Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: plugsnpixels on April 21, 2021, 12:18:47 pm

Title: Topaz Gigapixel 5.5.0 released: 5-6X faster!
Post by: plugsnpixels on April 21, 2021, 12:18:47 pm
Topaz has just released version 5.5.0 of Gigapixel AI (https://topazlabs.com/gigapixel-ai/ref/5/) (free update for existing users). Here are the release notes:

Major Features

•AI engine has been brought into Gigapixel. This should greatly improve performance on modern hardware.
•All models updated for those on newer hardware. These models should be slightly sharper than the legacy models
•New model - “Very Compressed”
•New trial flow. No more 30-day trials, but instead a trial will place a watermark on your image
•“Send Feedback” option in the Help menu - have a feature request you want to send to the dev team? Use this option to send us a 500-character report.

Improvements

•Interactive tooltips have been added for each model, to get a quick sense of what each can do
•Controls tutorial has been slightly updated
•Better caching when saving

Fixes

•Preview window should not show as blank before previewing for the first time
•Filenames should elide in the middle instead of the left
•DNG support should be fully-functional for those coming from pre-5.4.x versions of Gigapixel
•“Loading images” text no longer overlaps the FileListView caret
•Saving text has been changed to show you what the program is doing when processing (downloading, processing, finishing, etc.)

More info and my own examples are here (http://plugsandpixels.com/blog/gigapixel-5-5-released-massive-update-5-6x-faster-ai-engine-models-updated-discounted/).
Title: Re: Topaz Gigapixel 5.5.0 released: 5-6X faster!
Post by: Chris Kern on April 21, 2021, 08:24:15 pm
Topaz has just released version 5.5.0 of Gigapixel AI (https://topazlabs.com/gigapixel-ai/ref/5/) (free update for existing users). Here are the release notes:

Major Features

•AI engine has been brought into Gigapixel. This should greatly improve performance on modern hardware. . . .

This is a long overdue optimization.  It makes the application much more usable.  I suspect the competition from Adobe's new, fast Super Resolution tool in Photoshop provoked this.
Title: Re: Topaz Gigapixel 5.5.0 released: 5-6X faster!
Post by: nemophoto on April 22, 2021, 10:50:43 am
The speed upgrade will be greatly welcomed. I've used Gigapixel since it was first released, but as of late, I haven't used it as much because, frankly, others are just as good on higher res images and faster. I have been using PhotoZoom 8 a lot after many years of using what used to be called Genuine Fractals, then Perfect Resize, and now... (Gigapixel  is still the undisputed king for enlarging images from my early digital cameras (3MP-8MP). It does an especially stellar job on early Canon D30 and Olympus E10 images. But, for already hi-res images that need to be enlarged significantly more, it was no longer my "go-to" program.
Title: Re: Topaz Gigapixel 5.5.0 released: 5-6X faster!
Post by: plugsnpixels on April 22, 2021, 01:20:35 pm
This morning Topaz activated their launch special ($20 off). Using a coupon code (http://plugsandpixels.com/discounts.html), you can save an additional 15%.
Title: Re: Topaz Gigapixel 5.5.0 released: 5-6X faster!
Post by: plugsnpixels on April 26, 2021, 03:00:01 pm
Just heard that the Topaz sale is good through May 7.
Title: Re: Topaz Gigapixel 5.5.0 released: 5-6X faster!
Post by: plugsnpixels on May 06, 2021, 03:13:17 pm
Sale (including double-discount) ends today, 5/7. Includes Gigapixel AI and the Image Quality Bundle.
Title: Re: Topaz Gigapixel 5.5.0 released: 5-6X faster!
Post by: William Walker on May 28, 2021, 09:36:18 am
I accidentally uninstalled Gigapix Ai Ver5.3.2.
I simply went into time machine and recovered the files there.

When I opened it, only 1 "AI Mode" was available, with a message telling me to go into "Preferences" and make a selection in "Performance".
It was set on "medium" so I set it to "high".

I had never ever bothered going into Preferences in Gigapix before so was unaware of these options: To cut along story short - where previously it took anything from up to fifteen minutes to perform an up-sizing it now takes five seconds for the same size file!!