is a great example of how thuch tools can be valuable - rescuing a shot that was otherwise lovely if not for missed focus.
Do you think the upscaling features of Topaz are worthwhile for stills too? You didn't include that in the video where you featured Upscayl.
What about blurry or shaky documents images?
For me the best are Magnific AI, without a doubt!!
I'd really like to see a comparisson between Topaz and the new Lightroom Enhance.
Well, if I really wanted to recover a blurred image, I'd probably use more than one of these tools and then merge the results in PS to get the best each one can give. Hopefully they'll be better in a few years.
Can you select areas to to work on without affecting the rest of the image in any of these programs?
I'm surprised you didn't use photo restore in neural filters as an option.
so why do you think adobe and photoshop does not develop this more ? It seems there are some amazing apps for phone apps , im just wondering why adobe does not have more photoshop plug ins
Seems like the best way to go about doing a real photo restoration is to composit a few of these results together since none of them do the whole job by themselves
Maybe Remini "thinks" (or there's a setting somewhere) that the image is supposed to be painted on canvas?
Upscale the photo and use remini for eye , nose and lips.Problem with AI tools are that they change the person face
Yes. Topaz is better but they reduce the quality of the results with the version after this. Right now I don’t know if this evaluation still accurate
Impossibile non mettere il like.
Sei molto preparato e competente .Bravo e Complimenti 👍
many thanks for doing the comparison & sharing results, I think case by case, depending on photo and final application/results needed then all these have merit.
What would be best to use for text?
Why you didn't try with Neural filter Photo restoration? It did not bad job. Changes the colour little but this can be adjusted.
All night I've been working on restoring old pics of our family album and next day there's a video from you about it 😂 ok so I'll have to do that again 😂
I'm doing the same!
Excellent teacher incredible way of learning about this subject, Kudos my friend I learned a lot from your videos you truly inspire me to be my best .
How about using first Topaz and then Remini?
What about Gimp (open source) or Corey's Paint Shop Pro?
You must realize, it's not "recovering", because you don't have a time machine to return the lost information. The AI is a realistic recreation, but like a docu-drama the fine details may be untrue. (as they are literally obtained from the training data of other people's photos!)
Very helpful. What about low resolution pixelated images? Do you have a video for that?
Fotar does an amazing job with the eyes!
Well, you really are an amazing adept photoshop expert. I have subscribed! thanks for the content. this is an amazing tutorial.
What about Stable Diffusion with controlNET? by far the best IMHO since it also gives you creative freedom
Wow! Such a helpfull outstanding review! Thank you so much! You are my favorite chanell for Photoshop learning
Definitely Topaz...most natural
Been wondering about the utility of these various apps for a while. Thank you! Would enjoy gaining a better understanding of, and overlap, of the various Topaz apps. Personally, I find their various offerings confusing.
Thank you for this very informative presentation. At this time it looks to me that there is no real winner. It all depends - on many things that are difficult to predict. It all depends on the original file on which we work how well the software can cope with it.
Besides the great content, can we take a moment and appreciate the top notch audio quality!?
I’d like to see more about how apps do with non-face content. It looks like Topaz would be the best but I have several old, mis-focused images I’d like to fix, but they don’t have faces in them.
On1 noise and sharpening isn't designed to recover extremes like this. They have a separate Face Recovery feature. Mind you, I find it makes everyone look like a different person, much like most of the other programs. For me, that makes them useless. I'm sure we'll get closer in the coming years.
Pixperfect......Have you compared them with Photoshop 2024?
Hey Unmesh bro, I know you're always looking for ideas to make new vids. Well you already did one about wacom tablet setup for retouching, what about making a setup for vectorial work and update the content anyways? Keep doing awesome 🎉
I like using Topaz Photo AI, but my biggest complaint with the program is when it improves the face, it does an amazing job, but the rest of the surrounding skin (neck, chest, arms) look horrible.
this is as best guesswork. pleasing to look at, but not truly restoring it. again, still fun.