Topaz Studio, pre-release available

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Hi folks,

Just to let you know that Topaz Labs have (pre-)released their new application for image enhancement, Topaz Studio. The design is modular, so one can simply add the specific functions that are needed, as a Topaz Studio plugin. Most functionality was already available as separate Photoshop plugins, and those remain available and will be updated (but presumably not upgraded) indefinitely, for free. Because of the layering and the per adjustment masking capabilities of the host Studio application, some of the prior Photoshop plugin functionality is now part of the overall Studio interface.

Some functions have been simplified in comparison, so one might still prefer the PS version, but the integrated workflow of Studio is helpful. The order of adjustments and their blend modes can be changed after creating them, which further increases the possible number of results that one can achieve. Combinations of adjustments can be saved as presets, and presets can be shared with the online community's presets.

The basic Topaz Studio application apparently is (and will remain) free with some basic functionality. The Pro features can be individually activated for a trial period, and after purchasing the plugin will remain active.

Topaz Studio is free for everyone. The program, all effects, 10 Adjustments, Presets for all 24 Adjustments, Masking, and all tools are completely free to use forever.

'Studio' functionality has been designed with GPU acceleration in mind, so most functions run pretty fast, even complex ones.

The official release is scheduled for May 30th, but the pre-release (Pro-functionality) can already be downloaded/purchased. As a previous owner of Topaz products, I received a 70% discount coupon for the Pro plugins. That's a really good deal.

Cheers,
Bart

[Damon Lynch]

I certainly welcome competition for the big two players (or three if we count DxO). I wish the Topaz folks well, and I hope the Studio effort will be a success. However, it's clear that feature-wise Topaz Studio -- to put it as politely as possible -- needs a lot of work done on it.

For example, exporting a TIFF from a CR2 defaults to 16 bit ProPhoto, which is good, but strips out all metadata, which is bizarre in 2017 when there are excellent metadata libraries for C++ such as exiv2.

The user interface looks like it was rushed. The About menu item should not be below Exit / Quit. The menu item for the program preferences is incorrectly named 'Preference' (missing the plural), and its dialog window looks very amateurish.

It's unclear what paying for the "Pro Package" today means given that many adjustment modules are sure to be coming, such as the replacement for Topaz Detail plugin. Will they be included in a purchase made today? I've queried their sales support but am yet to hear back.

[mdijb]

I watched the videos that Topaz pUt out there.  Their luminosity masking capability THEY OFFER IS is very useful and flexible, but most of the other features seem to just duplicate what LR already offers.  There seems to be several offerings from other  companies in addition to this one, and all of them seem to be just LR wanabees  that do not supply anything much different form LR, just another a different looking interface.  Capture One might be an exception because the results of raw conversions have been reported to be superior to LR. 

One consideration for Topaz is there very poor tech support.  No Phone support available\.  It has taken several days to weeks to get answers from them about problems I have had using their software.  IT was only after I made some pretty nasty comments about their minimal resources for tech support that I was able to get more rapid responses.

MDIJB

[rdonson]

I use Topaz tools very sparingly because I HATE that they strip the EXIF data and have done nothing about that for years and seem to have no intention of ever fixing the problem.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I certainly welcome competition for the big two players (or three if we count DxO). I wish the Topaz folks well, and I hope the Studio effort will be a success. However, it's clear that feature-wise Topaz Studio -- to put it as politely as possible -- needs a lot of work done on it.

For example, exporting a TIFF from a CR2 defaults to 16 bit ProPhoto, which is good, but strips out all metadata, which is bizarre in 2017 when there are excellent metadata libraries for C++ such as exiv2.

Hi Damon,

Yes, I agree that EXIF should be kept intact. Bugfix or Feature requests may help to fix that.

The user interface looks like it was rushed. The About menu item should not be below Exit / Quit. The menu item for the program preferences is incorrectly named 'Preference' (missing the plural), and its dialog window looks very amateurish.

Well, this is their version 1.0 release, and is available for MAC and Windows operating systems. They focused on functionality so far, and they now need to also cross some t's and dot some i's.

It's unclear what paying for the "Pro Package" today means given that many adjustment modules are sure to be coming, such as the replacement for Topaz Detail plugin. Will they be included in a purchase made today? I've queried their sales support but am yet to hear back.

You purchase what they offer right now, 14 plugins in the Adjustment Pro-pack, or individual plugins. Future plugins will be a separate purchase, but they are usually offered with a discount at introduction time or during seasonal promotions. The business model that Topaz Labs have chosen, purchase once and receive updates and upgrades forever after that, forces them to keep innovating to attract new customers, or adding new plugins with new functionality for existing customers.

While their 'Clarity' Photoshop plugin equivalent is available as the 'Precision Contrast' plugin in Studio, their 'Detail' equivalent plugin is not yet available. So I expect that to be a future addition and purchase. BTW, there is some simplified Detail functionality available in some of the other plugins, but nothing as extensive as in the full Detail plugin. Also, if you have their PS version of the Detail plugin already installed, then it shows up under the Plugins menu-bar option. After the chosen plugin finishes, a version/snapshot of your file is added to the 'Workspace' at the bottom of the user interface.

Their 'Focus' plugin is a simplified version of their Photoshop equivalent InFocus plugin. Not as feature rich, but still useful for most users because it allows to specifically address Lens-blur.

The current 50% discount for the 14-plugin Pro-pack (70% discount for previous Topaz owners), is a pretty good deal, especially because you'll receive free updates and upgrades on these 14 plugins 'forever', so it's a one-time expense/investment.

Cheers,
Bart

P.S. Topaz Studio is free, as are 10 basic plugins, and can be used as host program for earlier versions of the Topaz plugins that were developed for Photoshop plugin compatible applications.

[kirkt]

All of these recent studio-like applications (Topaz Studio, OnOne Photo Raw, MacPhun Luminar, etc.) offer functionality beyond LR simply by offering layers and masks.  You cannot layer or composite anything in LR - it is surprising that LR seems intent on not offering this functionality (maybe to avoid cannibalizing Photoshop customers).  Each player in this market is trying to combine raw conversion with "essential" Photoshop-like functionality in a single interface environment.  One stop shop for all of your digital photography needs.  It is good to see multiple products compete, although I rarely use any of them beyond updating to the latest version to see if their conversion quality has improved.  These pre-release launches are a good thing - they offer the customer a free preview and they offer the app designer a base of enthusiast beta-testers to find problems and suggest features, revisions and enhancements.  That seems like a mutually beneficial relationship to me.

Topaz definitely honors customer loyalty - I received the discount offer as well, as an owner of several Topaz PS plug-ins.

kirk

[RobSaecker]

I’ve been looking for a way to run InFocus, which I bought long ago to run from Aperture and which no longer works because Aperture, of course. I thought this could be a solution, but: it wants you to log in to your Topaz Studio account before you can do anything. So I created an account, but I’m unable to log in from the Studio app, it just sits there forever saying “Logging in…”. A help request to Topaz is still unanswered +24 hours later. So, <shrugs>, I dunno, maybe I give up on InFocus.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I’ve been looking for a way to run InFocus, which I bought long ago to run from Aperture and which no longer works because Aperture, of course. I thought this could be a solution, but: it wants you to log in to your Topaz Studio account before you can do anything. So I created an account, but I’m unable to log in from the Studio app, it just sits there forever saying “Logging in…”. A help request to Topaz is still unanswered +24 hours later. So, <shrugs>, I dunno, maybe I give up on InFocus.

Hi Rob,

Don't know if you have tried running 'InFocus' through their free hosting program/plugin called 'Fusion Express' (can e.g. be called by Lightroom to invoke TopazLabs Plugins). Can be downloaded fro free here (right-hand side of the page):
https://www.topazlabs.com/downloads

I assume you have successfully tried if you can access your new Studio account directly from a web browser?
If so, then in principle Studio would also be able to do that. You can assume that Topaz Support is currently swamped by users wanting to try out Studio, so it may take them a bit of time to get back at you.

Cheers,
Bart

[RobSaecker]

Bart,

thanks for your response. I’m largely Adobe free at this point, though I do have older versions of Lightroom and Photoshop Elements on backups that I could reload and try. I just thought this would be a cleaner approach. 

Yes, I can log in to the account from a browser.

I’m sure you’re correct that Topaz support is swamped. I had an issue shortly after buying InFocus, and made several requests for assistance that were never responded to, so I’m not inclined to give them the benefit of doubt now.

Cheers back,

Rob

Hi Rob,

Don't know if you have tried running 'InFocus' through their free hosting program/plugin called 'Fusion Express' (can e.g. be called by Lightroom to invoke TopazLabs Plugins). Can be downloaded fro free here (right-hand side of the page):
https://www.topazlabs.com/downloads

I assume you have successfully tried if you can access your new Studio account directly from a web browser?
If so, then in principle Studio would also be able to do that. You can assume that Topaz Support is currently swamped by users wanting to try out Studio, so it may take them a bit of time to get back at you.

Cheers,
Bart

[vjbelle]

As a previous owner of Topaz plugins I was intrigued by the 70% discount but have yet to find anything other than 50% discount.  Where is it hidden?

Victor

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

As a previous owner of Topaz plugins I was intrigued by the 70% discount but have yet to find anything other than 50% discount.  Where is it hidden?

I received an email from TopasLabs with a coupon code. If it didn't reach you, and it didn't land in your Spam folder, ask them whether you qualify.

Cheers,
Bart

[Damon Lynch]

I just realized Topaz Studio does use Exiv2 to write some metadata -- or perhaps it calls a library of code that itself uses Exiv2. I realized that when using ExifTool to analyze what metadata is found in the TIFF files generated by Topaz Studio -- one of the XMP tags is XMPToolkit: XMP Core 4.4.0-Exiv2. Why Topaz Studio doesn't copy across all the relevant Exif metadata using Exiv2 is a decision I find totally bizarre.

I think I'll write a python script that calls either ExifTool or Gexiv2 (a wrapper around Exiv2) to extract metadata from the source RAW image and copy it across to the TIFF. When I last looked at it, it's not as simple as copying all the metadata because it makes no sense to copy the color space and orientation tags. If you copy across all the color space tags it only ends up confusing Lightroom, causing it to interpret a ProPhotoRGB image as AdobeRGB, for example. And obviously the Orientation tag doesn't need to be copied, because that's applying an orientation to a photo that's already been oriented.

[plugsnpixels]

Good comments all. There was a period of public beta testing for Topaz Studio, and Topaz made it clear that this initial release will be heavily modified and massaged as time goes on, based on user feedback.

As of 5/27 the general public does not know this yet, but there is a steep discount off the Pro Adjustment Pack available through June 30.

[Damon Lynch]

From my use the program is still very much in an alpha state. Version 1.02 writes out the metadata most (but not all) of the time. However, activating the functionality for payment-required-adjustments is proving impossible for my install, despite having paid for them 

[plugsnpixels]

Damon, I seem to have the opposite problem. I thought I still had to set this up at home, but all the advanced adjustments seem present (I no longer see the option to upgrade).

This is a big technical departure for Topaz and I'm confident they'll sort it out quickly. A lot was accomplished during public beta testing, and the 1.0 release will surely change dramatically as time goes on.

[plugsnpixels]

From my use the program is still very much in an alpha state. Version 1.02 writes out the metadata most (but not all) of the time. However, activating the functionality for payment-required-adjustments is proving impossible for my install, despite having paid for them 

See if "Help > Sync Adjustments" works.

[delfalex]

Just a quick question about the Studio edition; I currently use DeNoise, Clarity & Infocus plugins within Photoshop actions and am generally happy with the quality of the results they produce. The speed at which they operate though is a cause for my interest in Studio: Does Studio provide a marked increase in processing speed if used as a plugin compared to the existing individual plugins?

Thanks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Just a quick question about the Studio edition; I currently use DeNoise, Clarity & Infocus plugins within Photoshop actions and am generally happy with the quality of the results they produce. The speed at which they operate though is a cause for my interest in Studio: Does Studio provide a marked increase in processing speed if used as a plugin compared to the existing individual plugins?

Hi,

I just did a stress test with Clarity, because that filter has comparable features. However, the controls affect a different range it seems.

I created an increased size composite image by layering several copies of the same file on an expanded canvas and flattened that to a single (84.1 MegaPixel 16-bit/ch) layer.

Clarity took 58 seconds as a Photoshop plugin, and 6 seconds as a Precision Detail Studio plugin, using approx. the same settings.

Denoise has a different set of controls, so it's harder to compare, but as Photoshop Plugin it took some 3 minutes and 15 seconds after hitting okay, while the Studio plugin took something like 14 seconds.

InFocus has a different set of controls as well, but took roughly 6 seconds for an Unknown/Estimate blur adjustment, but as a plugin the result is visible in less than 1 second (which allows almost real-time tweaking).

The Photoshop plugins also do some preprocessing when loading the Photoshop layer and have to save the result back to the Photoshop layer, Studio is ready for another adjustment plugin much faster. Differences in hardware can obviously also make a difference, and maybe the Photoshop version makes a difference as well.

So an accurate comparison is hard to do, if at all possible due to the different settings, but Studio is very much faster in every way.

Cheers,
Bart

[delfalex]

Thanks for sharing these observations, as you say; it's hard to accurately compare, but there's enough of a difference in the figures to see that T. Studio would be a worthwhile choice for productivity (especially when looking at large file size images), over the existing PS plugins.

Thanks


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[plugsnpixels]

More advice for Damon from another user:

1. Uninstall previous version of Topaz Studio using the TS Update Manager
2. Delete the folder Macintosh HD/User/YOU/Library/Application Support/Topaz Labs/Topaz Studio
3. Reinstall Topaz Studio
4. Log in with your user account
5. et voilà