Hi, the vast majority of my photos are of people and events indoors. I rarely use a flash so I often need to use a relatively high ISO. Whenever I need to reduce high ISO noise, I tend to use the Topaz AI filter from Photoshop. In general, I think it does a good job of removing noise from 'large surfaces' (walls, clothing, faces, etc.) while preserving details. It's not perfect for all photos, but usually good enough for cleaning up noisy photos. The same applies to the Topaz Sharpen AI filter. I find it good in picking out details to sharpen. That said, sharpening can of course increase noise in some areas!
The main reason I use the Topaz filters is their ease of use. I like the 'split screen' (before and after) view and the movable 'zoom in' window that show me what the effect of the filter would be in various parts of the photo. And of course, I can adjust the filter parameters to see whether either more or less noise reduction would be beneficial. Similarly, I can select between a number of different types of 'blur' and adjust the parameters to optimize sharpening.
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I can't really compare the Topaz filters to Adobe's native capabilities because - these days - I rarely use the native Adobe filters. As far as I can see, Photoshop allows you to remove noise in 2 places. Either in the 'Camera Raw' (detail) filter or in the 'Reduce noise' filter. The latter also has a movable 'zoom in' Window that allows you to adjust the parameters. Compared to Topaz, what I
I'm not quite sure what you mean by upscaling but Photoshop usually does a good job of resizing a photo to a larger size automatically. But it allows you to select your preferred 'resizing algorithme.
re Sharpening: I like the Adobe suite because it provides a variety of different sharpening methods, and the best depends on the image. I do most of my sharpening with three tools: the sharpening sliders in Lightroom, which are quite good for some images; Smart Sharpen in Photoshop, and a high-pass filter in Photoshop.
Re changing size: I don't know how well Topaz does this, but the Adobe suite does it well. For printing, I find the built-in up- and down-rezzing algorithm in Lightroom does a very good job, so I have given up bothering with doing it manually in Photoshop. There is now also the enhance option in LR/ACR for raw images, which I have used when I am really short of detail, e.g., severe crops. It works some of the time.
Re noise reduction: I don't use it much because of the way I shoot. However, if you shoot raw, the new AI-based NR in LR/ACR is very good. For example, I used it recently on faces in images I took at a high ISO, and it was better than I could do at distinguishing between areas that needed detail preserved (e.g., eyelashes) and areas that could take more smoothing (e.g., cheeks).
First of all, hello. Long time away.
I find that Topaz Denoise and Topaz Sharpen do very well. Topaz Photo AI leaves me cold. It fails to sharpen images that need it. The "Enhance" function in LR is good, but slooooow on my computer.
Thanks, all. As you may have guessed, I use Photoshop plus ACR but was wondering if I should spring for the Black Friday Topaz deals. I decided not to because the Adobe tools are very good and periodically get worthwhile updates. No one I asked made the case that Topaz is better than Adobe for the three things I mentioned.
Good decision, Gary. No point on splashing out on Topaz If it doesn't offer you any significant advantages. I bought the (non-AI) Topaz suite many years ago because the Denoise app was highly rated. Since then, I've received 'free updates' on most Topaz apps. Notably the 'AI' versions of Denoise and Sharpen.
For someone not already tied to a RAW converter, that has need to be concerned about noise reduction, they need to also consider DxO Photolab. IME DxO has the best NR program when applied in RAW conversion. I still have Topaz AI to work with iPhone images, but for RAW images, DxO and Topaz are pretty close to the same, which is excellent. I slightly prefer Topaz AI's sharpening tool as it's very intuitive to work with and very effective.
I just bought a 15.6" Asus Q500A touchscreen laptop with Windows 8. I downloaded photoshop and the 'touch app plug-ins' through the Adobe Application Manager for creative cloud. When I open a file in PS and select the brush(or any other) tool if I use the touch screen to drag it accross the canvas nothing happens. It still works with my mouse though.
That depends on what you mean by move the cursor. The cursor is not visible when using the touch screen but reappears when you go back to the mouse. But you are able to do everything the mouse does, such as click, drag, right click, etc..
I've been playing around with it to try and find a solution and have found that the brush tool will draw only if I drag it in from outside the canvas. Otherwise it just has a weird panning effect when zoomed in or does nothing zoomed completely out.
I don't see how this would be the case, as It works fine in ms paint and Adobe Illustrator(Just installed and tested this). It seems to be only Photoshop that has an issue. Plus, it still draws when it is started outside of the canvas.
No Photoshop requires a particular API to be used. Microsoft ink API is not supported by Photoshop. Microsoft surface pro has new drivers from Wacom that should work with the surface and other pc with windows and some hardware touch support. You need to chect with Asus to see what hardware they use. here the link to the Wacom Drivers.
Adobe Customer Support is very poor. Photoshop requires device driver that use WinTab API for pen support Adobe will not support dirvers that use Microsoft Ink API for pen support. Adobe states Ink API lack options used by Photoshop.
Please read the links I gave you. The driver is for Windows 7 and Windows 8. Why are you concerned with the Graphics Card. The driver is for the pen and touch hardware not Video hardware chipset. Also try searching the web for more information.
As far as I can tell the drivers you linked to are only for tablets. I have found no way to install them on a laptop. I tried installing the latest wacom driver for windows 8 but it would not install through the downloadable exe and I can't find any other way to install it. I think you might be confusing this issue with one involving the Adobe Touch apps.
What issues do you have. Photoshop does not have touch support programmed in. However Touch drivers often have touch features the can be configured to generate Photoshop Supported events like keyboard keys and others. Have you look at the Touch Support Dell provides for your laptop and how to configure it for applications..
If your Dell has the 15.5 3200x1800 display Photoshop UI must be hard to see. Attaching an external display may help you see Photoshop pallets better. Just position the pallets on the external display.
I need to make 20 web banners, and each of them need to be made in 5 different formats. I usually make these in Indesign as I already have the layouts for print ready. I just make the necessary adjustments for web - then I use Alternate layouts (or Data merge it all depends). I'm not Photoshop-savvy, and I fear I can't do sudden changes to text/colors as quickly as I'd like.
A classic case of "Whatever works...". You're probably still unnecessarily limiting yourself by not learning to do it in PS, but ultimately it doesn't really matter that much if the limited options exporting this from ID to web formats do it sufficiently for you. Still, I would advise learning PS asap. Latest when someoen points you at error reports from Google due to lack of optimization of images or them being generally too bloated in terms of SEO you know you're in trouble...
I know artboards is a feature on Photoshop. Is that something I can look into? Actions? I've seen the way my colleague works and it's not time-efficient (is working one banner at a time the only way? I don't think so...?)
It is, however, true that InDesign has rather bad image output optimization. Photoshop's is better, but still not that great (in particular PNG), and my workflow is to treat files later in external web optimization tools. A real issue is that Photoshop STILL does not support webp export natively, and a plugin is required (let alone animated PNG files). Photoshop (all Adobe software) is terribly behind the times in that regard in my opinion.
Compared to InDesign's pages and alternate layouts, artboards are quite limited and awkward; as you discovered by watching your colleague struggle with them. That said, a lot of time can be saved by re-using smart objects.
I do agree with the other responses here though that learning Photoshop will expand the scope of your design options quite dramatically. It is worth learning, and the combination of ID and PS is hard to beat.
The most efficient workflow likely would be to package repeating content like headlines, slogans, branding etc. into smart objects or groups at sufficient resolutions or even truly vector-based and then indeed re-order it suitable across multiple artboards using duplicates of the SO. Then you could update the contents of the SO and the banners would update reasonably without needing too much extra tweaking. Furthermore this would ensure that you get a consistent quality based on PS' resampling algorithms plus better optimization simply because PS has deeper access to pixel data and can analyze it better. plus you could potentially further optimize it manually by using Indexed color modes for palette reduction on GIFs and PNGs or on the opposite end include some vector data when exporting as SVGs. Similarly, you could potentially help with web integration by slicing up banners or better matching colors. You see, there would be quite some benefits to using PS. In your current workflow there might even be some advantage in just optimizing re-compressing your exported banners from ID.
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