[Topaz DeNoise AI 1.2.1
Cdztattoo Barreto
Following on from my question concerning external denoising application workflow with Darktable, I put together a play raw to compare how noise reduction compares against ON1 NoNoise, Topaz DeNoise AI and the Profiled Denoise in Darktable.
Thanks for the sample, this is indeed getting interesting! This is now a brand new Adobe DNG 1.7 spec file that has an additional subimage embedded inside (rather than saving it as the primary image after enhancement like the other tools seem to do):
I tend to agree, but it seems that with the advent of AI denoise there seems to be an expectation that photos are supposed to be totally noise free. One of the reasons why I started looking more carefully at NR was because of feedback I received from some judged shows.
Hi, every time a new windows major update took place, Topaz did not open. I got polite help from Topaz, but in last case year ago, they failed to fix the problem. Was quite a hard for a common fellow to fix it yourself, but I finally managed to do it. Just now I bought a new machine, fulfilling the requirements more well than earlier, Win 11, and loaded the topaz. Will not open. Quite frustrating again, but only explanation I can imagine is, that I should have bought the latest version of Al and not to load the one I had already. So the question is, more money and it will work on Win 11 ?
Same here. New machine running windows 11 and plenty of resources to run Topaz. Contacted Topaz to see if my legacy apps will work and no reply as yet. I cannot see why they will not work but th load screen comes up and disappears.
Ok so i think i may have figured out what is going on,
what is happening is the program is opening but off-screen and out of any displays i am not sure why it is doing this it must be something to do with some sort of startup position value that is assigned somewhere that makes it launch in an impossible to access location, maybe a programmer messed up and instead of lets say putting 0 in for launch position they may put -0 or some other figure.
so in order to actually access the denoise program you will want to hold CTRL & Shift then right click the program icon on the task bar and select the move item from the list and then click somewhere on the screen and hold while dragging.
Photo AI offers the abilities of the three seperate applications Denoise, Gigapixel and Sharpen where the seperate applications still have an advantage in terms of usability and the final result. But the seperate applications are not updated regulary anymore while the main focus relies on Photo AI. I think all applications offer a test period of maybe 30 days so feel free to give it a try befor buy.
Despite the lack of updates for DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI, and Sharpen AI, many users still prefer using these separate applications over TPAI. TPAI is convenient if you want to upscale, sharpen, and denoise an image simultaneously.
The second problem with TPAI is that they hide all the adjustment sliders. Every time you want to adjust something, you need to click and expand the section first before you can make the adjustment. This requires extra clicks for every adjustment and multiple clicks for every image, which becomes extremely time-consuming when processing many photos.
It assesses the image and then selects the settings which thinks are the best. Only they are hidden because you have deselected Auto-pilot. But if you select say Sharpen it will be the auto setting, that is my understanding. You can then do each one individually rather than PAI doing it all at once, so it gives a bit more control.
I've owned lots of image de-noisers over the years. I've used external apps, Photoshop/Lightroom plugins, and I've used the noise reductions controls built into Photoshop and Lightroom. They all work to some degree, but you wind up trading noise reduction for details, and I've never found a noise reduction aid that didn't have some rather large trade-offs. Increase the noise reduction and details suffer. Preserve the details and the noise reduction is not effective. Many of you know the drill.
Over the years, I used the Topaz DeNoise plugin with fair to good results, and now, it's been updated to Topaz DeNoise AI. Its claim to fame is Topaz inspected thousands of noisy images and added AI smarts to help this new app/plugin know the difference between noise and actual data in an image.
Most of my imaging is in low light, as I do almost all my landscape work around sunrise and sunset. Working in reduced light and at high ISOs are an invitation to noise. Camera sensors are getting better and better, but there was not a single image I fed DeNoise AI that was not improved, even when inspecting the image at high magnifications.
I also do a lot of night photography, capturing the Milky Way, and I also do some telescope-based imaging. Looking at those images, again, I found DeNoise AI significantly reduced the noise with no visible degradation of detail. You can see below how the sky is cleaned up in this enlargement without doing damage to the stars. (It may be hard to see the improvement in these samples because I'm limited to small compressed files for uploading, but you can download large samples at the Topaz site.)
I can report that if you use the sliders in DeNoise AI aggressively, you're going to lose some detail, add some halos, or increase sharpness to the degree that you may see some micro-image breakup. Having said that, I never had to push those sliders very hard, because using the split screen feature and looking at the image at 400 percent magnification, I could easily find a setting where image grain (noise) was made invisible and I was not losing detail.
Topaz offers a 30-day free trial of the software, so you can judge for yourself. Until May 3rd, the software is $59.00, and after that, it jumps back to a list price of $79.00. Users of the older Topaz DeNoise are getting offers of a free upgrade, so check the Topaz site and see if you qualify or watch for an email offer.
I found Topaz DeNoise AI a significant achievement in noise reduction. It's not completely automatic, and the processing is not instant; it can take several seconds to see the result, but the wait is worth it,
If you are a photographer fighting noise, I suggest you try the free trial of DeNoise AI. No noise reduction tool is 100 percent effective, but this one comes really, really close. I'm not easily impressed, and this noise solution impressed me.
Have you tried other apps like Noise Ninja or Imagenomic Noiseware? Wasn't sure if this article was a paid product placement ad since there's no mention of similar alternatives. (Both are very good as well)
I just tried DeNoise AI on some 12800 ISO images I shot at the theater, and the noise reduction is much better than the latest Camera Raw, but previews and saving, as Paul stated, were definitely slow. Another downside is the DNG file I saved was 100Mb larger than the original CR2 file. It would also be nice if there was a batch process feature, so you could let your system churn through a lot of similar photos.
"I've never found a noise reduction aid that didn't have some rather large trade-offs"
It would be helpful to know what you have used. I suspect you haven't used DxO PhotoLab 2 Elite, widely regarded as having perhaps the best noise reduction among RAW processors available today. I tested PhotoLab's predecessor (Optics Pro), Aperture, Capture One and Lightroom several years ago, and DxO outclassed the rest in noise reduction by a large margin. I was using Topaz DeNoise at the time and found it very effective, but it required a great deal of user intervention for every single image, whereas DxO produced equally good or better results with no user intervention at all.
Very interesting article!
I just published a test a made about the best noise reduction software (Testing Loghtroom, Photoshop, Luminar, DXO, Capture One, Dfine 2, Noiseware, Topaz Denoise, Noise Ninja and Neat image pro) and the best at eliminating noise in skies while preserving details was without a doubt Noiseware. Below you can see the graphic results after testing the same image with all types of software: -reduction-software/
Topaz may be their own worst enemy in that several of their products have denoise sliders. And "Clairity AI" is made specifically for noise (and sharpness), leaving a person to wonder which product to choose and why. And yes, I've used DXO's "prime" noise reduction and it's quite good. A big comparison test is really what's called for.
Hmmm, being that I already owned Topaz DeNoise and so qualified for a free upgrade, I downloaded and tried it. I would say that it depends on the image. I tried it on a rather noisy image of a darkened room (see attached image), and it seemed to get rid of some of the paneling detail below the books. Settings are default, without touching the sliders, but even trying the sliders only marginally improved the image. The previous version DeNoise 6, probably made a better fist of the image set to 'Light Jpeg' setting.
Some of the smaller software companies (compared to Adobe) can take a while before buying licensing for new cameras.
I always convert my .orf files to .TIFF using LR, then use Topaz Denoise AI. My workflow relies on making adjustments to exposure and contrast (and sometimes cropping) before doing noise reduction.
You are right. If I open an ORF file in Photoshop I can send it to Topaz DeNoise or Sharpen and it will edit and return it to PS. But it doesn't go back to PS as a RAW file when saved as it has to be converted to a TIFF, JPEG or PSD file.
typically, applying Topaz DeNoise AI on a duplicate layer, selecting subject, extracting same to 4 new layers, renaming and reordering (for clarity) ,each one receiving 1 (different) NIK Collection filter + an inverted layer mask, takes some 40 secs per image, on my built 2011 (win10) to be ready for completely non destructive workflow
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