Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: Michael Erlewine on January 28, 2019, 07:32:43 pm
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This is interesting. A 30-day trial, afterward it is $79 for this program. I have tons of old JPG files from years ago that are in JPG and I would not use them, but some of them I wish I could. Here are two examples to consider. The first is the original JPG and the one with the word “edit” in the file name is the converted image converted to TIF and 16-bit is the other. Judge for yourself. No, it’s not perfect, but it might save some files from many years ago. Your thoughts?
I am sure there are faults, but are there any good use of this. I have to run some tests, but I feel it would be useful.
Of course, here both are JPGs, but in Photoshop they are JPG and TIF and the TIF is twice as large.
https://topazlabs.com/jpeg-to-raw-ai?utm_source=Topaz+Updates&utm_campaign=3d07ab1be6-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2019_01_23_04_28&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_5e4dd8652a-3d07ab1be6-88405693&mc_cid=3d07ab1be6&mc_eid=f3703aa120
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I'm confused about what you're reporting let alone the title: JPG to Raw but you speak of TIFF.
You took a JPEG and edited it so it looks better right? What's that got to do with JPEG to Raw? That's simply not possible, a JPEG is rendered, it's baked, you can't make it a raw.
You could convert a JPEG to a DNG, it's still not raw. DNG is just a container. As is TIFF. Open the JPEG in Photoshop, convert to TIFF, so what?
I think there's some marketing hype going on here.
The image was somehow edited and looks better. I don't understand what the big deal is, I can do that in Photoshop, Elements, Photos on Mac, Lightroom etc.
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I'm confused about what you're reporting let alone the title: JPG to Raw but you speak of TIFF.
You took a JPEG and edited it so it looks better right? What's that got to do with JPEG to Raw? That's simply not possible, a JPEG is rendered, it's baked, you can't make it a raw.
You could convert a JPEG to a DNG, it's still not raw. DNG is just a container. As is TIFF. Open the JPEG in Photoshop, convert to TIFF, so what?
I think there's some marketing hype going on here.
The image was somehow edited and looks better. I don't understand what the big deal is, I can do that in Photoshop, Elements, Photos on Mac, Lightroom etc.
I'm reporting a new piece of software. Don't shoot the messenger. Check it out for yourself. I am NOT going to get into an argument over this. There it is. Try it out for free and come to your own conclusions. I did.
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I'm reporting a new piece of software. Don't shoot the messenger. Check it out for yourself. I am NOT going to get into an argument over this. There it is. Try it out for free and come to your own conclusions. I did.
I'm not shooting the messenger but I am asking him to clearly his writings. Again, your topic states JPG to Raw files and you speak of JPEG to TIFF. :P
Next I'm asking you and others to use some critical thinking about this. You can't convert a JPEG (or a TIFF) into a raw. It's not possible.
I did check it myself, there's a massive degree of marketing BS! It's nonsense. You can of course edit a JPEG to make it look better. You can convert a JPEG to a 16-bit TIFF, you gain nothing doing so. You can edit that TIFF and you'll get less data loss after saving it back as a TIFF instead of a JPEG but otherwise, you've gained nothing and Photoshop has been able to do this for a couple decades.
You can open a JPEG in Photoshop and use ACR as a Filter, edit that data in high bit and wide gamut so there's nothing new here in this new product either. You can save a JPEG into a DNG, it's still not raw data, DNG is like TIFF simply a container for image data.
But the worst part of this product is the massive BS they claim that people will believe and lay down money for. I don't need to try it, they've lost me based on their marketing lies and I have tools that can do just what they propose anyway.
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An 8bit sRGB JPG can be converted to a 16bit ProPhoto Tiff with any software. BUT there is no way to recover the data-loss from the conversion RAW to JPG. Therefore I'm with Rodney, their call about improved "dynamic range", "color space", "color depth" is simply marketing chatter.
The only thing the software takes care of are artefacts and of course, it has to sharpen details back then. Both things you can do on your own.
Some with not much processing experience may still prefer a piece of software. But as I try to avoid any artefacts and I think others do too, I'm curious how often you really would use this software...
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An 8bit sRGB JPG can be converted to a 16bit ProPhoto Tiff with any software. BUT there is no way to recover the data-loss from the conversion RAW to JPG.
Hi Sebbe,
And there it gets interesting.
First of all, Demosaicing Raw file data can be done in different ways, that's why we have different Raw conversion engines in the market. Otherwise, they would all use a similar, maybe DCRaw type of demosaicing. An application like RawTherapee offers a choice of algorithms, and they do produce different results (resolution/artifact trade-offs, sensitivity to noise amplification, and false-color artifacts from the more undersampled Red and Blue Bayer filtered pixels compared to the undersampled Greens).
So different Raw conversion engines will also produce somewhat different output, even in TIFFs.
Then we get additional JPEG compression losses of, mostly, Chroma precision depending on the quality settings at conversion time. And usually, there are additionally also losses due to gamut compression, going from e.g. ProPhoto RGB to RGB conversion, and additionally by going from 16-bit/channel precision to 8-b/ch precision.
By the time we have a JPEG image, it's not very suited for postprocessing anymore, and it's not very robust. JPEGs are basically an end-product for display or print. Their robustness has been sacrificed for smalle size, and artifacts are baked in.
Interestingly, by using Artificial Intelligence, it is possible to recover from some of the losses incurred when converting to 'lossy compression' JPEGs. The loss of precision in the Chromaticity is where most of the compression is achieved, and this process can be reversed to a certain degree. It can be done to greater precision in 16-b/ch, and also when using a wider gamut colorspace.
It won't be exact, because image fragments are replaced by the results of trained AI models. The results depends on the training sets. But then, TIFFs from Raws are also not created equal.
Sure, a reverse-engineered TIFF is not an un-demosaiced Raw, but it could be very close, or even at times better (because we have replaced pixels by credible RGB data per pixel instead of only R, or G, or B interpolations).
Cheers,
Bart
P.S. Keith Cooper has written an initial review based on an earlier beta version of the software:
http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/topaz-jpeg-to-raw-ai-review/
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Early in the digital revolution there were a few who managed to get this concept of Raw vs JPEG across very well for the strugglers as myself. John Paul C. and Andy R were two in those days that that lighted and focused the subject for me. The term that appeared then was "baked". JPC especiallywould spread out his arms to illustrate the enormous bowl necessary to contain the information available for use in a Raw file. Once you zeroed in on which ingredients in that bowl you wished to use, and "baked them" forever more into a JPEG cookie, what you now had for ingredients could be contained in a tiny, tiny bowl in comparison. You could choose to process the ingredients of that small bowl again, but only shaping and reshaping what was in that bowl. Once you have thrown out the Raw spices and washed the big bowl there would be no bringing them back up the drain. If you were too early in your ability to recognize the presence of those spices, that represented permanent loss. You could make the salt and sugar become larger presences if that is what you had saved, baked, processed, but no getting back what went down the drain. ACR and others could do that sugar enhancement for you, but not manufacture the discarded spice variety that was originally in the BIG bowl of varied content. Over the years I have explained this to musically inclined , but processing comprehension challenged, as an enormous band or orchestra. Depending on your hearing acuity, or that of the recording quality, the work of music may be rich and lush with variety or it may be just a few of the loudest, or most bass or most treble you recognize and hear. Once you transcribe those you've lost the rest. They've left the stage forever.
We were encouraged back then to never throw out or Raw files as we could not possibly imagine how much was in that large bowl that we were not yet aware of our able to see or hear, but that the advances in processing/ tech were coming so fast that we would be glad to have kept that bowl to visit again and again. Not the same as the baked product, small bowl, which we had chosen to keep and now wished to make large. That wool sweater has been shrunk, and stretch it over you body as you will, it is still the shrunk material stretched large. Nice to hear from you Andy. Of course AI can certainly manufacture and replace those emptiness but with imagined/algorithmed, not original. (last sentence added after reading Bart's reply)
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It won't be exact, because image fragments are replaced by the results of trained AI models. The results depends on the training sets. But then, TIFFs from Raws are also not created equal.
Quote Bart.
Excellent explanation Bart. The world advances at flank speed. I sometimes feel as if AI is already advancing faster than human intelligence is capable of running with abreast, let alone keeping up~thank you Bart
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One thing that isn’t clear from their email is if it is available as a plugin in Topaz Studio.
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One thing that isn’t clear from their email is if it is available as a plugin in Topaz Studio.
Hi Rajan,
From the TopazLabs webpage: https://topazlabs.com/jpeg-to-raw-ai/ref/17/
Simple workflow
Whenever you would edit a JPEG, put it through JPEG to RAW AI first for best editing results. Standalone application for Mac + Windows that allows batch processing.
Cheers,
Bart
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Bart, I'm with you. It sounds like a good solution. But to be honest, it's a good start for processing IF I have only a JPG available and IF the JPG shows artefacts too.
Do you have such pictures? I don't.
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Bart, I'm with you. It sounds like a good solution. But to be honest, it's a good start for processing IF I have only a JPG available and IF the JPG shows artefacts too.
Do you have such pictures? I don't.
I try to avoid taking such JPEGs myself, but I may be faced with such images from others, from a Smartphone, or frames from a video.
I'll have to experiment a bit to see which use-cases benefit most. It might also be useful for Texture files or Stock images one finds on the internet that can be used for different purposes.
My smartphone allows to take Raw files, but I might forget to switch that on. It can be helpful to turn the JPEGs into DNGs after the fact.
The images that I've tried so far come out a bit too sharp for my taste, but J2R has just been released. There might be a minimal/None setting added to the Normal / High setting for Noise and Blur Reduction, just like we saw with A.I. Gigapixel.
Cheers,
Bart
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Sure, a reverse-engineered TIFF is not an un-demosaiced Raw, but it could be very close, or even at times better (because we have replaced pixels by credible RGB data per pixel instead of only R, or G, or B interpolations).
Here's a TIFF and of course, it was originally captured as raw. Please reverse engineer the TIFF to whatever, and then we'll talk about how 'close' it is to the raw. The TIFF is at: http://digitaldog.net/files/JPEGforRAW.tif
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I agree that sometimes Andrew tends to perhaps voice his opinion in a very straight forth manner, which some might translate as being over the top and even perhaps arrogant. One thing I've discovered over the years in this forum is this - Andrew knows what he's talking about, and quite frankly, he seldom holds back when asked for an opinion or an assessment.
However, I also have a lot of confidence in what Bart has to say. I really believe that Andrew's only, or at least biggest problem with this new app from Topaz is in its marketing approach, trying to convince us that a JPEG file can be converted into a RAW file, which of course is indeed IMPOSSIBLE. For those who have doubts about this here's a very easy way to prove it to yourself. Take your camera and tripod and find a lovely nature scene with a full range of colour, gradients (sky etc.) and depth, and I don't mean Bit Depth. Set you camera on the tripod. Once the light is right take two exposures, one in RAW and one in JPEG. Open both files in ACR or your preferred image processor. Process both with the same adjustments. Save both as a TIFF or perhaps a DNG file. Make further adjustments to the TIFF/DNG files and closely compare what you have in both files, RAW and JPEG. Depending on the latest adjustments you should be able to see quite a variation, both in colour rendition and in the gradients.
As Bart mentioned, there may indeed be some use for this particular offering from Topaz Labs for some folks, but quite honestly I cannot see that at this point. Of course it is also in its infancy, so perhaps it will grow into something of worth. For me at this time, not so much.
Gary
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Add me to the list turned off by the Topaz marketing hype for this sw. However, decided to be "fair", downloaded the trial on a spare W10 system, stripped off one of the befores on their website, and ran the small image (512x512) thru the program. Simple minded interface, drop the original on a target and wait for the dng output. Had two choices, normal and high, so I chose high and hit start. Ran several minutes on a quad core i5 from some years back, my first thought was it's really cranking those cores. However, task manager indicated about 2% cpu usage, which didn't make much sense.
Finally ended, spit out a dng. I have to admit it did a reasonable job, although seem to be some areas where it didn't know quite what to do. I wasn't able to duplicate the results with a quick pass thru PS, but I'm sure others more skilled than I could do so. If they would just describe the program in relatively modest terms might be ok, although a bit pricey IMO. Maybe a big disconnect between Engineering and Marketing.
Richard Southworth
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My beef with Topaz Labs is a rather blatant marketing lie as seen here:
Does anyone believe or have proof that they can convert a JPEG to raw and produce the same results? Can anyone shoot a JPEG and a properly exposed raw where the white balance for the JPEG is totally wrong (say set for Daylight but shot under Tungsten), and make that JPEG WB alone match the qualities of the raw? Has Topaz provided any test files, both JPEG and raw that test this or other such corrections instead of rendering?
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Here's more nonsense from Topaz's web site that the unsuspecting will eat up:
You can prevent this from happening by running it through JPEG to RAW AI. JPEG to RAW’s machine learning models expand the sRGB colorspace to ProPhoto RGB, which is even better than a regular RAW file! This works so well because there is usually enough information in at least one color channel for our models to reconstruct missing detail with a high level of preciseness.
Machine learning expands? Oh, Photoshop's Convert to Profile (sRGB to ProPhoto) does that too and has for 20 years.
Do I have to map the gamut of an sRGB JPEG and then map the gamut after conversion to ProPhoto RGB to show them, making a container larger doesn't do anything else?
Better than a 'regular' raw? Usually enough?
They, Topaz need to start telling the truth.
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I am not going to argue all this. All I did was try it out on some of the many JPGs I have from way back, like the Nikon D1X. What they did, to my eyes, looked better than the JPG and was easy to work on in post. IMO, so far so good. If it is cool technology, cool. If it just does a better job, which it seems to, then it helps me. Simple.
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I am not going to argue all this.
There isn't anything to argue about really.
All I did was try it out on some of the many JPGs I have from way back, like the Nikon D1X. What they did, to my eyes, looked better than the JPG and was easy to work on in post.
To be expected. If the results were the same or worse, I doubt the company would have released it or had the nerve to ask money for it. They do have the nerve to lie about how the product does what it does. No need to do so. But yet they lie about it.
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Michael,
But are you going to spend $100 on it after the trial is over? I agree it probably can rescue bad images, producing something usable. But I'm with Andrew, can't forgive their blatant marketing crap, trying to justify the price tag with a bunch of off the wall claims. Why not market it as a piece of AI aimed at poor image restoration, and keep it sane? Some misguided soul at Topaz decided they couldn't get the desired price without the contrived description.
Obviously not aimed at most LULA members.
Richard Southworth
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Michael,
But are you going to spend $100 on it after the trial is over? I agree it probably can rescue bad images, producing something usable. But I'm with Andrew, can't forgive their blatant marketing crap, trying to justify the price tag with a bunch of off the wall claims. Why not market it as a piece of AI aimed at poor image restoration, and keep it sane? Some misguided soul at Topaz decided they couldn't get the desired price without the contrived description.
Obviously not aimed at most LULA members.
Richard Southworth
I am not sure what I will do. I have tens of thousands of JPGs from long ago. Some of them are very nice and deserve to be more than a JPG. I could care less about the hype. Only interested in if it works and how well. It's worth $79 just for the old family images and perhaps some of the iPhone images too. I will find out.
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Got ACR?
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At the moment you can actually get it for $67.99 but I can't link that here ;-)
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At the moment you can actually get it for $67.99 but I can't link that here ;-)
What a deal (induced sarcasm and emjoi :P for emphasis). ;D
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I actually always enjoy your posts, Andrew, always have. I have some messages from you in my inbox from 2006 about PixelGenius!
Let's see how this new title plays out over time, and what others think.
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Thus far I cannot tell what special sauce the Topaz product has on JPGs that cannot be achieved in ACR through Noise Reduction, Clarity, and Deconvolution sharpening. Perhaps the virtue of the new tool is that it does everything in one step. But I'll withhold judgement until I have more experience with it.
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Thus far I cannot tell what special sauce the Topaz product has on JPGs that cannot be achieved in ACR through Noise Reduction, Clarity, and Deconvolution sharpening. Perhaps the virtue of the new tool is that it does everything in one step. But I'll withhold judgement until I have more experience with it.
It improves JPEG editability, especially when the JPEGs were saved with lower quality settings. The output files are more robust, which only shows when trying to subject them to significant post-processing edits. At the moment, the amount of 'sharpening' (actually replacing with sharper detail), it too heavy-handed for my taste, but the DNGs can be adjusted to something more palatable in Capture One Pro by reducing the amount of "Structure".
I hope they will add a "None" or "Low" setting for the J2R AI "Noise and Blur Reduction" control. It's not just a setting, because they will have to create a new AI model for that, and that can take months of training.
Also, currently, the "Preview" (button at the bottom left) allows to change brightness and contrast, but they are not saved and just serve as aids to better judge e.g. Shadows and Highlights.
Cheers,
Bart
P.S. I've attached a screen-grab of an example of Andrew's TIFF (see Reply #12), converted to JPEG with quality 10, and another one converted to JPEG with quality 99. The conversion to sRGB for Web was done with Photoshop CS-6. In both cases, it's clear that J2R added detail that was not available in the original JPEG input.
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And here's an article where Dr, Feng (Albert) Yang, the founder of Topaz Labs, explains a bit more about the how's and why's.
https://petapixel.com/2019/01/29/can-jpegs-be-improved-to-raw-quality/?utm_source=Topaz+Updates
Cheers,
Bart
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Bart,
I noticed the heavy handed sharpening, too. Especially at 200-300% you can see ringing and other artifacts.
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Bart,
I noticed the heavy handed sharpening, too. Especially at 200-300% you can see ringing and other artifacts.
Hi Rajan,
Indeed. I guess I'll leave a comment about it on their forum. It might take a while before they could cure that, because it's not the result of simple sharpening. In Capture One it's simple to reign it in though, with a -60 Structure adjustment on a DNG, but that should not be necessary.
Cheers,
Bart
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And here's an article where Dr, Feng (Albert) Yang, the founder of Topaz Labs, explains a bit more about the how's and why's.
https://petapixel.com/2019/01/29/can-jpegs-be-improved-to-raw-quality/?utm_source=Topaz+Updates (https://petapixel.com/2019/01/29/can-jpegs-be-improved-to-raw-quality/?utm_source=Topaz+Updates)
Cheers,
Bart
I have to ask those with critical judgement to ask: are you serious? It's yet another fluff/puff piece. Let's look at some of the text here with again, just an ounce of critical thinking.
The Author writes:
“Can a JPEG image be enhanced to a RAW image quality?”
"However, I recently became hopeful that my “No” could eventually become a “Yes.”
The comment comes without a lick of any proof of concept. Marketing hype.
Further he writes:
"JPEG images typically come from small cameras, like your phone, or are saved after editing to reduce image size for the internet."
NO! They all shot raw but these cameras only provide a JPEG processed from that raw.
"When a JPEG image is saved with “Quality > 70”, it “looks” almost as good as a RAW image."
The raw image doesn't look anything like the JPEG; it's yet to be rendered. This is a silly statement!
"Instead of trying to reverse the information loss, which is impossible, we train a neural network to “remember” what the RAW image should look like before it’s converted to a JPEG image."
That's nonsensical too, this is what a raw image looks like and no, it's nothing like a processed JPEG:
http://www.digitaldog.net/files/raw.jpg (http://www.digitaldog.net/files/raw.jpg)
(http://www.digitaldog.net/files/raw.jpg)
"Are the enhanced JPEGs now RAW quality? That’s for you to judge."
The company or those not shocked by the massive lies told by this company (we convert JPEGs to raw, we can edit a JPEG as if it were a raw) could provide examples as I suggested but so far, none seem to exist.
One could shoot a raw + JPEG (or ideally a raw ideally exposed, then the JPEG ideally exposed) where the white balance is wrong. It will not affect the raw whatsoever. It will massively and negatively affect the JPEG. Shot the JPEG under Tungsten of Fluorescent with camera WB set for Daylight. Now process the JPEG in this product and the raw in a product you usually use and understand how to operate. Show us the two matching in terms of WB.
One could shoot a scene with a large dynamic range, 9-11 stops perhaps, then the JPEG and show us that the JPEG has the same DR as the processed raw.**
One could shot a scene with colors that greatly exceed sRGB color gamut in raw and JPEG, run this product and plot the image color gamut vs. the raw processed into ProPhoto RGB and show its plot.
There are a few tests the company and others supporting it's ideas can try to prove the claim.
The claims made are nonsensical. They could easily have said "Processed JPEGs from Topaz provide best in class quality" or "AI provides the best quality post JPEG editing on this planet" etc, etc. They don't. They lie. And they haven’t provided anything I can yet find comparing a raw capture and their JPEGs processed to back up the two egregious claims I've mentioned above. Of course there are more such egregious claims but those two are enough.
Why can't they tell the truth? I suppose they are considering how so many Governments lie and put all technical and science aside and figure, let's sell this to people who don' know any better. What a sad shame of events.
**The JPEG engine that processes the raw massively clips and compresses highlights. We often don't when editing the raw. This compression can clump midtones as much as 1 stop while compressing shadow details! People incorrectly state that raw has more highlight data but the fact is, the DR captured is an attribute of the capture system; it's all there in the raw but maybe not in a camera proceed JPEG.
A raw capture that's 10 or 11 stops of dynamic range can be compressed to 7 stops from this JPEG processing which is a significant amount of data and tonal loss! So when we hear people state that a raw has more DR than a JPEG, it's due to the poor rendering or handling of the data to create that JPEG. The rendering of this data and the reduction of dynamic range is from the JPEG engine that isn't handling the DR data that does exists as well as we can from the raw! Another reason to capture and render the raw data, assuming you care about how the image is rendered!
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P.S. I've attached a screen-grab of an example of Andrew's TIFF (see Reply #12), converted to JPEG with quality 10, and another one converted to JPEG with quality 99. The conversion to sRGB for Web was done with Photoshop CS-6. In both cases, it's clear that J2R added detail that was not available in the original JPEG input.
But that wasn't the request nor is it at all useful IMHO. I supplied it based your statement below and await, yes, proof of concept:
Sure, a reverse-engineered TIFF is not an un-demosaiced Raw, but it could be very close, or even at times better (because we have replaced pixels by credible RGB data per pixel instead of only R, or G, or B interpolations).
Plus there is no 'original JPEG'. There's a rendered TIFF from an original raw. NOR did the TIFF require editing. It was rendered from raw as the photographer desired.
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Bart,
I noticed the heavy handed sharpening, too. Especially at 200-300% you can see ringing and other artifacts.
Yup but for *some* if it "looks" sharper, it's better despite the obvious for some, heavy handling that wasn't necessary in the first place. ;)
Let's see what this product does with a JPEG that actually needs editing!
Anyone here who shoots raw convinced from this product they should stop doing so and set their cameras for JPEG? I didn't think so (I hope not).
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Anyone here who shoots raw convinced from this product they should stop doing so and set their cameras for JPEG? I didn't think so (I hope not).
I don't think that is the motivation at all.
Although it can shoot in RAW with third party apps, my default iPhone camera setting is JPG. The other day while shooting with my Panasonic LX100II, I must have inadvertently hit some button and I was dismayed to find later that instead of RAW I had JPGs on my hand. These situations could conceivably benefit from such a tool.
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I don't think that is the motivation at all.
I believe it is the motivation of their marketing, not what smarter consumers are motivated to do.
I too shoot with an iPhone (but raw is possible) and I do seek solutions that could provide better editing, when necessary to improve those shots. I'm not saying this product doesn't or can't improve a JPEG. I'm saying the company is full of crap in how they are 'selling' the solution and it's not at all necessary to lie as they have. Frankly they should have just ignored anything to do with raw. Just sell a product that can improve JPEGs (if nothing else).
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After the Topaz founder's article are several comments, including some denying the raw connection. In reply another commenter wrote:
"the actual tech aside, what you describe here is really just semantic, and is a bit nitpicking. Because "RAW" are used so often to be associated with upmost quality, so it could be used this way, and many people will understand what the author meant.
What you are doing is like telling a person that, "Stop asking me to Google the meaning of RAW quality, because Google is a company, not an action." :-)"
So I guess those of us who object to the use of raw in describing the program's function are nitpicking. So much for logical thinking.
Richard Southworth
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I believe it is the motivation of their marketing, not what smarter consumers are motivated to do.
I too shoot with an iPhone (but raw is possible) and I do seek solutions that could provide better editing, when necessary to improve those shots. I'm not saying this product doesn't or can't improve a JPEG. I'm saying the company is full of crap in how they are 'selling' the solution and it's not at all necessary to lie as they have. Frankly they should have just ignored anything to do with raw. Just sell a product that can improve JPEGs (if nothing else).
I completely agree with this - it's an application that takes a JPEG and produces a DNG container for an interpolated and otherwise cooked TIFF that may help improve your original with editing in certain use cases. Nothing at all wrong with that and I think if it works for people and provides a use, it should be marketed that way. I think it is disingenuous (at best) to mention "raw" in the name. Maybe JPEG-to-DNG or JPEG-to-TIFF.
One of the things I looked at was whether it would be useful for pulling out any sort of useful shadow detail from poorly exposed JPEGs, which is what I'd want from such an application. I didn't expect it to do well (can't put back what's not there) and it didn't. In general, if I happen to have any JPEGs around, they're pretty nice as it is, so such a tool would have limited use with me anyway. For me, not worth the price, and I don't normally have problems dropping cash on software :).
That said, it is interesting to see what people are doing with computational photography and machine learning as there are useful nuggets to be had, but the marketing hyperbole is certainly over-the-top here.
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I do not understand the basis of the absolutist statement that a lossy file format such as a JPEG image file may not be reconstructed into its source data.
For example; It seems to me that if one knew exactly what protocols were followed when compressing the data into the lossy format then it should be possible to reverse the functions and arrive at a solution that matches the original data.
Is that actually impossible or just highly unlikely?
I understand that there is no single specific recipe for compressing a JPEG file but it does not seem impossible that a neural network can get remarkably close to figuring out what choices were made when the data was thrown out, and then put most of it back together again.
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A JPEG simply cannot be converted back to it's original raw data.
Can a baked cake be converted back to all it's individual and separate ingredients? Nope.
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Why not just shoot RAW in the first place?
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Why not just shoot RAW in the first place?
1. Your camera may not offer that option.
2. You haven't the time to post process from RAW to end use (eg sports/news photography).
3. You may run out of space on memory.
From what I've seen from Bart's example, this may be a useful tool to rescue and enhance some JPGs, if you only have a JPG original. Although there does look to be as much false information added as credible detail. Like many other Topaz products not a compelling product.
Personally, I'd have to be pretty desperate to spend money to rescue something for so little gain.
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Raw to jpg is a many-to-one relation, in fact, so many that it isn't very useful to think about reverse engineering that relation. That relation loses a lot of data and is specific to each producer.
Of course, with AI and a whole bunch of raw+jpg images, one can *attempt* to train the AI to find some inverse relation, but it will just be guestimating most of the time.
For specific producers, there may be a slight improvement, think of it like this:
If the raw data represents 100% integrity (relatively speaking)
A jpg represents say 25% integrity
An attempt at reverse engineering to raw then represents maybe 30%
It probably does more harm than good. There is maybe one reason to do this, which is a desire to use tools in the raw converter that are not available when editing jpg.
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32BT, I remember theimagingfactory from over a decade ago! I featured one of your products in my old ezine then (http://www.plugsandpixels.com/pdf/plugsnpixels06.pdf) (page 9).
And I think you summarize JPEG to RAW well when you say, "a desire to use tools in the raw converter that are not available when editing jpg".
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"a desire to use tools in the raw converter that are not available when editing jpg"
I disagree - I shoot raw because the resulting image file has everything from the scene recorded in it, subject to the limitations of my equipment and photographic skills. IMO there is no significant downside to a raw workflow, almost everything I shoot goes thru ACR, most of it comes out of the Save spigot if it comes out at all, only a selected few into Photoshop. I also process most acquired jpegs in ACR (or maybe LR), using the same tools. Some of the tools have different characteristics between raw and jpeg, but they do the same basic operations.
Richard Southworth
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And I think you summarize JPEG to RAW well when you say, "a desire to use tools in the raw converter that are not available when editing jpg".
Tools perhaps, but DATA, absolutely. Again, read the facts about what a camera generated JPEG does rather destructively from the raw data to make the JPEG (all such cameras produce a raw, even if you don't ask for it which is a big mistake). There's a potentially huge data loss in DR, color gamut and bit depth alone doing this conversion instead of capturing the raw. NO software can put that toothpaste back in the tube.
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Of course a real RAW is most preferable whenever possible, no argument. As an analogy, audio collectors have no patience with mp3s (the audio equivalent of JPEGs) and want not only lossless files (16/44), but hi-res lossless (24/96 or better).
But if you're stuck with an mp3 and nothing else and need to do edits, you'll have to "convert" the mp3 to a WAV/AIFF, do your edits, and keep it there. In that case no lost audio data is being put back, but no further damage is being done. Topaz's AI is attempting to restore some lost data, though of course the argument is whether this is working, and if so, how much.
In the case of Gigapixel AI I have been very impressed. I've done my own tests and have definitely seen the difference.
I agree with Andrew that the main problem with JPEG to RAW is in the product name used ("RAW") instead of "DMG", which would be quite accurate of itself.
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I agree with Andrew that the main problem with JPEG to RAW is in the product name used ("RAW") instead of "DMG", which would be quite accurate of itself.
It's DNG and it's again, just a container like TIFF. The issue is many people incorrectly assume DNG equals raw. Lightroom has had the ability to convert (embed) a JPEG into DNG for years. Or a TIFF. You're just placing that existing data into the DNG container. So this company is making up a lot of stuff AND trying to pass off the option to save as DNG as another excuse to imply this is raw data. It's JPEG data IN a DNG.
People could convert a JPEG into a 16-bit TIFF in ProPhoto RGB for decades now. But apparently the people who don't know how to do this don't have a clue about what raw or DNG is and just buy into this companies marketing hype. Suckers are born every minute and have $80 (or $99) to spend it seems.
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So that leaves us with the AI aspect of the new product, which will develop over time, after which we can evaluate it further.
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So that leaves us with the AI aspect of the new product, which will develop over time, after which we can evaluate it further.
Yeah, AI, another unnecessary marketing term. It might get better, as any software product could (should). Or it may fail because enough people see through the rubbish and lies this company has decided to use to sell a product.
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1. Your camera may not offer that option.
2. You haven't the time to post process from RAW to end use (eg sports/news photography).
3. You may run out of space on memory.
1. If your camera doesn't shoot RAW, you are probably not concerned about quality anyway.
2. If you don't have time to process raw, you don't have time to use this product either. You can also shoot RAW+JPG.
3. Use a bigger card. They are cheap. Or, carry an extra card.
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1. If your camera doesn't shoot RAW, you are probably not concerned about quality anyway.
2. If you don't have time to process raw, you don't have time to use this product either. You can also shoot RAW+JPG.
3. Use a bigger card. They are cheap. Or, carry an extra card.
I get clients wanting something like a 17 inch print from a jpeg file.
If the jpeg has 600 - 800 px on the long side I can usually do it.
I haven't tried the unfortunately named Topaz JPEG to Raw AI, but if it sometimes made life easier I'd buy it.
There's no point telling clients what they should have done, we have to deal with what they have.
David
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David, you'd probably want to look at Gigapixel for that purpose. See my other posts about it.
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David, you'd probably want to look at Gigapixel for that purpose. See my other posts about it.
Way ahead of you on that. :)
I've used it once and it did the job I wanted, but the AI Clear has been more useful. Once I've cloned out the jpeg artefacts, restored the colour balance and maybe dynamic range, a tool for selective detail restoration both before and after uprezzing works better for me.
David
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1. If your camera doesn't shoot RAW, you are probably not concerned about quality anyway.
2. If you don't have time to process raw, you don't have time to use this product either. You can also shoot RAW+JPG.
3. Use a bigger card. They are cheap. Or, carry an extra card.
You're missing many things here;
1. You might care a lot about quality, but have no option but to use a JPG only device (eg your camera is lost, stolen or develops a fault and you're stuck with just a phone or other JPG only kit)
2. Lots of event/sport photographs don't need to shoot RAW, JPG is fine for most expected use, but an exceptional event or image might need everything possible squeezed out a JPG. Shooting RAW+JPG may not be viable if you're shooting thousands of images an hour.
3. When a card fails and a replacement isn't available, or the lost or stolen scenario rears it's head again. There's many unfortunate things that do go wrong and you need to use anything to get the shot.
My point is that the unexpected does happen and then having tools like this available might just enhance an image a worthwhile amount.
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Way ahead of you on that. :)
I've used it once and it did the job I wanted, but the AI Clear has been more useful. Once I've cloned out the jpeg artefacts, restored the colour balance and maybe dynamic range, a tool for selective detail restoration both before and after uprezzing works better for me.
David
Very good. In one of my blog posts I used both Gigapixel and Clear together and got really good results from some old 35mm film scans.
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Hello,
I'm new here so hope you'll forgive me for jumping in.
I've been using Topaz program for a few days now and testing it fairly extensively and as far as I'm concerned it is amazing!
Now I know lots of people say it's not RAW etc, but it produces both a TIFF file or a DNG so apart from the fact that it isn't just raw data the fact is it actually does what it says.
And it beats my usual NR program hands down.
At this moment my Z800 is batch processing 300 old 40D files using this program.
If I'm allowed I have a link to my flickr site where I've actually put some samples of what this program can produce:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/20926615@N05/albums/72157678279709128
Please don't treat them as if they should be prize winning photos, many of these were taken over 10 years ago with the Canon 350D, 450D, 40D etc.
They are there to show the capabilities of this new program.
I also have an album for AI Gigapixel which totally blew me away when I tried it.
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... so apart from the fact that it isn't just raw data the fact is it actually does what it says.
Except the JPG to raw part, yes, it does exactly what it says on the tin. ;)
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Except the JPG to raw part, yes, it does exactly what it says on the tin. ;)
Let's see it recover highlights and DR as it says on the tin. You'd need to have a raw of the same capture and ideally exposed for raw to compare. No comparison as yet provided (I wonder why?) :P
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Let's see it recover highlights and DR as it says on the tin. You'd need to have a raw of the same capture and ideally exposed for raw to compare. No comparison as yet provided (I wonder why?) :P
Andrew's point here is well taken. Highlight recovery in raw requires that the blue and/or red channels contain unclipped data. This is shown in this raw histogram of a Stouffer wedge exposed so that the green channels are clipped but the red channel is 1/3 EV below clipping and the blue channel is considerably less than 1/3 EV below clipping. To achieve white balance in rendering the red channel is multiplied by 1.90 (moved 0.93 EV to the right) and the blue channel by 1.38 (moved 0.46 EV to the right). After these WB multiplications both the red and blue channels would be clipped and highlight recovery would not be possible from the JPEG.
Bill
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Andrew's point here is well taken. Highlight recovery in raw requires that the blue and/or red channels contain unclipped data.
And I wasn't even talking about recover like that but rather a blown out JPEG (all channels clipped) compared to a raw from that JPEG where no channels are clipped. As Jeff Schewe shows here:
http://schewephoto.com/ETTR/
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Andrew,
Please consider the possibility that you are not clear in your mind about what A.I. means and does, in particular as Topaz is using it. Bart has summarized it well, and perhaps you should reread what he has written.
I was the head of an A.I. Startup some time ago, and the "experts" defined "A.I." as "software that we do not quite understand." This still seems operational.
Some have found that this Topaz product improves old Jpeg files, as I have. Topaz's use of A.I is a first try and could and should become better. A.I. is very different from traditional software, so the traditional "diminishing returns" expectations may be flipped on their heads.
The trial is free; have you tried it? If so, did you try ACR/LR/PS on the result vs using ACR/LR/PS on the original file? When I did, I saw more elbow room in addition to the initial pretty clear improvement. If you have not tried it, please give it a try and let us benefit from your perspectives.
Bill
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Andrew,
Please consider the possibility that you are not clear in your mind about what A.I. means and does, in particular as Topaz is using it. Bart has summarized it well, and perhaps you should reread what he has written.
I was the head of an A.I. Startup some time ago, and the "experts" defined "A.I." as "software that we do not quite understand." This still seems operational.
Some have found that this Topaz product improves old Jpeg files, as I have. Topaz's use of A.I is a first try and could and should become better. A.I. is very different from traditional software, so the traditional "diminishing returns" expectations may be flipped on their heads.
The trial is free; have you tried it? If so, did you try ACR/LR/PS on the result vs using ACR/LR/PS on the original file? When I did, I saw more elbow room in addition to the initial pretty clear improvement. If you have not tried it, please give it a try and let us benefit from your perspectives.
Bill
I'm quite clear on marketing BS and claims that are impossible. Topaz Labs, A.I. or otherwise have done just so: need to buy beachfront property in New Mexico?
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Right on!. Keep on refusing the possibility that your lying eyes might cause you consternation.
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Right on!. Keep on refusing the possibility that your lying eyes might cause you consternation.
Keep believing in pink unicorns.... And software "we don't quite understand". :o
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Don't know how you can be so certain about this product since you refuse to look. Same approach used by critics of Galileo.
Actually, and fwiw, the unicorns are green after the Topaz conversion, not pink.
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Don't know how you can be so certain about this product since you refuse to look. Same approach used by critics of Galileo.
Actually, and fwiw, the unicorns are green after the Topaz conversion, not pink.
I know a JPEG cannot be converted to a raw!
Yeah, green unicorns after conversion with Topaz A.I. More marketing fiction. More lies.
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Don't know how you can be so certain about this product since you refuse to look. Same approach used by critics of Galileo.
Actually, and fwiw, the unicorns are green after the Topaz conversion, not pink.
Given a JPEG, Topaz’s application may or may not create a TIFF (or TIFF in a DNG container) that allows you to spit out a better image after some edits. It seems to for some people. That’s great, truly. What it does not do is create a raw file, nor any image that recovers raw-like flexibility (it can’t do that). If they’d called it something like “Magic AI JPEG Enhancer” that’s a closer match.
I definitely get that AI and machine learning can do things to help some images, I work in the ML/AI space, but please, let’s have some reality around what it does. The name of the product simply isn’t an indicator of this. And no, spitting out a DNG doesn’t make it raw.
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Ray,
1. Did it allow you to create a better image from the old jpeg?
2. Do you think the others on this blog who say "yes" to this question are deluding themselves?
3. Why are you and others so concerned about using the word "raw"? Have you listened to any TV ads lately that use dull, literal words? Previously I did not give a damn about the product name, but now I must admit that it was brilliant. Look at all the attention that word has given the company. Pure gold. Now maybe they can finance some more R&D and can do even better. They are surely saying, "thank you, thank you, thank you."
Bill
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How exactly does placing a JPEG in a DNG, or saving it as a TIFF give more editing headroom?
Yes, it certainly doesn't become raw data.
Yes, a converted TIFF or DNG after a subsequent edit, will not suffer additional JPEG data loss as if the edits were applied and saved again as a JPEG. More data and overhead otherwise?
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Ray,
1. Did it allow you to create a better image from the old jpeg?
2. Do you think the others on this blog who say "yes" to this question are deluding themselves?
3. Why are you and others so concerned about using the word "raw"?
Because it's a friggin lie and utter BS, that's why. Like my offer to sell you beachfront property in NM. But a group of suckers are born every minute.
This of course has nothing to do with the ability of this software or any image editing software to make an image that require improvement to be improved. I don’t know if you and others defending this products nonsense are purposely trying not to understand this, or if you all are really struggling with it.
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Ray,
1. Did it allow you to create a better image from the old jpeg?
2. Do you think the others on this blog who say "yes" to this question are deluding themselves?
3. Why are you and others so concerned about using the word "raw"? Have you listened to any TV ads lately that use dull, literal words? Previously I did not give a damn about the product name, but now I must admit that it was brilliant. Look at all the attention that word has given the company. Pure gold. Now maybe they can finance some more R&D and can do even better. They are surely saying, "thank you, thank you, thank you."
Bill
1.) No
2.) They had different use cases, I’m assuming, plus I never indicated that someone couldn’t get something they liked better. Great! That’s what tools are for.
3.) Raw means something, spitting out a tiff or a dng isn't that something. The end result of the Topaz application doesn’t give me the flexibility of a raw file, or behave in any way like one. And yes, they’ve made a silly, possibly controversial, and certainly inaccurate name. I’m personally not going to help “finance some more R&D”. It definitely sounds like you are. I’m super excited for you that it fixes all your JPEGs!
If I was selling a machine, let’s say “Ray’s Lead to Gold Converter”, and for the sake of argument :), it didn't actually do that, maybe it just spray painted your lead a gold color instead of actually changing elements. And let’s say I wasn’t selling it as a joke. I would hope people would call me out on it, and that I couldn’t just get away with saying “Hey, if I used dull, literal words, nobody would buy it so I used GOLD instead!”
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Andrew,
Bart can explain better all of this (and has), but I continue to think you are trying to force this product into some past analysis and insights you have had. Try with a fresh sheet of paper. Forget terms like jpeg, raw, Dng, and Tiff as you have understood them.
Maybe I can get down and dirty and such a description might help understand what Topaz is attempting.....
First, what I understand Topaz to be doing might be thought of as like PS's "content aware fill", which I think is also supposedly being allowed/enhanced by some of their own "A.I.". How does it work? PS "looks at" the pixels that are selected as acceptable replacement pixels. Base on that selection, I think (but do not know) that it then generalizes about the default selected pixel set and maps those acceptable pixels via a transformation matrix (which is what I think the A.I. generates) into the pixel space where the selected fill area has been selected. Sometimes it does it well and sometimes terribly. The new version from Adobe lets humans see which pixels the algorithm is allowed to use as acceptable substitute pixels and pixel patterns. When the user changes this acceptable area, think of that as "training" PS to use a different transformation matrix. Maybe the result is better, maybe not, maybe perfect, and the result will depend on the complexity of the "source" pixels and the target pixel space. Should we reject this and confine ourselves to only using a pure cloning mechanism? The new pixels are not "real". Do these improve images contain pink unicorns?
Again shooting in the dark, imagine a x by y pixel matrix, aka the jpeg you see on your screen. Imagine banding and other jpeg artifacts one commonly sees. What the Topaz paper says (I take some liberties in the interest of brvity and possibly clarity) is that they took many paired raw/jpeg examples, and did some "A.I" on them (think of it as Excel regression analysis), pixel coordinate by pixel coordinate for the entire set of images. Since each pixel coordinate has many, many attributes like tone, color, and others, the software goes to the first pixel and creates a data matrix of differences between the raw version pixel and the jpeg pixel. Now do this for every set of pixels on that particular image. Now find the next x thousand images and do the same. Now you have a boatload of data equaling the number of images by the number of pixels times the set of data differences. Now, "regress" all of this and boil it down into a very complex mathematical polynomial. Now invert this polynomial equation and try it on some jpeg image not in the analyzed data set. If it is not ok, do all of this again but twiddle with the knobs to get a different polynomial. etc, etc. It is certainly more complicated than this, but on the other hand, it is just trying to find repetitive patterns in the many Raw to jpeg conversions it analyzed. Each of you know how to describe what banding in the sky looks like, so all these equations do is try to "undo" that causation via mathematics.
Clearly, this has nothing to do with the pattern of data in a camera raw data set. Maybe, if it is good, it will create a pattern of data that, when stored and opened as, say, a DNG file format, it creates a pattern of pixels that better approximates what the original raw data set represented than the jpeg image does. If, in the process, it creates more gradations, say, between this tone and that, it gives you and me, the PS mechanics, more choices of, say, intermediate tones to tune to your taste. If so that would be or could be more "headroom."
Content aware fill, Topaz J2r. Use'um if you like, forget'um if you wish. Why their names matter in "image processing" continues to escape me. My recollection is that many "real artists" laughed at users of Photoshop as fake art and laughable. They are less sure now. Most importantly, A.I. is a basis to improve image processing, and it will get better and better, and no matter how well content aware fill and J2R perform now, odds are they will become better and better. Objecting to this as a possibility seems very odd to me.
All this literalism about the word, "Raw" recalls Alice in Wonderland when the Humpty Dumpty says about words that they meant whatever he said they meant. This seems even more odd than improving imaging processing. Nobody can patent word meaning. Businesses and communities routinely change the meanings of words and add meanings. Raging against it will not change anything.
Bill
PS. "Sep 10, 2018 - Everyone went nuts for Adobe's “content-aware fill” in Photoshop when it ... essentially an AI-powered clone stamp that intelligently brought in ..." from https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/adobe-supercharges-photoshops-content-aware-fill-so-you-have-more-options-fewer-ai-fails/
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Ray,
Sorry to tell you, but each time you buy a product, you "fund their R&D".
Topaz is a pimple competing with Goliath Adobe. Compared to Topaz's loose use of the word "raw", Adobe's broken promises makes them look Saint like.
You pull for the big guys, or in your case your desired profitless companies, but I pull for the inventors who try to invent something that will help me.
Bill
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Ray,
Sorry to tell you, but each time you buy a product, you "fund their R&D".
Topaz is a pimple competing with Goliath Adobe. Compared to Topaz's loose use of the word "raw", Adobe's broken promises makes them look Saint like.
You pull for the big guys, or in your case your desired profitless companies, but I pull for the inventors who try to invent something that will help me.
Bill
Bill, sorry but I’m not specifically sure what point you are trying to make, or even where Adobe comes into the picture. I like inventors too. Most people here do. I have topaz products and products from a lot of other smaller companies. But I also think words have meaning and it’s how we apes communicate. Yes, words evolve, I get that. Right now though, raw means something specific, as does dng, tiff, jpeg. Topaz has created a ML-based jpeg to tiff image processor based on interesting training sets. It’s certainly clever image processing tech, it may help people who have a bunch of JPEGs in certain cases, and as you point out will get better over time. All cool. If a jpeg to tiff tool is valuable in the market place, it will certainly sell well. If it helps you to be fuzzy with your definition of raw, knock yourself out. I disagree, though.
I’ve spent more time than necessary already (and wasted a perfectly great Colorado evening 🙂) on a product that I don’t need (no JPEG-only images) and certainly am not purchasing after the trial. I’m glad it’s full of awesomeness for you.
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RAW files are universally understood in the photo industry to refer to unprocessed digital data from the camera's sensor together with metadata containing info such as lens used, exposure settings, etc.
A RAW image, being unprocessed lets one do many things such as:
1. Develop a scene referred image. This does not impose a tone curve and is used for making good copies of existing art. When you take a typical, jpeg, output referred picture of a picture and print it the same size it will have more contrast and more saturated colors in the midrange with less contrast and more desaturation in the dark and light extremes. It will be a very poor copy. OTOH, if you use the same settings to develop a RAW file of a normal scene the result will not be very pleasing.
2. Make highly accurate copies of black and white printed documents. Doing this requires bypassing the CFA and scaling the RGGB channels individually. dcraw, for instance, has an option to do just that.
It may well do a great job detecting and removing jpeg artifacts and make a nicely improved 16 bit tiff file (or one wrapped in a DNG) but it can't create RAW files that can be developed as above. The information to do so just doesn't exist in the jpeg. That cake has been baked.
Call it whatever they like but don't abuse the language. Currently RAW has a clear meaning to photographers. Let's keep it that way.
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Frankly I don't care about the name - my question is "Does it work?" and it does!
Amazingly so - and can be used to produce virtually noise free images in the process.
They use TIFFs because what you get from the JPEGs is a 16 bit image so obviously cannot be a JPEG.
I haven't tried to check this yet but I know that images I've produced by it certainly seem smoother when editing.
But if all you can do is argue that it can't work because it's called raw then that is nonsense, since it does work.
And it certainly seems to recover some lost highlights.
I've put some more comparison photos on my Flickr site so just go there and see for yourselves.
Or better still, actually try it out.
After all, since you get a free 30 day trial you have nothing to lose - except perhaps, your prejudices.
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Frankly I don't care about the name - my question is "Does it work?" and it does!
Amazingly so - and can be used to produce virtually noise free images in the process.
They use TIFFs because what you get from the JPEGs is a 16 bit image so obviously cannot be a JPEG.
I haven't tried to check this yet but I know that images I've produced by it certainly seem smoother when editing.
But if all you can do is argue that it can't work because it's called raw then that is nonsense, since it does work.
And it certainly seems to recover some lost highlights.
I've put some more comparison photos on my Flickr site so just go there and see for yourselves.
Or better still, actually try it out.
After all, since you get a free 30 day trial you have nothing to lose - except perhaps, your prejudices.
No one anywhere is saying the tool doesn’t potentially do something to make certain images better. It’s clear that it is indeed an image enhancing tool that uses machine learning and that people are finding value. While I’m not the target audience of the tool as I don’t have a lot of JPEG-only images, I have tried it with some difficult images, seeing if it would recover some shadow detail from underexposed somewhat noisy files. I’d expect to be able to from a raw file. And it didn’t perform to my expectations. Not even close. To be up front, I didn’t really expect it to because I know enough about how JPEGs are produced and what gets lost in translation. My expectations, skeptical as they were, were driven by the name, which you and others are arguing is meaningless.
I’m not writing more on this subject as it has clearly devolved into absurdity, but I’m glad the tool does what you need!
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All that JPEG to RAW aims to achieve is, to create a higher quality source file to base one's editing on.
That source file is not a Raw in the traditional sense, but it offers much of the flexibility of the original Raw file that produced the JPEG.
The result is not perfect, but it does eliminate JPEG compression artifacts, removes noise, adds some of the lost/missing detail, and it improves the robustness of the 'New original'. There is room for improvement, e.g. when a training model is added that produces less noise reduction and sharpening.
Case in point, I've taken a frame from a movie/video (from Blade Runner 2049), and output that as a DNG which was then processed by Capture One Pro. The resulting 'Raw conversion' :P produced a Wider Gamut TIFF, which was dumbed down to a maximum-quality sRGB JPEG attachment.
The IMHO too aggressive noise reduction caused some (avoidable) shadow detail loss, the overly aggressive 'sharpening' had to be reigned-in a lot with a -60 structure adjustment in CO12, and the default color balance was improved too much because it removed the original colorcast.
So there are several aspects that could be improved (and probably will over time, just like already happened to A.I Gigapixel), but except for the noise reduction, the more robust file allows to post-process it in any way one wants. A brittle JPEG would not allow the level of postprocessing that the DNG allows.
As a side note, I'm reading a lot about people who are upgrading (fragments of) their Videos by using A.I. Gigapixel on the individual JPEG frames and then converting those back to Video. So while not intended for that purpose, a new use has already been found, and the batch processing capability comes in handy when 10s of thousands of images need to be processed. I've also attached a small crop from a 6x upscaled image from the same video. That improved resolution (smaller detail than 6 pixels), but also shows the very narrow DOF in movie frames (which is compensated for by viewing movement from a distance).
JPEG to RAW's potential lies in removing the typical JPEG artifacts (block artifacts and loss of chrominance detail) and postprocessing brittleness, so maybe video frames are of relatively too good quality to show the benefits. But average quality phone/camera JPEGs do already benefit a lot, and things will only get better.
Cheers,
Bart
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Simple: report them to the Federal Trade Comission for false advertising.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_advertising
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Bart,
Many thanks for an actual level headed and honestly useful overview!
Thanks,
Ray
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Bart,
Many thanks for an actual level headed and honestly useful overview!
Ray, you're welcome.
It's always a bit of a disappointment when people try to hide their lack of knowledge with monologues about semantics, instead of trying the software.
What they apparently fail to recognize is that Raw images were used, together with resulting JPEGs to train A.I. models that can approximately reverse the lossy compression operation. The goal result is a higher than JPEG quality 'New Original'. It would not make much sense to cripple such a 16-bit/channel larger gamut RGB image by converting it to a 14-bit single channel Bayerized Mosaic, thus throwing away information that was just painstakingly (re)created.
Maybe TopazLabs was a bit too creative in using 'JPEG' and 'RAW' in the product name, because they used JPEGs and Raws to train the model. But thank goodness the result is not dumbed-down to a traditional Raw status. Maybe that's also the reason they called it RAW instead of Raw. Because it's better than Raw 8)
Cheers,
Bart
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Ray, you're welcome.
It's always a bit of a disappointment when people try to hide their lack of knowledge with monologues about semantics, instead of trying the software.
What they apparently fail to recognize is that Raw images were used, together with resulting JPEGs to train A.I. models that can approximately reverse the lossy compression operation. The goal result is a higher than JPEG quality 'New Original'. It would not make much sense to cripple such a 16-bit/channel larger gamut RGB image by converting it to a 14-bit single channel Bayerized Mosaic, thus throwing away information that was just painstakingly (re)created.
Maybe TopazLabs was a bit too creative in using 'JPEG' and 'RAW' in the product name, because they used JPEGs and Raws to train the model. But thank goodness the result is not dumbed-down to a traditional Raw status. Maybe that's also the reason they called it RAW instead of Raw. Because it's better than Raw 8)
Cheers,
Bart
And mea culpa - I did get buried in semantics and I'll freely admit ignorance where I'm due (I'm in a constant state of learning) :).
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It's always a bit of a disappointment when people try to hide their lack of knowledge with monologues about semantics, instead of trying the software.
Andrew,
Maybe I can get down and dirty and such a description might help understand what Topaz is attempting.....
Utter waste of time for me. I ONLY capture raw. I consider JPEG and sRGB to be an output specific end products of editing raw solely for uploading to the web and mobile devices.
I have no JPEG turds to polish. Keep in mind too: GIGO:Garbage In Garbage Out!
Recommending I try the software is akin to suggesting I download and try software that evaluates how many green unicorn's reside in Guam.
I've never said without looking at this product that it can't improve a JPEG that needs some editing (or perhaps for some here, turd polishing). It better do something to make the image look better or the suckers who believe it converts JPEG to raw, as the manufacturer falsely claims, will be even more clueless to purchase it, let alone waste their time testing it.
I've stated and will state again, Topaz Labs is lying, is full of sh*t, is so desperate to sell a product that may or may not be better than the hundreds of products that edit images, and they should be called out for lying. I don't support companies, software or otherwise, that lie to their potential customers let alone their existing customers who feel the need to for whatever reason, defend their egregious lies.
It's always a disappointment when people who know they are being lied to hide their lack of knowledge with monologues about trying software that promises something that's impossible to provide; a big fat wet lie. >:(
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And mea culpa - I did get buried in semantics and I'll freely admit ignorance where I'm due (I'm in a constant state of learning) :).
I didn't mean you. ;)
Cheers,
Bart
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Utter waste of time for me. I ONLY capture raw. I consider JPEG and sRGB to be an output specific end products of editing raw solely for uploading to the web and mobile devices.
I have no JPEG turds to polish. Keep in mind too: GIGO:Garbage In Garbage Out!
Recommending I try the software is akin to suggesting I download and try software that evaluates how many green unicorn's reside in Guam.
I've never said without looking at this product that it can't improve a JPEG that needs some editing (or perhaps for some here, turd polishing). It better do something to make the image look better or the suckers who believe it converts JPEG to raw, as the manufacturer falsely claims, will be even more clueless to purchase it, let alone waste their time testing it.
I've stated and will state again, Topaz Labs is lying, is full of sh*t, is so desperate to sell a product that may or may not be better than the hundreds of products that edit images, and they should be called out for lying. I don't support companies, software or otherwise, that lie to their potential customers let alone their existing customers who feel the need to for whatever reason, defend their egregious lies.
It's always a disappointment when people who know they are being lied to hide their lack of knowledge with monologues about trying software that promises something that's impossible to provide; a big fat wet lie. >:(
So you know the product that others, like me, have actually tried and evaluated and found to be excellent, is absolute rubbish simply because you say so?
Based on what evaluation?
The fact that you only shoot raw?
Some evaluation. ::)
And BTW Topaz does NOT claim that it converts JPEGs to raw - the name of the program is "JPEG to RAW" - RAW - NOT raw!
And as a legal point the vituperation you spout may be considered to be libel and if Topaz' lawyers wished could see you end up suffering considerable damages.
And if you're not sure what vituperation means:
"sustained and bitter railing and condemnation : vituperative utterance"
as defined by Merriam-Webster:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vituperation
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So you know the product that others, like me, have actually tried and evaluated and found to be excellent, is absolute rubbish simply because you say so?...
Once again, nobody is saying that.
The issue is false advertising, in the name and in marketing material.
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Once again, nobody is saying that.
The issue is false advertising, in the name and in marketing material.
Since the term used is RAW, not raw, which is the general term used in photography, the only ones who would gain by such a dispute is the lawyers.
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"It's always a disappointment when people", Andrew, express complete disinterest in the possibility that outside "Plato's Cave" the future is flying ahead with almost more speed than the eye is able to follow, or willing to investigate/study for the possibility that the container which held so much knowledge has become astoundingly inadequate. That artificial intelligence, once trained to sort billions of content points for hundreds of thousands of predictive specific data points is beneath your willingness to even explore, even in the tiny subset of photography, is well, yes, disappointing. Terabytes of information that were not able to fit in the Raw container are available and increasing before our eyes. I'd hate to miss this unfolding sapiens/technology/AI defining thriller with the years I may have left, simply for my unwillingness to step outside away from my comfortable and known depression in the face of earth. You educated me about so much early in the revolution, yet expansion of the universe has not stopped there. You must know that.
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Since the term used is RAW, not raw, which is the general term used in photography, the only ones who would gain by such a dispute is the lawyers.
And the difference is...?
Basically, none. Some would argue that "raw" shouldn't be capitalized, as it is not an acronym, some others would argue (including myself) that companies like Canon, Nikon, etc. use RAW to denote their proprietary raw files. For the purpose of this debate, RAW or raw distinction means nothing.
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So you know the product that others, like me, have actually tried and evaluated and found to be excellent, is absolute rubbish simply because you say so?
Based on what evaluation?
The fact that you only shoot raw?
You don't read or comprehend my writings very well sir. I'll repeat: I didn't say it didn't work. I said the marketing and claims (convert JPEG to raw) is utter BS. As Slodobdan correctly stated: The issue is false advertising, in the name and in marketing material.
I don't need to download anything to know Topaz's claim is utter BS. You cannot convert a rendered JPEG into a raw.
At least one person here, who's yet to prove it's kind of maybe possible has not done so either despite my request for proof of concept.
As for those tricky semantics, let me provide those here with an ounce of critical thinking: And old Chinese provide states: The path towards genius is calling things by their proper names.
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And BTW Topaz does NOT claim that it converts JPEGs to raw - the name of the program is "JPEG to RAW" - RAW - NOT raw!
PLEASE attempt to remove yourself from your unreality bubble and actually examine Topaz's web site (which AGAIN I have to post for those unable to fully read the history of this tread):
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Since the term used is RAW, not raw, which is the general term used in photography, the only ones who would gain by such a dispute is the lawyers.
Mostly people who only capture JPEGs and do not understand what raw data really is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format
https://www.adobe.com/digitalimag/pdfs/understanding_digitalrawcapture.pdf
https://luminous-landscape.com/understanding-raw-files-explained/
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But it does convert them to a raw file - DNG.
Or are you going to claim that Adobe is also tricking people?
"The Adobe DNG Converter enables you to easily convert camera-specific raw files from supported cameras to a more universal DNG raw file. Another benefit of using the DNG Converter is backward compatibility."
A universal raw file - raw.
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/adobe-dng-converter.html
So Topaz is correct, they turn JPEGs into RAW or DNG raw.
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But it does convert them to a raw file - DNG.
Or are you going to claim that Adobe is also tricking people?
"The Adobe DNG Converter enables you to easily convert camera-specific raw files from supported cameras to a more universal DNG raw file. Another benefit of using the DNG Converter is backward compatibility."
A universal raw file - raw.
https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/adobe-dng-converter.html (https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/adobe-dng-converter.html)
So Topaz is correct, they turn JPEGs into RAW or DNG raw.
No. You don't seem to understand how the DNG converter actually operates any more than you do what raw data really is.
The DNG converter does convert proprietary raw to DNG and that sensor data isn't touched at all, it's just as raw. FWIW, what's really being converted is the metadata! Not the sensor data.
The DNG converter can convert a TIFF or PSD or JPEG into a DNG. It's still rendered data. It isn't raw data. You can convert a JPEG to a TIFF. That's a container. The data is as JPEGy as it was prior to the conversion. What results after saving that TIFF again is a different story. A story I shouldn’t have to explain to you if you understand more about what JPEG data is and what happens when re-saving it than your understanding of what raw data really is.
The DNG format is just a container. What's placed (image data) into that container is what it was prior to conversion!
So, is Topaz correct (convert JPEG to raw data)? No, it's a massive lie.
Jules: If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.
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But it does convert them to a raw file - DNG.
Or are you going to claim that Adobe is also tricking people?
You've been tricked by misunderstanding and assumptions about DNG. DNG may equal raw. DNG may not equal raw. As for JPEG to DNG, read, learn:
http://asktimgrey.com/2015/09/01/jpeg-to-dng/
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1049709
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2189544
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/968134
https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/73475/how-to-convert-jpeg-to-raw-in-photoshop-or-similar
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/jpg-to-dng.35456/
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No. You don't seem to understand how the DNG converter actually operates any more than you do what raw data really is.
The DNG converter does convert proprietary raw to DNG and that sensor data isn't touched at all, it's just as raw. FWIW, what's really being converted is the metadata! Not the sensor data.
The DNG converter can convert a TIFF or PSD or JPEG into a DNG. It's still rendered data. It isn't raw data. You can convert a JPEG to a TIFF. That's a container. The data is as JPEGy as it was prior to the conversion. What results after saving that TIFF again is a different story. A story I shouldn’t have to explain to you if you understand more about what JPEG data is and what happens when re-saving it than your understanding of what raw data really is.
The DNG format is just a container. What's placed (image data) into that container is what it was prior to conversion!
So, is Topaz correct (convert JPEG to raw data)? No, it's a massive lie.
Jules: If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions.
Really?
Topaz claim:
"An 8-bit JPEG only has 256 values per channel. Running that JPEG through JPEG to RAW AI will expand it to 65,532 values per channel. This will prevent posterization and banding when you adjust the contrast in your images."
So the DNG or TIFF is a 16 bit image which JPEGs definitely are not.
Can you PROVE them wrong?
Not what you claim but what you can prove?
Incidentally DXOmark says in relation to portrait colour depth and their tests:
"For our DxOMark camera sensor reviews, we measure the image quality performance only of camera sensors that are capable of capturing images in RAW format, and we do this before demosaicing or any JPG processing has taken place. You can read more about the DxOMark approach to image quality measurement and why we base our testing on RAW image files here.
Maximum color sensitivity reports in bits the number of colors that the sensor is able to distinguish.
The higher the color sensitivity, the more color nuances can be distinguished. As with dynamic range, color sensitivity is greatest when ISO speed is minimal, and tends to decrease rapidly with rising ISO settings. In DxOMark testing we measure only the maximum color sensitivity. A color sensitivity of 22bits is excellent, and differences below 1 bit are barely noticeable."
A JPEG has 24 bits, more than the 22 bits of colour information that DXOMark considers excellent.
What am I missing?
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Really?
Topaz claim:
An 8-bit JPEG only has 256 values per channel. Running that JPEG through JPEG to RAW AI will expand it to 65,532 values per channel. This will prevent posterization and banding when you adjust the contrast in your images.
So the DNG or TIFF is a 16 bit image which JPEGs definitely are not.
You are still very confused. One CAN convert JPEG data to 16bits. You've gained nothing by doing so. You can't save this as a JPEG, it doesn't support that bit depth. You can save that as a TIFF or PSD or DNG (from Photoshop). SO bloody what?
Topaz, like Photoshop can convert a JPEG to high bit and save it as a DNG. You've gained absolutely nothing doing so and had you read the various URL's from outside experts before posting again, you'd understand that fact.
Can I prove them wrong? Yes. Converting a JPEG to DNG doesn't make it raw data. If you would study this a bit before believing their hype, you'd see this is the case.
What are you missing? A lot of facts that have been presented to you. And not only from me.
You need to learn what raw data really is (URLs provided, read them).
You need to learn what happens when you place rendered data or raw data into a container like DNG or TIFF (URL's provided, read them).
You need to learn that simply taking an 8-bit per color document and using something like Photoshop (a nearly 30 year old product) and using Mode Change to select 16-bits doesn't provide any more data than in the original. It's just encoding of numbers.
You don't appear to know the difference between device values (numbers in a document) and colors either. So here's more homework.
http://digitaldog.net/files/ColorNumbersColorGamut.pdf (http://digitaldog.net/files/ColorNumbersColorGamut.pdf)
Come back and reply when you better understand what you're not correctly arguing about. ;)
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Topaz, like Photoshop can convert a JPEG to high bit and save it as a DNG. You've gained absolutely nothing doing so and had you read the various URL's from outside experts before posting again, you'd understand that fact.
Sorry Andrew, but what Topaz JPEG to RAW does is unlike what Photoshop does. Once the A.I. learning has been optimized a bit more, one does gain over what Photoshop does; reduced JPEG compression artifacts, additional detail, reduced noise.
As I've said before, there is some more room for improvement in the current version, but it already does a lot of what it promises.
Cheers,
Bart
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Sorry Andrew, but what Topaz JPEG to RAW does is unlike what Photoshop does.
In converting JPEG to high bit, how? That's specifically what I'm referring to for albytastic! Tell us how converting a JPEG to high bit, in either product inherently produces more data, more DR etc.
As I've said before, there is some more room for improvement in the current version, but it already does a lot of what it promises.
One thing it promises is utter BS; a conversion of JPEG to raw. You have any proof that's anything but marketing claim? Yeah, it can convert a JPEG to high bit (so can PS). Yeah, it can convert a JPEG to DNG (so can LR) and that doesn't make it raw as I am trying to explain to albytastic. Now tell us about it's promise, shown now twice, to convert a JPEG to raw data. Please.
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In converting JPEG to high bit, how?
It doesn't do that. It does more than that.
Cheers,
Bart
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It doesn't do that. It does more than that.
It doesn't do that (according to you, convert JPEG to high bit) yet that's what the web site says it does do. So as a Topaz cheerleader, you're kind of ignoring what they tell us and have yet to explain if and how they convert a JPEG into raw data.
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...Topaz claim:
"An 8-bit JPEG only has 256 values per channel. Running that JPEG through JPEG to RAW AI will expand it to 65,532 values per channel...
Think of it this way: it will move 256 values per channel into a wider container, capable of storing up to 65,532 values per channel, but it will still contain no more than 256 values per channel.
Or think of it this way: you have a wall-to-wall-carpet in a room 10'x10'. You move it to a room of 20'x20' and it becomes an area carpet, but still measuring only 100 square feet, within a room of 400 square feet.
The real question though is this: is AI capable of inventing extra values and adding them sensibly to the original 256?
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It doesn't do that (according to you, convert JPEG to high bit) yet that's what the web site says it does do. So as a Topaz cheerleader, you're kind of ignoring what they tell us and have yet to explain if and how they convert a JPEG into raw data.
I was hoping you were just trolling but apparently you really do not (want to) understand what it actually does.
I, therefore, doubt the usefulness of explaining it once more, so I'll refrain. I have more useful and rewarding things to do.
Cheers,
Bart
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Slobodan says, "The real question though is this: is AI capable of inventing extra values and adding them sensibly to the original 256?" And, I say, this is exactly what I read Topaz to say. Just like the Adobe's A.I. Content aware fill feature in PS "invents" extra values that are not in the source pixels. Call it "interpolation by other means" if that helps.
More generally than Slobodan's comment, call it anything one likes, but shouldn't the only material question be if it is useful to the particular user?
How good is Topaz J2R at image processing, actually and potentially, irrespective of whether it is called "Potato" or "Tomato"?
Bill
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I was hoping you were just trolling but apparently you really do not (want to) understand what it actually does.
Yes, how it converts JPEG into raw data. Still waiting.
Does it use the new Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Little Green men from Mars, Chupacabra algorithms to do this Bart?
You didn't explain it. Nor show it's even possible to convert a JPEG to raw data. Nor provide that raw data converted from my TIFF.
And I'm trolling? Kind of the pot calling the kettle black. :P
Rewarding work is justifying a company lying to unsuspecting customers?
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How good is Topaz J2R at image processing, actually and potentially, irrespective of whether it is called "Potato" or "Tomato"?
More like calling a JPEG a raw. But like a Potato and a Tomato, two totally different things. You can believe they are the same but I don't recommend you believe that's true for either; they are not.
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The real question though is this: is AI capable of inventing extra values and adding them sensibly to the original 256?
Exactly.
A.I. does allow to invent credible detail after long enough training of the model with good (before/after) example images. Whether the values are sensible enough to call it an improvement? That is up to the beholder to judge.
Cheers,
Bart
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Next we'll hear that A.I. can take a Carrot Cake and un-bake it and provide us the individual ingredients specified in it's original recipe. :P
If you actually believe that, the oceanfront properly in New Mexico is on sale until February 8th, instead of $9999.00 per cubic inch, it's a mere $7999.00 per cubic inch.
Whether the oceanfront property is sensible enough to call it an oceanfront properly? That is up to the beholder to judge.
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Well this argument is becoming circular so all I can say is that Bart has it right and so does Topaz - the program works brilliantly as I have shown with ACTUAL examples on my Flickr site.
So frankly all arguments to me are fallacious - it works!
I'm afraid that those who try to claim that it can't produce the results it actually does because they disagree with Topaz' nomenclature had better get used to a simple fact - AI is here - and many programs like PhotoShop are already extinct - they simply don't know it yet.
I have used Neat Image for many years, but that program can no longer compete with J2R in terms of noise reduction and there are many other AI programs now appearing.
The future of photography is clear and Topaz and others are leading the way.
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Think of it this way: it will move 256 values per channel into a wider container, capable of storing up to 65,532 values per channel, but it will still contain no more than 256 values per channel.
Or think of it this way: you have a wall-to-wall-carpet in a room 10'x10'. You move it to a room of 20'x20' and it becomes an area carpet, but still measuring only 100 square feet, within a room of 400 square feet.
The real question though is this: is AI capable of inventing extra values and adding them sensibly to the original 256?
That would be how a standard application converts jpg, or any 8 bits/ch format, to 16 bit tiff.
But, to be fair it actually does expand to a larger space since it uses AI against a surrounding region to reconstruct, to some degree, what it expects the image to be had it not been lossily compressed to jpg. And this produces higher bits/ch.
That, of course, doesn't make it a conversion to RAW but it could improve the image and make it more editable.
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Some people here just can’t tell the difference between “it works” and we’re telling you a lie.
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Well this argument is becoming circular so all I can say is that Bart has it right and so does Topaz - the program works brilliantly as I have shown with ACTUAL examples on my Flickr site.
So frankly all arguments to me are fallacious - it works!
I'm afraid that those who try to claim that it can't produce the results it actually does because they disagree with Topaz' nomenclature had better get used to a simple fact - AI is here - and many programs like PhotoShop are already extinct - they simply don't know it yet.
I have used Neat Image for many years, but that program can no longer compete with J2R in terms of noise reduction and there are many other AI programs now appearing.
The future of photography is clear and Topaz and others are leading the way.
I've failed to stop commenting. After this time, for sure. :P
I don't think anyone is claiming "it can't produce the results it actually does". I've seen results it produces on a handful of my images, and believe me, I won't deny it produces those results :). You're certainly nothing if not extremely, extremely enthusiastic. Enjoy!
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Andrew,
Are you in charge of "thought purity" on this blog, because that is the tone of almost all of your remarks.
You seem to wish to shut down discussions that do not fit your views. I understand and appreciate constructive disagreement but lotsa seemingly irrelevant invective in your messages.
Given your ignorance of and indifference toward learning what A.I. is, why don't you give it a rest until you close that knowledge gap you have?
Also, this might let some topaz actual users come out from the shadows without worrying that their damn heads will be cut off when they discuss their experiences. I for one would like to hear about their experiences.
Bill
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Andrew,
Are you in charge of "thought purity" on this blog, because that is the tone of almost all of your remarks.
I'm not in charge of critical thinking but I recommend it to everyone. It is a shame it is so often lacking. :-\
BTW, this isn't a blog; try to use the correct nomenclature if you can. This is a web forum.
blogDictionary result for blog
/bläɡ/Submit
noun
1.
a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporarily archived.
I have no ignorance, like some posting here what raw data is, how DNG operates, and the vast differences in data and editing overhead between a JPEG and raw data.
Topaz users can state it works; I've never stated otherwise. But then the Topaz fanboys miss that and the fact that Topaz is outright lying about what the product does and how. But given the current state of many governments, this doesn't surprise me, even if what we're discussing, well some of us, is based on actual imaging science.
You guys can and should discuss your user experience but you guys should recognize that Topaz is making stuff up and absolutely is NOT converting a JPEG to raw. But it seems so many of the Topaz fanboys find it necessary to ignore that lie and confuse a product that actually does something versus a product that does something and utterly lies about what it does. Connecting those dots seems rather difficult for a few people posting in this forum unfortunately.
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As the OP, my thought was to draw attention to and point out what may be useful to some of us. Not all of us were born yesterday. I have serious film, slides, and so on going back to 1955 that can benefit from this treatment, not to mention JPGs. from having the first digital Nikon camera, etc. I have tens of thousands of images that would be great to "clean up" and do some further editing on. so much of this discussion is over my head or above my use-grade. LOL.
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I have tens of thousands of images that would be great to "clean up" and do some further editing on.
You better get started. Life is short. I am more interested in making new images rather that futzing with my archive.
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You better get started. Life is short. I am more interested in making new images rather that futzing with my archive.
Well, as they say, "two trains are running." LOL.
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Well, as they say, "two trains are running." LOL.
+ 1 Michael ;)
The way I see it, Life is only as short as you make it. I love collecting "Sayings" and coining a few of my own occasionally. One of my favourites(not mine) is as follows - "Die Young, As Late As Possible". In my 72nd decade I cannot compete with your archive of thousands, but I do still enjoy "Futzing" through the ones I have. Occasionally I'll open one in PS and create a brand new version with some or all of the components. Sometimes abstracts and others exactly as it was shot, but with brand new edits. I also love the experience of capturing new images, although physical issues don't allow the mobility I once to enjoyed. I sincerely hope you will find some treasures from the past Michael, as I'm sure you will. The past is where we live, the present is just a word, and the future is the Twilight Zone.
Gary
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The past is where we live, the present is just a word, and the future is the Twilight Zone.
Sorry, but I live in the present and look forward to the future.
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Quote Gary, " 72nd decade"
WOW!!!!! You've seen some things! ;)
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Sorry, but I live in the present and look forward to the future.
This becomes somewhat philosophical I suppose, but I imagine it probably took perhaps 3 - 5 seconds to type your reply. Were you still in the present as you finished typing? Actually as soon as you typed one letter that action was in the past. The present consists only of a nano of a nano of a nano second, and probably shorter than that. Therefore, existence in the present can not efficiently or accurately be measured on any level we can understand. By the time it takes to press a key and release all of that action then exists in the past, not the present. I have never read anything bordering on this particular theory, but to me it has always seemed perfectly clear. I never worry about the present, since it would be a foolish task to take on. I can only worry about the future and whether there might be anything I can do to change it from my vantage point. I cannot change the present, which would involve doing so at or very close to the speed of light. At this age I can only think about that possibility, but I cannot afford to dwell on it, and only in the past.
Gary
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LOL. And yet, to a marked degree, what we do in this present moment (in the present) determines the future.
The moment "now" cannot be measured, but it is infinitely present.
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This becomes somewhat philosophic I suppose, but I imagine it probably took perhaps 3 - 5 seconds to type your reply. Were you still in the present as you finished typing? Actually as soon as you typed one letter that action was in the past. The present consists only of a nano of a nano of a nano second, and probably shorter than that. Therefore, existence in the present can not efficiently or accurately be measured on any level we can understand. By the time it takes to press a key and release all of that action then exists in the past, not the present. I have never read anything bordering on this particular theory, but to me it has always seemed perfectly clear. I never worry about the present, since it would be a foolish task to take on. I can only worry about the future and whether there might be anything I can do to change it from my vantage point. I cannot change the present, which would involve doing so at or very close to the speed of light. At this age I can only think about that possibility, but I cannot afford to dwell on it, and only in the past.
We were talking about spending time (or not) futzing around with tens of thousand of jpgs in our archives versus doing current work, so I don't think your semantical arguments are very helpful in that context.
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The less time we have in the future, the more we live in the past. Including mementos.
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We were talking about spending time (or not) futzing around with tens of thousand of jpgs in our archives versus doing current work, so I don't think your semantical arguments are very helpful in that context.
They weren't meant to be. Sorry for wasting your time, sort of ;) Oh, and by the way, since I have so much time left I'll point out that there is no such word as "semantical". Leave the 'al' off and you've nailed it.
Gary
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Oh, and by the way, since I have so much time left I'll point out that there is no such word as "semantical". Leave the 'al' off and you've nailed it.
The word "semantical" is the adjective form of "semantic". It is in the Oxford dictionary: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/semantical
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Quote Gary, " 72nd decade"
WOW!!!!! You've seen some things! ;)
Hi Patricia,
Well yes, I suppose I have. I love the insurance company add - "We know a thing or two because we've seen a thing or two". I guess I have seen a thing or two. Problem is I only remember one of them, and that's rather hazy. And by the way, it's quite obvious from reading your replies that you have also seen some things. Very impressed. We don't see you very often in here it seems, so please feel free to chime in anytime. Your knowledge and opinions are welcome. I first started working in a custom printing lab in Toronto in 1968 and eventually had a lab of my own since the mid '70's. After a number of moves I finally shut it down in early 2017 and now still do some printing etc. at home for my regular customers and few new ones as well. So yes, I have seen quite a few things pertaining photography in general and printing specifically during those years. However, among all of the changes I've experienced, digital imaging and all of its accompanying pluses is the biggest one yet. I suppose perhaps digital AI is the next big advance and perhaps almost ready for prime time as it is on some levels. Some pretty exciting and interesting things coming down the pipe I believe.
Gary
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The word "semantical" is the adjective form of "semantic". It is in the Oxford dictionary: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/semantical
I bow to Mr. Oxford. Unfortunately Mr. Apple dropped the ball on this one, no mention of the word semantical. You sir are correct!!!! :) However, Merriam-Webster defines "semantic" as an adjective and "semantical" is mentioned only as a less commonly used variant. Obviously "Semantically" is the adverb, but this seems to be the war of the dictionaries. Therefore it would seem that both forms (semantic & semantical) are acceptable as adjectives, depending on which dictionary you prefer. Of course I prefer M&W and you prefer Oxford, so I suppose we're both correct on some level.
Gary
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Thank you for your kind response Gary. It would seem it was I that was hazy, as I was just having a good chuckle at your 72 decades (72x10). My attempt at humour I had hoped would return the favour.
Best
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Thank you for your kind response Gary. It would seem it was I that was hazy, as I was just having a good chuckle at your 72 decades (72x10). My attempt at humour I had hoped would return the favour.
Best
Seems I'm not having a good day at all, so perhaps I should give it up for today. Oh, you mean you didn't realize my surname is Methuselah? Well, neither did I until I tried to find a way of squeezing out of this one. Perhaps it would have worked better had I used a decimal point, as in 7.2 decades, but it's a bit late for that I'm afraid ::) Even though this isn't what I meant by "your expertise", I do appreciate your attention to detail, albeit at my expense. And in case you're wondering, you are still very welcome to join in anytime of course. Perhaps next time you could just drop me a personal email to let me know I've done it yet again. That way I can just ignore it and correct it while no one is looking :) What's the going rate for editing fees?
Cheers,
Gary
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One more example (see attached), from an image crop of a significantly diffraction-blurred shot. It is a trickier image fragment than one would expect, and it indeed reveals a few shortcomings in the recovery process. But overall, it did a good job of converting from JPG to DNG with processing in Capture One Pro 12.
Most of the C1 adjustments were aimed at reducing the oversharpening, and reducing the Saturation. No additional sharpening was applied, and I even added a tiny bit of fine graininess. C1 makes it very easy to get a better base-line image because one can wrap the tweaks into a User-Style that can be automatically applied upon import.
Do note the improved interior details visible through some of the windows, as well as a significant recovery from diffraction blur on fine detail like the vertical railing bars and horizontal ventilation grids, as well as on tree branches and bricks and grass. In addition, we now have a more robust 16-bit/channel wider-gamut image ready for postprocessing, with less risk of banding or clipping. In this particular crop, there is room for improvement with tonality adjustments to counteract the original diffraction effects.
Cheers,
Bart
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... converting from JPG to DNG with processing in Capture One Pro 12.
C1 makes it very easy to get a better base-line image...
Bart, one thing is not clear to me in the above. Do you first process in C1 (the reference to “base-line image”) to prepare the jpeg for export to Topaz? Or you take out-of-camera (or phone) jpeg, convert it in Topaz, then fine-tune in C1?
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One more example (see attached), from an image crop of a significantly diffraction-blurred shot. It is a trickier image fragment than one would expect, and it indeed reveals a few shortcomings in the recovery process. But overall, it did a good job of converting from JPG to DNG with processing in Capture One Pro 12.
Most of the C1 adjustments were aimed at reducing the oversharpening, and reducing the Saturation. No additional sharpening was applied, and I even added a tiny bit of fine graininess. C1 makes it very easy to get a better base-line image because one can wrap the tweaks into a User-Style that can be automatically applied upon import.
Do note the improved interior details visible through some of the windows, as well as a significant recovery from diffraction blur on fine detail like the vertical railing bars and horizontal ventilation grids, as well as on tree branches and bricks and grass. In addition, we now have a more robust 16-bit/channel wider-gamut image ready for postprocessing, with less risk of banding or clipping. In this particular crop, there is room for improvement with tonality adjustments to counteract the original diffraction effects.
Cheers,
Bart
I also found the same when I tested the program against an old old pic taken on a Canon 350D with the 75-300mm lens, which is quite soft at the far end (300mm).
The results I got showed the same type of improvement you got, so much so that I have no doubt that as this becomes even better with the addition of more images for the AI to learn from we could easily see it correcting more lens faults, including chromatic aberration etc.
I have now actually bought this program so pleased am I with it.
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Bart, one thing is not clear to me in the above. Do you first process in C1 (the reference to “base-line image”) to prepare the jpeg for export to Topaz? Or you take out-of-camera (or phone) jpeg, convert it in Topaz, then fine-tune in C1?
I don't know about Bart but I always put the JPEG through J2R as a first step.
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I appreciate how appropriate the additional visual cues seem.
In the second example the tree bark looks more like tree bark and the bricks look more like bricks.
Thank you for posting the comparison.
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Hmmm... if Topaz’ AI is so automagical, why don’t they come up with a superior raw converter in the first place?
I shoot jpeg only by accident, a temporary lack of sanity, or with a phone. Should I now convert my gazillion raw files into jpegs in order to benefit from the AI magic?
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Hmmm... if Topaz’ AI is so automagical, why don’t they come up with a superior raw converter in the first place?
I shoot jpeg only by accident, a temporary lack of sanity, or with a phone. Should I now convert my gazillion raw files into jpegs in order to benefit from the AI magic?
Of course not, but in addition to it's other outstanding qualities it is a superb noise reduction program.
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A very appropriate application of AI would be to reduce/remove jpg compression artifacts for example. That would be a distinct advantage as a first step in any subsequent editing. It is a specific task with more or less known reversal patterns. Just like we recognise certain patterns and objects "behind" the jpeg compression artifacts, so also can a well shaped AI implementation.
If this is all that the product does and turns the result into a dng for editing purposes, it can certainly be a very beneficial product. Another benefit would be to convert the jpg back to capture space in linear gamma which would improve wb adjustments and other editing. Whether it is useful to do so with AI is questionable of course, since the math relation is pretty much transparently known, very specific to the capture device, and can't be generalised.
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Bart, one thing is not clear to me in the above. Do you first process in C1 (the reference to “base-line image”) to prepare the jpeg for export to Topaz? Or you take out-of-camera (or phone) jpeg, convert it in Topaz, then fine-tune in C1?
Hi Slobodan,
The latter. All steps in detail:
1. I started with an existing (dated 23 Nov 2012) cropped JPEG (one from an earlier set of tests involving progressively narrower apertures, in order to find the sweet spot).
2. I then took that cropped area JPEG and ran it through JPEG to RAW A.I. with the Normal setting, to produce a DNG output.
3. that DNG output was converted with Capture One Pro 12 to an Adobe RGB colorspace TIFF, with some of the default reigns pulled.
4. that TIFF was converted to a 100% quality for Web JPEG (sRGB colorspace included) with Photoshop and shown in my previous post.
It was a demonstration of what to expect when no original Raw file would have been available, but just a diffraction blur handicapped JPEG.
Cheers,
Bart
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After looking at the most recent examples posted here, I optimistically downloaded and installed a JPEG to RAW trial, and dug up some old JPEG pictures I made before I began working with RAW. The pictures I had on hand were already well made and didn't really have any features which I sought to improve, but they were handy.
I ran them through the JPEG to Raw process and was somewhat unimpressed with my results. I began to consider the idea that I could easily replicate the exaggeration of detail using Focus Magic or some other detail enhancer, while I also wondered if I thought the exaggeration of detail actually enhanced the picture.
So, I then made some several direct comparisons to see if I could support my suspicions. What I found is that the AI provided a cleaner enhancement of detail than I could achieve using methods familiar to me, and that my suspicions were unfounded.
Finally, I downloaded a copies of Bart's examples and tried various settings of sharpening on the basic JPEG to see how it compared to the AI output. I could not better the results of the AI. By the time I had enhanced the details to seem as crisp as the AI did, I had overcooked the edges and caused noticeable ringing. The AI system arrived at a better looking final result.
I do not think I will personally benefit from this application, but it does seem like an impressive application of computing technology.
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Thanks, Bart.
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If this is all that the product does and turns the result into a dng for editing purposes, it can certainly be a very beneficial product. Another benefit would be to convert the jpg back to capture space in linear gamma which would improve wb adjustments and other editing.
Ah, can it fix badly processed WB in the JPEG converted? I asked along time ago, no answer or examples as converting (using) raw data could easily provide.
Lightroom and ACR do all processing in a linear gamma and of course can convert a JPEG into a DNG (which is simply placing the JPEG into a DNG; nothing magical). Not sure how that's beneficial and it's nothing new by a long shot.
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Hmmm... if Topaz’ AI is so automagical, why don’t they come up with a superior raw converter in the first place?
Actually, their Raw converter is free, as a part of their free Studio application (a standalone application, and at the same time a Plugin). While not as good as Capture One's Raw conversion engine, it ain't bad either. One just drags a Raw file onto the Studio application desktop to convert.
I shoot jpeg only by accident, a temporary lack of sanity, or with a phone. Should I now convert my gazillion raw files into jpegs in order to benefit from the AI magic?
Wouldn't that be something ;) . But no, since your Raws do not suffer from lossy compression artifacts like JPEGs do, you can skip the JPEG part of the workflow and optionally have a look at the Topaz 'A.I. Clear' plugin for Studio. While your quality images probably won't benefit as much as lesser quality source files, who knows they could benefit from a blended A.I. Clear layer...
And when someone else's Raw file get corrupted (would never happen to ourselves, would it) one might be able to salvage the embedded JPEG thumbnail.
When you produce large format output, I most certainly recommend having a look at 'Topaz GigaPixel A.I.', a standalone application that can upscale your original output to 6x larger linear dimensions (with a max of about 50000 pixels) while adding resolution. That would work especially well on your Architectural series of images. Because it adds resolution (fine detail will be smaller than 6 pixels on a 6x upscale), it can even be useful to upscale 6x and downscale 1/6th back to your original output size.
Cheers,
Bart
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Ah, can it fix badly processed WB in the JPEG converted? I asked along time ago, no answer or examples as converting (using) raw data could easily provide.
Lightroom and ACR do all processing in a linear gamma and of course can convert a JPEG into a DNG (which is simply placing the JPEG into a DNG; nothing magical). Not sure how that's beneficial and it's nothing new by a long shot.
Andrew, does LR remove the JPEG compression artifacts when reading a JPEG?
Topaz JPEG to RAW A.I. does.
You can try that with a JPEG saved with a low quality setting. The blocking artifacts are removed, and replaced with somewhat plausible detail, pretty well.
Of course, you and I would never (deliberately) produce such low quality setting JPEGs, but you may be surprised about the number of people who do. Also, those of us who are involved with postprocessing/restoration of other people's images, may appreciate the potential that this application offers. It can even be used to improve some stock photography, and there's a lot of that going around in the industry.
Cheers,
Bart
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"replacement" by trained AI with AI gathered information (done with greater efficiency than mere humans or software are concurrently able). Thank you for those two images Bart. It should help to clarify the difference between editing and enhancing with gathering and applying of relevant data from a rapidly increasing pool of relevant data.
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Ah, can it fix badly processed WB in the JPEG converted? I asked along time ago, no answer or examples as converting (using) raw data could easily provide.
Lightroom and ACR do all processing in a linear gamma and of course can convert a JPEG into a DNG (which is simply placing the JPEG into a DNG; nothing magical). Not sure how that's beneficial and it's nothing new by a long shot.
I don't know if the product can do it. I'm no expert at the product. I doubt it, and I do know that AI, especially in a general sense, isn't very well suited to do so. AI is very appropriate and useful for reducing/removing jpg artifacts. That benefit should be easy to demonstrate if they did manage to design and teach a proper AI design.
I could also see that for any specific capture device, one could create some reverse for the contrast curve and colorspaces, and perhaps some local contrast reversal. If you could get the imagedata back in linear capture space, it would be useful, but I doubt any sw can do that. (A plain vanilla colorconversion to some linear reference space is not what I mean here.)
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Andrew, does LR remove the JPEG compression artifacts when reading a JPEG?
Topaz JPEG to RAW A.I. does.
Terrific, what's that got to do with the price of cheese? I'm simply providing facts from a comment and asking for clarification of that comment and no, you didn't clarify it. LR and ACR convert JPEG to DNG as mentioned. LR and ACR process the data in a linear encoding as mentioned. Did I or 32BT state LR/ACR and the Topaz product produce the same results? No, we didn't. So your question is moot IMHO.
The question might might be able to answer but so far have not is can Topaz take a JPEG with utterly wrong WB and fix that as if it were raw data? The other thing you've yet to provide is an ounce of proof the Topaz product converts JPEGs into raw as they state or convert my TIFF back into raw, as you say is possible. Is any of that possible? Have you actually tried any of the above? Should I hold my breath waiting for results of such testing in a product we are told converts JPEG to raw? ;)
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I don't know if the product can do it. I'm no expert at the product. I doubt it, and I do know that AI, especially in a general sense, isn't very well suited to do so.
Thanks. I doubt it too and it would be kind of interesting if anyone here, who actually believes the product converts JPEG into raw or provides the same level of corrections, as Topaz claims, could answer if this is true or not. But digressions about what it does to a JPEG after processing in terms of artifacts appears to be the only useful capability.
It (Topaz) can actually recover lost highlights or increase Dynamic Range AS promised below?
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Of course, you and I would never (deliberately) produce such low quality setting JPEGs, but you may be surprised about the number of people who do.
Yes! They still need to learn a fact of image processing: GIGO:Garbage In Garbage Out.
I'm rarely surprised by the number of people who produce garbage quality images. But they usually reside on the DPR forums instead of LuLa forums. :(
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"replacement" by trained AI with AI gathered information (done with greater efficiency than mere humans or software are concurrently able). Thank you for those two images Bart. It should help to clarify the difference between editing and enhancing with gathering and applying of relevant data from a rapidly increasing pool of relevant data.
Hi Patrica,
Indeed, replacing image detail has the potential to improve image quality more than modifying/editing alone could achieve.
I'm not sure what your attached version of my JPEG crop is supposed to show, could you elaborate?
Cheers,
Bart
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Thanks. I doubt it too and it would be kind of interesting if anyone here, who actually believes the product converts JPEG into raw or provides the same level of corrections, as Topaz claims, could answer if this is true or not. But digressions about what it does to a JPEG after processing in terms of artifacts appears to be the only useful capability.
It (Topaz) can actually recover lost highlights or increase Dynamic Range AS promised below?
It also reduces noise far better than any I have seen so it doesn't do just one thing, it recovers detail (as already shown), it reduces noise (as shown on my flicker site) and it sharpens and does all this without having to bother with sliders and all the other paraphernalia of other products.
Just one thing, why don't you actually try the product - it is after all free for 30 days?
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It also reduces noise far better than any I have seen so it doesn't do just one thing, it recovers detail (as already shown), it reduces noise (as shown on my flicker site) and it sharpens and does all this without having to bother with sliders and all the other paraphernalia of other products.
Just one thing, why don't you actually try the product - it is after all free for 30 days?
I told you (and other's) why.
I didn't ask about NR or sharpening, but what I did ask about has again been ignored.
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Just one thing, why don't you actually try the product - it is after all free for 30 days?
I have no JPGs and therefore have no interest in the product. Unless you are shooting with a phone, why wouldn't you shoot raw?
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I have no JPGs and therefore have no interest in the product. Unless you are shooting with a phone, why wouldn't you shoot raw?
I do sometimes but it's far easier to shoot JPEGs especially since I have thousands of photos going back about 15 years.
And virtually all the photos I end up with - in JPEG - are just as good as those I could shoot in RAW - and without all the fuss associated with RAW.
And after all as I have already said, whatever the arguments associated with RAW or JPEG all the billions of photographs on all the web pages in all the world are, guess what?
That's right JPEG!
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And virtually all the photos I end up with - in JPEG - are just as good as those I could shoot in RAW - and without all the fuss associated with RAW.
If all the jpgs you shoot are just as good as raw, why are you using a jpg to raw converter? And isn't using a jpg to raw converter just the "fuss" that you seek to avoid when shooting raw?
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If all the jpgs you shoot are just as good as raw, why are you using a jpg to raw converter?
Excellent question.
Just as good? That too needs some proof of concept. Again:
The JPEG engine that processes the raw in cameras massively clips and compresses highlights. We often don't when editing the raw. This compression can clump midtones as much as 1 stop while compressing shadow details! People incorrectly state that raw has more highlight data but the fact is, the DR captured is an attribute of the capture system; it's all there in the raw but maybe not in a camera proceed JPEG.
A raw capture that's 10 or 11 stops of dynamic range can be compressed to 7 stops from this JPEG processing which is a significant amount of data and tonal loss! Loss that Topaz can't recover. So when we hear people state that a raw has more DR than a JPEG, it's due to the poor rendering or handling of the data to create that JPEG. The rendering of this data and the reduction of dynamic range is from the JPEG engine that isn't handling the DR data that does exists as well as we can from the raw! Another reason to capture and render the raw data, assuming you care about how the image is rendered!
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If all the jpgs you shoot are just as good as raw, why are you using a jpg to raw converter? And isn't using a jpg to raw converter just the "fuss" that you seek to avoid when shooting raw?
I didn't say all my RAWs were good, and all RAWs need work - I'm sure you know that, including converting to a usable file type, sharpening, NR etc.
So do JPEGs - what this program does is allow me to batch process a lot at once in the same way that my usual NR allows me to batch process them.
But it does a far, far better job all in one go.
So in one go it reduces the noise, recovers details and sharpens where necessary - without fuss.
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Excellent question.
Just as good? That too needs some proof of concept. Again:
The JPEG engine that processes the raw in cameras massively clips and compresses highlights. We often don't when editing the raw. This compression can clump midtones as much as 1 stop while compressing shadow details! People incorrectly state that raw has more highlight data but the fact is, the DR captured is an attribute of the capture system; it's all there in the raw but maybe not in a camera proceed JPEG.
A raw capture that's 10 or 11 stops of dynamic range can be compressed to 7 stops from this JPEG processing which is a significant amount of data and tonal loss! Loss that Topaz can't recover. So when we hear people state that a raw has more DR than a JPEG, it's due to the poor rendering or handling of the data to create that JPEG. The rendering of this data and the reduction of dynamic range is from the JPEG engine that isn't handling the DR data that does exists as well as we can from the raw! Another reason to capture and render the raw data, assuming you care about how the image is rendered!
Actually I don't!
I couldn't care less how it's rendered or anything else really.
All I try to achieve is a decent looking photo without too much trouble.
And this program and also AI Gigapixel help me achieve that.
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Actually I don't!
You don't get the same quality and options between the two kinds of data; correct!
That you may not care is a different story.
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You don't get the same quality and options between the two kinds of data; correct!
That you may not care is a different story.
And at the end of the day after all that manipulation of 16 bits or 14 bits what you are all left with is - an 8bit JPEG as the final result!
Exactly what I start with!
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"could you elaborate?
Cheers,
Bart"
Yes, simply that a visual scan of your two versions should allow anyone who has worked with software along the lines of "content aware" applications to more easily recognize tangential areas, (as bark to shadow, edge to similar background, branch to non-related yet similar background tone) that illustrate that the AI part of the equation is not doing "recovery" (highlight, shadow, gamma etc) "better". It is the extraordinary possibility of knowledge existence points gathered, and then applied in a way to tangencies that create the result. I think that the size of the pool being drawn from to apply to small personal locations is being missed. In particular looking at that concrete edge, and imagining the way in which any software would handle the vagaries, as opposed to the result shown here in particular as in multiple points in your two images. Thanks
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And at the end of the day after all that manipulation of 16 bits or 14 bits what you are all left with is - an 8bit JPEG as the final result!
Exactly what I start with!
You're missing the point and facts again.
You might end up with an 8-bit JPEG, other's not so much.
Start by educating yourself before posting.
http://digitaldog.net/files/TheHighBitdepthDebate.pdf (http://digitaldog.net/files/TheHighBitdepthDebate.pdf)
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You're missing the point and facts again.
You might end up with an 8-bit JPEG, other's not so much.
Start by educating yourself before posting.
http://digitaldog.net/files/TheHighBitdepthDebate.pdf (http://digitaldog.net/files/TheHighBitdepthDebate.pdf)
I don't need to - I can still produce good photos despite my total ignorance of anything!
Good JPEGs :)
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I don't need to - I can still produce good photos despite my total ignorance of anything!
Good JPEGs :)
"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about". -Wayne Dyer
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Yes, simply that a visual scan of your two versions should allow anyone who has worked with software along the lines of "content aware" applications to more easily recognize tangential areas, (as bark to shadow, edge to similar background, branch to non-related yet similar background tone) that illustrate that the AI part of the equation is not doing "recovery" (highlight, shadow, gamma etc) "better". It is the extraordinary possibility of knowledge existence points gathered, and then applied in a way to tangencies that create the result. I think that the size of the pool being drawn from to apply to small personal locations is being missed. In particular looking at that concrete edge, and imagining the way in which any software would handle the vagaries, as opposed to the result shown here in particular as in multiple points in your two images. Thanks
Thank for explaining. There sure is room for improvement, but this is just their first published version of the JPEG to RAW A.I. models. IMHO, it looks promising.
It's similar to their other A.I. tool models, they have been improved several times already (today they again added 'A.I. Clear' models to that plugin). And since future upgrades are free, the value for money keeps improving alongside.
Cheers,
Bart
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Actually I don't!
I couldn't care less how it's rendered or anything else really.
All I try to achieve is a decent looking photo without too much trouble.
And this program and also AI Gigapixel help me achieve that.
Well , at least you recognize that jpgs lack image quality, and have taken steps to improve them. That's a step in the right direction. Rather than futz with a jpg to raw program, I'll start with a raw to begin with. I don't think it is to much trouble to try to make my images look better than decent.
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"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about". -Wayne Dyer
Or possibly condemning a program out of hand without even trying it?
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Or possibly condemning a program out of hand without even trying it?
Wrong, I'm condemning the LIE the software company is making. I've never condemned the results shown (I'll repeat again) or ever state it doesn't do something to improve what is apparently a turd of a JPEG that needs polishing.
The product isn't converting a JPEG to raw. That's a lie. It will continue to be a lie if I download and test the product or I don't. And again (because you seem to have reading comprehension issues making me repeat myself to your posts), I have no need to polish JPEG turds. My JPEGs are output ready FROM raw data.
I don’t know if you are purposely trying not to understand this, or if you are really struggling with it. Seems the former. :'(
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Wrong, I'm condemning the LIE the software company is making. I've never condemned the results shown (I'll repeat again) or ever state it doesn't do something to improve what is apparently a turd of a JPEG that needs polishing.
The product isn't converting a JPEG to raw. That's a lie. It will continue to be a lie if I download and test the product or I don't. And again (because you seem to have reading comprehension issues making me repeat myself to your posts), I have no need to polish JPEG turds. My JPEGs are output ready FROM raw data.
I don’t know if you are purposely trying not to understand this, or if you are really struggling with it. Seems the former. :'(
But they convert to DNG - a RAW file
"DNG is also considered to be a RAW image file. It is Adobe’s proprietary image standard that was created to store image data in a generic, highly-compatible format, unlike RAW files that have specific formats based on manufacturer and camera type. Although DNG was invented by Adobe and is supported in all Adobe applications, there are other camera manufacturers such as Leica, Hasselblad and Pentax that adopted this standard and use it in their cameras as their native and supported RAW file format."
https://expertphotography.com/dng-file-vs-raw-file/
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But they convert to DNG - a RAW file
"DNG is also considered to be a RAW image file. It is Adobe’s proprietary image standard that was created to store image data in a generic, highly-compatible format, unlike RAW files that have specific formats based on manufacturer and camera type. Although DNG was invented by Adobe and is supported in all Adobe applications, there are other camera manufacturers such as Leica, Hasselblad and Pentax that adopted this standard and use it in their cameras as their native and supported RAW file format."
https://expertphotography.com/dng-file-vs-raw-file/ (https://expertphotography.com/dng-file-vs-raw-file/)
You're confused again. DNG may equal raw, DNG may not equal raw. You've been told over and over again, and provided outside references that DNG is a container for image and metadata. You refuse to accept that a JPEG placed INTO a DNG is still a JPEG and NOT raw data.
A camera may indeed write raw data into a DNG. That data IS raw.
A proprietary raw can be converted to DNG, that sensor data is raw (and again, all that is converted is simply metadata).
A JPEG or TIFF can be converted to a DNG. That absolutely doesn't make that raw data.
I'd provide the actual DNG spec that talks of this but I suspect it would over your head as you simply cannot accept or understand the multiple outside references I've already provided to you that clearly state what happens when you convert a JPEG to DNG. What it absolutely does NOT do is make that JPEG raw data. If you believe that, you're stuck in an unreality bubble.
Can you read? Let's try this again:
You've been tricked by misunderstanding and assumptions about DNG. DNG may equal raw. DNG may not equal raw. As for JPEG to DNG, read, learn:
http://asktimgrey.com/2015/09/01/jpeg-to-dng/
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1049709
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2189544
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/968134
https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/73475/how-to-convert-jpeg-to-raw-in-photoshop-or-similar
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/jpg-to-dng.35456/
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I think it's quite clear that this application does not produce a raw file or honestly, anything like one (and I have tried it). It's really a JPEG image enhancer that is attempting to "fill in the gaps" by using machine learning and subsequent A.I. predictions instead of more "bog standard" image processing techniques. Success in machine learning comes from choosing the right features and the right model for your training set, and it depends on the quality of the training set as well. And how often you retrain it and tweak the model. At the end of the day though, they're still filling in the gaps. Whether that gap filling is from A.I., "standard" image processing techniques, or indeed, the tooth fairy. It may be that over time, the model gets better at filling in the gaps for a given set of use cases, it's hard to say. Working in machine learning and AI myself (admittedly not in the imaging space), I can say that applying it is definitely not always a straight upward trajectory of improvement to life and the universe and we should always remember that at most, ML/AI is simply a tool and it is not magic.
This has certainly been an interesting discussion. I always learn a lot from Andrew, Mark and Bart, despite their obvious differences on this subject. I've certainly appreciated that Bart has done comparisons that show for his use cases, those gaps are filled with what he needs to accomplish his goals. The OP and others have seen some value in it. The ever enthusiastic albytastic thinks it's the best thing since sliced bread and produces apparently pleasing images. It may be that for those who have large selections of JPEG-only images, old slides or scans (like OP), it adds value. That's great.
I have used any number of tools over the years, including from Topaz. They do decent stuff there. I obviously have nothing against AI. But at the end of the day, I only shoot raw, even in my phone, and can't think of any reason to use this product, though I did try it on one or two tough images to see what it could do. Obviously contrived since I had the original raws as well. I didn't care much for what it did. And the images were better processed from raw simply using C1 at the end of the day. The result from the topaz tool required much more work to get it even slightly close to where I wanted it. It seems over-priced and over-hyped and quite honestly, I am really bothered by the name too. To go back to Bart's omelette analogy (in this or another thread, I forget), I'd rather start with the highest quality eggs and cook it the way I'd like it to begin with rather than having to reconstitute egg powder and cook it again. Obviously, if I was really hungry and egg powder was all I had... :)
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And another example with different subject matter. Same procedure as before;
JPEG -> JPEG toRAW A.I. -> DNG -> Capture One-> TIFF ->JPEG.
I unfortunately do not recall the exact source (somewhere on the WWW) of the crop (otherwise I'd have added a link to that).
Cheers,
Bart
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Mr. Rodney,
You are endlessly repetitive, abusive, and uninformative. Please explain upon what authority you tell a contributor to "do his homework" before commenting? If you are King here, as you seem to think as you sit on your perch and preach, I will shortly move to a new realm.
Despite numerous excellent contributions by Bart and others showing what J2R really is and how it helps with images now and how it might help even more in the future, you consistently fail to do "your homework" about his remarks. So, the fact that you admonish someone else about not doing their homework is astonishing.
Unwillingness to do one's homework is one possibility. The other possibility is that your mind has become so inelastic that you are not able to even comprehend the possibility that a math exits that is not the equivalent of an inversion of the (aka your math) math that converts from Raw to Jpeg, and can bring with it some of the advantages of Raw over jpeg.
Please feel free to feel negatively about j2R and about all the silly people that have jpegs that they cherish and wish to improve.
However, I will repeat my request that you cease and desist with your repeated personal attacks and with comments with zero new information or perspectives. It was easy to hear you the first time.
My view is that you are inhibiting others -- say "fresh blood" newbies with software backgrounds -- from contributing insights on this new product, which I at least would like to see encouraged.
Bill Bane
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... I only shoot raw, even in my phone...
Once I got an iPhone XS Max, I realized I prefer their computational jpeg to the raw I can process in Lightroom mobile.
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Mr. Rodney,
You are endlessly repetitive, abusive, and uninformative. Please explain upon what authority you tell a contributor to "do his homework" before commenting? If you are King here, as you seem to think...
I can perhaps agree that Andrew can be repetitive and abusive at times, but uninformative!? Have you actually research Andrew's authority? In the realm of this forum, and certainly beyond, Andrew is the authority, widely accepted as such by me and many, many others. Compared with Albert's 5th-grader knowledge and logic, there is no contest.
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Once I got an iPhone XS Max, I realized I prefer their computational jpeg to the raw I can process in Lightroom mobile.
They are definitely doing some great stuff. I'm getting my XS Max next month. I'll check it out!
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And another example with different subject matter...
Bart, what is the purpose with this latest example? It shows a bit more sharpening applied, and a bit shadows opening, both of which can be achieved easily by any program today. I do not see any improvements in recovering highlights, however. They are still blown.
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Quote Gary, " 72nd decade"
WOW!!!!! You've seen some things! ;)
I've seen more! ;)
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Mr. Rodney,
You are endlessly repetitive, abusive, and uninformative. Please explain upon what authority you tell a contributor to "do his homework" before commenting? If you are King here, as you seem to think as you sit on your perch and preach, I will shortly move to a new realm.
Good idea.
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Slobodan,
I accept your premise that Andrew was a bright light in his past, and that you and others learned from him. He deserves appreciation and respect for that.
Further, I accept that his knowledge is useful today, but this has not been there to be seen on this matter, which was the point of my remark. What has he said other than that the output of j2R is not equivalent to Raw, and in how many angry posts has he said no more than this?
And, you, seemingly like him, think others who you know little about are weak in logic, and that is quite an assumption. Anyway, good logic stands on its own, and Andrew has failed miserably there.
In the past I have visited this and other post processing threads occasionally, and I have seen the very useful knowledge available here, as represented by Bart, you, and a few others whose names are not as memorable as yours. It is clearly present and valuable.
So, I hope that the old vets will continue to contribute but surely it should not be the hope that this blog be the exclusive domain of the old dogs? Andrew's behavior is antagonistic to this blog's sustenance and vibrancy and I felt it worth complaining about. Your acknowledgement that he is endless repetitive and abusive is quite stark, fwiw. Do you have no concerns that this is not harmful to useful contributions to this blog over time?
BTW, I am an old dog myself, and recognize the old Silicon Valley saying that "Perspective is worth 20 IQ points."
Bill
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Slobodan,
I accept your premise that Andrew was a bright light in his past, and that you and others learned from him. He deserves appreciation and respect for that.
Further, I accept that his knowledge is useful today, but this has not been there to be seen on this matter, which was the point of my remark. What has he said other than that the output of j2R is not equivalent to Raw, and in how many angry posts has he said no more than this?
And, you, seemingly like him, think others who you know little about are weak in logic, and that is quite an assumption. Anyway, good logic stands on its own, and Andrew has failed miserably there.
In the past I have visited this and other post processing threads occasionally, and I have seen the very useful knowledge available here, as represented by Bart, you, and a few others whose names are not as memorable as yours. It is clearly present and valuable.
So, I hope that the old vets will continue to contribute but surely it should not be the hope that this blog be the exclusive domain of the old dogs? Andrew's behavior is antagonistic to this blog's sustenance and vibrancy and I felt it worth complaining about. Your acknowledgement that he is endless repetitive and abusive is quite stark, fwiw. Do you have no concerns that this is not harmful to useful contributions to this blog over time?
BTW, I am an old dog myself, and recognize the old Silicon Valley saying that "Perspective is worth 20 IQ points."
Bill
Being a newbie here, perhaps you need a tutorial in the use of the Ignore feature of this blog forum?
https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=121220.0 (https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=121220.0)
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Bart, what is the purpose with this latest example? It shows a bit more sharpening applied, and a bit shadows opening, both of which can be achieved easily by any program today. I do not see any improvements in recovering highlights, however. They are still blown.
Depending on the training set, some A.I. models are more successful than others. Given the lack of other example contributions, I thought it might be useful to see some different types of images given the current capabilities. When new models become available, it will allow comparing if and how progress was made.
I too was looking at highlight and shadow detail. I still feel that the noise reduction is too strong, even in the Normal setting. Obviously some room for improvement can be achieved there. Highlights can only benefit if 2 channels (expressed in the RGB colorspace) are not clipped in the original. The source JPEG uses a different type of colorspace (with one Luma and two chroma channels).
Cheers,
Bart
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... Your acknowledgement that he is endless repetitive and abusive is quite stark, fwiw. Do you have no concerns that this is not harmful to useful contributions to this blog over time?...
Bill,
First, thanks for elaborating your position, appreciated. But more importantly, let me correct one thing. I said that "perhaps I can agree that Andrew can be repetitive and abusive at times." That is a long way from "endlessly."
As for long-term impact of "abusive" members, it is a grownup world around here, and we are mature enough not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Or as Merilyn Monroe would say: "If you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." I also understand that Steve Jobs was very abusive to everyone, including to his daughter :)
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Please explain upon what authority you tell a contributor to "do his homework" before commenting? If you are King here, as you seem to think as you sit on your perch and preach, I will shortly move to a new realm.
Bye.
As a newbie here maybe you should look in depth at who you're picking on.
Andrew is a very respected author and software creator who is held in very high regard by anyone with any real knowledge of photographic software and process.
OK he's sometimes too pedantic, abrupt and unwilling to accept any imprecision in approach, but his fundamental knowledge is beyond reproach.
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I've seen more! ;)
... Than 720 years? ::)
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...what is the purpose with this latest example? It shows a bit more sharpening applied, and a bit shadows opening, both of which can be achieved easily by any program today...
I made a similar assumption and then attempted to prove this idea to myself by making my own tests. When I was done trying to achieve similar results using the easily available software I am familiar with, I found myself impressed with the AI systems capability to make a sharper picture with less ringing than any of the traditional methods that I tried.
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Rhossydd,
Some time ago I bought and read Andrew's 2005 book, among others. It is still for sale: https://www.amazon.com/Color-Management-Photographers-Techniques-Photoshop/product-reviews/0240806492/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_viewopt_sr?ie=UTF8&filterByStar=five_star&reviewerType=all_reviews&pageNumber=1#reviews-filter-bar
I am always keen to learn, and hope I never come remotely close to thinking I know all there is to be learned.
That is why I visit this blog, to learn.
In this case, I was interested in learning what this just released new j2r program could do. What was your motivation in following this thread?
Bill
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... Than 720 years? ::)
OOPS - shoulda gone to specsavers :)
Only 7.5 decades.