The Truth Revealed: Lightroom Denoise AI vs Topaz AI
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ส.ค. 2023
- 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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I use lightroom denoise and it takes the same amount of time as topaz on your computer, very fast. I have a mac with an M2 chip. I also sharpen my subject a little after denoising and I find no real difference between the 2 softwares, except it is a lot more convenient to denoise in lightroom. I have wildlife photos at 12800 ISO that look like 400 ISO. Great video
The LrC Denoise requires a different GPU. Specifically RTX based NVIDIA chips. Then its as fast as Topaz. The workflow is smoother with Lightroom, as opposed to the cumbersome Topaz workflow. Winner in my book... Lightroom.
Folks, one thing I noticed a few minutes ago when doing more performance testing is I had not checked one important setting. I did have it set to use my GPU for processing, but failed to check the box that enables the graphics card on export. That was a critical box. When combining that with the latest version of LRC, I now can process in 48 seconds. I can live with that. I had my brother test this with his machine which is newer than mine and he was able to generate in 10 seconds. Obviously, the newer the machine, the better your results will be. That pretty much goes without saying. I recommend an RTX graphics card with at least 8 gigs of RAM. I have an older GTX 1660 6 gig card, which is really a good medium duty gaming card, but RTX will really boost your performance. The CPU mattered very little. I tested it against older Xeon and i7 processors and very little CPU was even consumed. I hope this helps settle the disputes. If you don't have a powerful graphics card and use Intel integrated, then the CPU may really help pick up the slack. As always, buy the best you can afford, but having said all that, Topaz is just faster with older machines and many people just don't have the latest and greatest.
Don’t know your computer setup but my Lightroom DeNoise takes just a little over a minute at most. I now only use Topaz in very tough cases. Topaz is brilliant for sure, but it sometimes is just a bit too much on auto, and playing around with the settings adds to the time. True, LR DeNoise doesn’t sharpen as much as Topaz, but you can quickly add more sharpening in Lightroom. Really, I am astounded how slowly your computer handled that process.
It isn’t about how my computer handles LR, it is about the fact that Topaz uses my graphics card heavily and I don’t need to waste money on the latest greatest computer. Even spending 100 a year, it is nothing compared to buying new computers. Lightroom is notorious for using intel graphics and the cpu, rather than leveraging the GPU.
As you can see by the video my workstation handles Lightroom itself like a champ.
Wait until next week when you see LR a completely fail against topaz at Iso 20000.
@@MatthewCuda I’m glad you like Topaz. I do too.I just have an iMac that I bought years ago and is about to go “obsolete.” I’m a poor boy 🤣. LR DeNoise still works fine on it.
I shoot in dark music venues where I have to use ISO 25,600 or even higher for some shots. The noise is pretty extreme, but both DxO PureRaw and Lightroom Denoise do a good job of eliminating it. At the most extreme ISO, DxO PureRaw may distort people's faces while Lightroom doesn't create distortions. Of course, at super high ISO nothing is really sharp, but too much sharpness in that kind of shot would look unnatural. Topaz can't get rid of really high ISO noise.
Have not really played with the new noise removal in LRC, but I prefer either DXO PhotoLab or On1 NoNoise AI for noise reduction. Does a great job and I rarely have to change any settings
I used to be critical of Topaz when it first came out but over the last several years it has become truly amazing. I also love Lightroom and I am sure they will be just as good at some point but who knows. Competition is good.
Thanks for the comparison, it’s nice to see the difference in quality. I use the Lightroom denoise and it’s just as fast as Topaz. PC specs matter when using these programs, I have an Intel I9 13900k with a Rtx 4090 graphics card, so my pc is a high end build. I can denoise 500 images in about 10 mins, so if your lightroom is slow, you need to upgrade your pc.
I would respectfully disagree. I have a fast PC but not the latest. Lightroom itself runs great and is super fast. The denoise on topaz made Lightroom look like a 386 trying to run a modern game. Having said that, I do think Adobe will catch up and currently they are closing the gap very quickly. I definitely see a speed difference in the latest Lightroom version. In other words think of the advantage Topaz has when it runs so well on slightly older computers and is slightly better.
By the way, thanks for the tip on batch enhance. I never noticed that before!
I have been using Topaz, but recently I have been unhappy with some details being lost during processing and tried LR denoise again. At least for me it has much speeded up, being done in less than a minute with for me the most satisfactory results. Not sure if I will renew my Topaz subscription when it becomes due in November although Topaz sharpening can sometimes rescue slightly soft images
When you say "details being lost", do you mean that the subject's details are being lost? With any Denoise tool that is possible with a really noisy image. I see the same thing in Lightroom. When you have a really noisy image, you have to apply custom masks with Topaz. There is also a slider that restores details. I have also found that Topaz Photo AI seems to give better results than the vanilla Topaz Denoise AI with balancing detail loss with noise reduction. Wildlife is a real challenge for any denoise software as they tend to have noisy backgrounds and subjects that are fairly low noise. I believe I day will come when Lightroom will completely be equal to Topaz. We are almost there now. I am dropping a video today that shows where the holes are in Lightroom that still needs to be fixed.
For me personally I prefer to have a dng file after noise reduction, therefore LR is the preferred solution for me.
I recently realized you can save them as a dng from Topaz. Just throwing it out there, for whatever it is worth.
@@MatthewCuda 👍 yes thanks, I saw that too. I think this is a good improvement.
There is a known color bug with DNG and Topaz.
Looking forward to the next video!
The next one will be a deep dive into working with an image that might be considered unrecoverable.
No nonsense comparison!! Perfect
Glad you enjoyed it!
May I ask what your computer configuration is? I am getting ready to buy a new computer - thinking a desktop that is a beast and also a laptop that is powerful but not crazy expensive for when I need to go portable.
But, your machine seems quite fast and obviously you must have some of "the good stuff" in it!
I use a highly upgraded Dell T3610 Workstation. Not to be confused with a desktop. The RAM is maxed at 32 and I have a GTX 1660 TI giving me 6 gb of GPU when needed. I also have a hexacore overclocked CPU which will soon be upgraded to 8 core. The BIggest thing to make sure you have is a 1TB or more SSD to put the operating system, Lightroom and its catalog on. I can't emphasize that enough. My configuration is not amazing but runs lightroom like a champ. I do not like laptops for editing. I also have a 4k Monitor, which is the minimum size I would use for post processing.
Thank you very much. That helps a lot and validates my tendency to opt for a workstation, rather than a laptop.
Especially considering, to get comparable power in a laptop one would have to spend a small fortune.
Coming late to the party, but for all others that might contemplate an expensive laptop or workstation desktop;
I opted for a refurbished Workstation Laptop (yes, they exist) a year ago. Yes, it is about 4 years old so it's not the newest of the newest.
So here I have a rather well equipped Dell Precision 7540 with 32GB of RAM, a six core Xeon and more importantly for denoise AI, a Nvidia Quadro T1000 GPU which is only 4GB unfortunately.
Bear in mind though that portablility is rather "portability" and is not very battery efficient (it can draw 180W under full load and will use the battery power when the adapter cannot deliver enough juice, and can result in faster battery wear if one does not use the original adaptor). Mine came with warranty, and for about $500 it was not too bad, given it was in absolutely new condition and the price when new was around $4500. A 24MP raw file denoises in less than 1 minute, which is absolutely fine for me being an amateur. Do not expect it to be a silent experience, the fans will be working overtime. Build quality is top notch, though I prefer Lenovo - but could not find a good workstation laptop for my liking at the time.
Also, refurbished workstation desktops could be an option. Great bargains can be found, just be sure there's some kind of warranty you can fall back to.
BTW I have an USB docking and all stuff connected to that (except graphics , running straight to the 4k monitor), so you can use the laptop as a regular PC.
Using Topaz for about 2 years now. Beats the Lightroom built features. Using on a Macbook 2019, Lighroom takes 15 minutes to do a noise reduction while Topaz takes about 1 or 2 minutes wither better results.
Lightroom is ridiculously picky about the graphics card you use. Some say it only works well with mid-range RTX cards or better. Some days it decides to use my card and it is quick and other times, It decides to not use my card and it is slow. There is a bug in there with GPUs that they are not addressing. I am in the process of upgrading my GPU now, so we shall see. Topaz is just a better product when it comes to denoise, sharpening and resizing than Lightroom. The batch processing in Topaz is also top notch. To my knowledge, I have never stood behind a product like I have Topaz. As soon as they went to the AI version, it was a dream to use.
I'm not sure what kind of computer you have. I have an 4 year old pc that is WAY faster than that in Lightroom. One rendering of same feature takes me 14 seconds. And Topaz Photo Ai same picture as the one in Lightroom test takes around 9-10 seconds to render. They are 24Mpix RAW files. Besides you are using Lighrooms feature the wrong way. You can many times get the same or sometimes even better results using Lightroom. For the heck of it I tested an 46Mpix RAW file Lightroom around 20 seconds, Topaz Photo AI 18 seconds.
My old pc (use Xeon fron China, 32gb DDR3 and GTX970) takes about 1 minute to denoise process in LR. And use 100% of graphics card during the process.
Interesting. What graphics card were you running. As I stated in the second video, I have noticed a speed increase in the latest version of LRC
I’m using MacBook Pro with a M2 chip and my LT Denoise AI is super fast, never more than 45 seconds for a 61MP RAW image from the SonyA7R4 camera. Topaz is about the same time so for me the speed of both is the same, but I prefer LT as the overall workflow is much faster.
Love Topaz...used it for more than a year
Takes my computer about nine seconds to render a 24 meg image in Lightroom enhance I love the results I get they look very natural, I use it at 60 %.
Adobe should stick to solving problems that don't already have solutions. Everyone who is anyone workings in the image industry knows about Topaz products and that they are incredibly good.
Basically, it it ain't broke don't fix it.
If I were them, Adobe, I would focus truer brain power on the amazing AI features they are putting into Photoshop Beta - and also Firefly.
Topaz is the much better solution for noise reduction and I, for one, will not be using Lightroom Denoise.
I would generally agree with this. Often companies focus on new technology and not getting what they already have as flawless as possible. But, marketing wins often times over wisdom.
Lots of folks like a one stop solution without having to buy additional software.
Ai denoise in lightroom for 6k image raw it takes only 4s for rtx 4090
I use Topaz for 3D texture maps and speed is king when rendering 60+ images at a time...
Totally agree
I have Lightroom Classic and installed it on a brand new Windows 11 gaming laptop. The laptop comes from the factory set to only save to the cloud. Nothing saves to the laptop. Thankfully, I have a techie son, who configured my work process to bypass the automatic cloud and save directly to my laptop. He even had to tweak his work around, after an update. I feel sorry for those trying to stay out of the cloud, in this day and age. There is such a disconnect with real life. I can't imagine what my ability to download my pics in the middle of nowhere in Alaska, would have been like otherwise.
I don't talk about it much on here, but I have 25 years of professional software development experience. I can tell you that the cloud is a nice invention for backup, but the reality it is it just a fancy way to say "web services" of varying types and data being stored on the web. There is nothing mystical about it. It's biggest limitation is bandwidth and with wildlife photographers, bandwidth can be a real issue. Most cloud based services "own you" once you commit to them and they can change anything at any time (including the price). Cloud licensing is another troublespot with Adobe products.
That's nuts! No doubt you have to pay to store in the cloud as well?! They keep nickel and diming us to death!
I really dont think you were comparing them equally... I mean, you let Topaz sharpen the image but you didnt sharp the image in Lr C.
I actually said that
@@MatthewCudai missed that 😖
But you maby should have turned the sharpener slide down to zero to make a clear comparison 😊
But a great video though
I use topaz ai. It works well for me. For other editing I use the one that comes with windows. Great video.
Topaz had artifacts in the birds eye
You are definitely going to break pixels with an underexposed ISO 20000 shot. With a shot like this, normally I would just dump it or I would spend a whole lot more time with it cloning out artifacts
Topaz removed to much fine details from the feathers sticking out. How about Neat?
You can control that
I have an old pc and LRC denoise works much faster in about 2-3 min with 8000 ISO. Checked your performance and check your ram and GPU ram
This was solved for the most part. I was able to get it down to less than a minute at times. There are still times where very large images give it some pause. I addressed this in the comments in the next video of this series.
Lightroom version is great, but way too slow. Ok for one image, but not good for a batch of sports photographs. Topaz wins!
Thank you.
Topaz won and getting better and better. Period.
Agree
@@MatthewCuda
Everywhere people saying Denoise & Sharpen AI is better than Photo AI - OK, maybe, but who cares, that's the past folks, there won't be any update for those, only for Photo AI 😊
First, you must have a very slow and outdated PC to denoise that long in LR, or Adobe Camera RAW (ACR). Secondly, a real test should be a low light when ISO is higher than 6400 and shot is RAW, not JPG, as that's cheating a bit using a compressed jpg file. I shot night sports and there's plenty of noise to deal with, plus I shoot RAW. I batch the selected pre-cropped RAW photos from Photo Mechanic intoACR. Under DETAILS, I slide the Luminance slider mid-way to reduce noise, plus any exposure, color, highlights, etc. Then select all photos and sync to the settings of the adjusted image. Then followed by selecting all to export to jpg, and It' supper fast. On my i9 64GB PC about 1 image per second. From there, it's optional to load the jpg's into Topaz Photo A.I. for a bit of extra sharpening in under a minute or two, cepending on the number of images to proccess. Oh, BTW, Topaz Photo A.I. is at V 2.0.2. Be sure to update for best results.
One thing I noticed is that I did not have my settings set to export with my graphics card. I only had it set to process with my GPU. Once I did that, I got the time down to 48 seconds. I can certainly live with that.
Lr denoise ist Cloud based as far as i know, du your internet is more the bottleneck as the image needs to be up and downloaded.
I might be wrong but I don’t think LR a classic is cloud based at all. You are thinking of Lightroom cloud based
@@MatthewCuda I talk about classic and ACR (basically I nearly never use LR but ACR is basically the LR development screen. Same counts for generative fill. Denoising an image is a short 200% CPU peak of PS but while the image is processed there is only 23% CPU load 0-7% GPU load (In the test I just did) So it does not seem to utilize a lot on the local hardware which means it has to be in the cloud. As said generative fill is very sure cloud based.
See at 6:30 minute, Topaz lost some details compatre to Lightroom Denoise
That is what I said in the video. Not sure what you are getting at. You have slider to control the details.
topaz had it first
Yep, I have been using topaz for many years and they have a huge head start on Adobe, but Adobe will get their eventually, I suspect. Competition is almost always a good thing.
Lightroom DeNoise AI is way too slow
I know, I had to do some serious editing of the review just so people didn't get bored and move on. The other thing I didn't mention because it could be machine related is sometimes I get a random crash with Lightroom Denoise AI.
@@MatthewCuda My old laptop was just too slow with either one. I just upgraded to a Dell XPS 15 i9 with the 2T SSD and 32 gig ram. How ever I just could not leave it alone. Added a 4T SSD and upgraded the Ram to 64Gig now I am cooking with gas.
My PC is AMD X6 6000+ , bought in 2010, but install Nvidia RTX 2060. Denoise only take 10 second, compare to new PC, come with i7 whtout nvdia gpu, take 20 minute to complete denoise.