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Author Topic: Topaz Gigapixel  (Read 11509 times)

Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #40 on: December 21, 2018, 09:27:46 pm »

Thanks, that helps a lot.   So you would turn off capture sharpening in Lightroom prior to export?

Yes, Focusmagic is superior.

Cheers,
Bart
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earlybird

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #41 on: January 25, 2019, 07:26:13 am »

...Export a 16-bit/channel TIFF. I then use Topaz Clarity (now Precision Contrast) and Topaz (Precision) Detail for contrast control and detail enhancement. Since Focusmagic does a better job at sharpening, I'd finish processing that TIFF in Photoshop or Affinity Photo and apply Focusmagic sharpening with a Luminosity Blending Layer...

I thought the recommended workflow was to use Focus Magic prior to adjustments such as Topaz Clarity and Topaz Detail. Have opinions about this changed?

Thank you.
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #42 on: January 27, 2019, 03:58:29 am »

I thought the recommended workflow was to use Focus Magic prior to adjustments such as Topaz Clarity and Topaz Detail. Have opinions about this changed?

Good point, I should have been clearer. I work in layers.

One layer is for Capture sharpening and that layer is set to Luminosity blending on a Blend-If layer to avoid the deconvolution sharpening leading to potential clipping. This allows disabling the layer when I want to downsample the image, because the sharpness can lead to downsampling artifacts showing up and adds nothing useful for a smaller size anyway. The downsampling also reduces noise unless it got sharpened too much. So it's best not to sharpen before down-sampling, if it can be avoided, or simply turned off by deselecting the layer.

On another layer do Clarity/local contrast adjustments and Detail modification or Creative 'sharpening'. I might add another layer for output sharpening for a specific output size, but I mostly use Qimage for output, and it has excellent resizing and subsequent halo-free output sharpening capabilities.

Cheers,
Bart
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earlybird

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #43 on: January 27, 2019, 08:26:21 am »

Hi Bart,
 Thank you for elaborating.
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Arlen

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #44 on: January 28, 2019, 10:28:43 am »

Good point, I should have been clearer. I work in layers.

One layer is for Capture sharpening and that layer is set to Luminosity blending on a Blend-If layer to avoid the deconvolution sharpening leading to potential clipping. This allows disabling the layer when I want to downsample the image, because the sharpness can lead to downsampling artifacts showing up and adds nothing useful for a smaller size anyway. The downsampling also reduces noise unless it got sharpened too much. So it's best not to sharpen before down-sampling, if it can be avoided, or simply turned off by deselecting the layer.

On another layer do Clarity/local contrast adjustments and Detail modification or Creative 'sharpening'. I might add another layer for output sharpening for a specific output size, but I mostly use Qimage for output, and it has excellent resizing and subsequent halo-free output sharpening capabilities.

Cheers,
Bart

Bart, I've learned a lot from you about using Focus Magic for sharpening, but there is one thing I have never quite understood. If you make any further adjustments--other than with Photoshop's special Adjustment Layers--after using FM as a first step on a blend-if layer, then it seems the FM adjustments have to be baked into those subsequent higher layers. For example, as you have described elsewhere, by making a Merged All Below layer upon which you then make Topaz Detail and/or Clarity adjustments. But then at that point you can't just turn off the FM adjustment (e.g., for downsizing) by deselecting its layer, because the Merged All Below layer above it still contains the FM adjustment. So it seems that there's no way to use things like Topaz Detail or Clarity (or Studio adjustments in general) without losing the ability to easily turn off FM sharpening?
« Last Edit: January 28, 2019, 12:58:14 pm by Arlen »
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #45 on: January 28, 2019, 11:57:28 am »

Bart, I've learned a lot from you about using Focus Magic for sharpening, but there is one thing I have never quite understood. If you make any further adjustments--other than with Photoshop's special Adjustment Layers--after using FM as a first step on a blend-if layer, then it seems the FM adjustments have to be baked into those subsequent higher layers. For example, as you have described elsewhere, by making a Merged All Below layer upon which you then make Topaz Detail and/or Clarity adjustments. But then at that point you can't just turn off the FM adjustment (e.g., for downsizing) by deselecting its layer, because the Merged All Below layer above it still contains the FM adjustment. So it seems that there's no way to used things like Topaz Detail or Clarity (or Studio adjustments in general) without losing the ability to easily turn off FM sharpening?

Hi Arlen,

One can take one of two approaches.

One can create a Capture Sharpening Layer, to which I'd add a Blend-If to avoid clipping risks, and change it to Luminosity blending.

1. One can then choose to use that same layer to add Clarity and Detail, but it will only affect Luminosity, and it will have the Blend-If baked in.

2. Alternatively, one can start by producing 2 copies of the original Background layer. One with the FM Capture sharpening and Luminosity Blend-If behavior, and another with Clarity and Detail adjustments. If you keep the FM Capture sharpening layer on top, you can switch it on/off as needed.

Cheers,
Bart
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Arlen

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #46 on: January 28, 2019, 01:30:58 pm »

Hi Arlen,


2. Alternatively, one can start by producing 2 copies of the original Background layer. One with the FM Capture sharpening and Luminosity Blend-If behavior, and another with Clarity and Detail adjustments. If you keep the FM Capture sharpening layer on top, you can switch it on/off as needed.

Cheers,
Bart

But if the Clarity & Detail, etc., adjustments are below the FM Capture sharpening layer, their effects are mostly obscured, no? At least that's what happens for me. (And without the Luminosity Blend-if setting in the topmost FM layer, the effects of lower layers are completely obscured, as I would expect.)
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #47 on: January 28, 2019, 02:15:34 pm »

But if the Clarity & Detail, etc., adjustments are below the FM Capture sharpening layer, their effects are mostly obscured, no? At least that's what happens for me. (And without the Luminosity Blend-if setting in the topmost FM layer, the effects of lower layers are completely obscured, as I would expect.)

In that case #2, with the FM Capture Sharpening layer on top, it will be applied to the next lower layer (where it is not transparent).
That next lower level layer (with Clarity and Detail adjustments) will not be as sharp, it will have mostly similar sharpness (but also different contrast and feature amplitude) as the Background layer.
Clarity and Detail modification is not equal to actual deconvolved (luminosity) sharpness.

Cheers,
Bart
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earlybird

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #48 on: January 28, 2019, 03:36:24 pm »

What percent of blend do you often times use?

The way I use Focus Magic, which is with mild settings, I rarely use less than an 80% blend, which is to say my Focus Magic layer is barely transparent even if it is only using the Luminosity channel.

Thank you.
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #49 on: January 28, 2019, 03:48:25 pm »

What percent of blend do you often times use?

Depends on the image. But I often use 100% opacity for the FocusMagic layer itself (and let the Blend-if settings pick the opacity/transparency based on the underlying layer). My FM settings are usually a blur width of 1 (sometimes 2), with an amount of 75-175 percent. That's for a camera with an AA-filter (Optical Low-Pass Filter, or OLPF). Camera's without OLPF are hard to sharpen without exaggerating the aliasing artifacts.

I attached my Blend-if starting settings for sharpened Luminosity layers for Photoshop and Affinity Photo.

Cheers,
Bart
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earlybird

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #50 on: January 30, 2019, 07:48:42 pm »

Thank you for posting the screen shots.

Thank you.
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Brad P

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #51 on: February 07, 2019, 01:56:53 pm »


Depends on the image. But I often use 100% opacity for the FocusMagic layer itself (and let the Blend-if settings pick the opacity/transparency based on the underlying layer). My FM settings are usually a blur width of 1 (sometimes 2), with an amount of 75-175 percent. That's for a camera with an AA-filter (Optical Low-Pass Filter, or OLPF). Camera's without OLPF are hard to sharpen without exaggerating the aliasing artifacts.

I attached my Blend-if starting settings for sharpened Luminosity layers for Photoshop and Affinity Photo.

Cheers,
Bart




Thanks for the screenshots too, Bart. 

I'm interested in your thinking about the "Blend If" settings.  I've been using different settings others have recommended for years (basically pulling inward the white and black blend if markers about 30 to preserve the extreme blacks and whites in the original image, then setting the overall opacity of the layer to about 50%.  (As an aside, I do this on sharpening layers and various other adjustments).  Instead here I see you are leaving the opacity at 100% but bringing the pointers both to neutral 128.  Practically there is little visual difference in the outcomes, but reading your posts over the years, you usually have a very good rationale for doing things the way you do. 

I imagine your standard blending settings more smoothly bring in the adjustments made by a sharpening layer more smoothly and evenly over the entire image, but at the same time it seems to have a disadvantage of losing some of the benefits of the sharpening layer toward the extreme blacks and whites.  Any thoughts you can share on that? 
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LesPalenik

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #52 on: February 11, 2019, 12:39:25 pm »

Has anybody compared the uprezzing quality between Topaz Gigapixel and Corel PhotoZoom Pro 7?
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plugsnpixels

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #53 on: February 17, 2019, 12:15:03 pm »

Les, you mean BenVista's plug-in? I did at the bottom of this post.
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #54 on: February 17, 2019, 01:30:09 pm »

Has anybody compared the uprezzing quality between Topaz Gigapixel and Corel PhotoZoom Pro 7?

Hi Les,

Yes, we have a new winner, Topaz A.I. Gigapixel. The king is dead, long live the new King.

Cheers,
Bart
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nemophoto

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #55 on: February 18, 2019, 10:29:31 pm »

You can't use a RAW.

In a separate post, I included AI Gigapixel vs Perfect Resize which I find yields basically the same results my PhotoZoom plugin. The only negative is you can't run AI Gigapixel as part of your Photoshop workflow. You must resize it outside. I found it quite quick for even very large images input.
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LesPalenik

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #56 on: February 19, 2019, 06:59:15 am »

Les, you mean BenVista's plug-in? I did at the bottom of this post.

I never heard the BenVista name, and don't know if it is the same product as marketed by Corel under the name Photo Zoom Pro.


Hi Les,
Yes, we have a new winner, Topaz A.I. Gigapixel. The king is dead, long live the new King.

Cheers,
Bart

Thanks, Bart. It will be interesting to see how Topaz can train their new AI Gigapixel program to improve its capabilities in the next few updates.
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #57 on: February 19, 2019, 09:00:57 am »

I never heard the BenVista name, and don't know if it is the same product as marketed by Corel under the name Photo Zoom Pro.


Thanks, Bart. It will be interesting to see how Topaz can train their new AI Gigapixel program to improve its capabilities in the next few updates.

Well, it's quite capable already. Here are some examples of the added detail that Andrew was sceptical about.

Attached, a crop of a close-up of an Uhu, a European Eagle owl. Note the shallow Dept of Field, which can cause issues for some upsampling algorithms when they struggle to balance between soft and sharp detail.
Also added are 3 crops from the 6x upscaled version with A.I. Gigapixel. These crops show the added detail in places where the focus was good, and smoother detail in the more OOF areas.

Cheers,
Bart
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Arlen

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #58 on: April 21, 2019, 12:42:41 pm »

I realize this thread is a little old, but I recently ran some tests on the effects of the GPU on Gigapixel AI performance that I though might be of interest to some who are grappling with performance issues. Might as well keep such info in one place I guess.

Unless you put GAI into cpu mode, how it runs is very much dependent on your GPU. I have two Windows 10 computers, both with 32GB of fast RAM and near top of the line CPUs at time of purchase. But computer1 has a 3.5 year old Nvidia 960 2GB GPU, and computer2 has a 6 month old Nvidia 1080 6GB GPU.

I just ran some tests using several images that are 4608 x 3456 px. Using GAI to upscale by 400%, computer1 took about 7:08 (minutes/seconds) to completion. Computer 2 took about 3:07, or less than half the time.

I then took the newer GPU from computer2 and put it into computer1, and ran the tests again. Computer2 then took about 1:36 to finish the same tasks. That's a 78% reduction for computer2, entirely due to the newer, more powerful GPU. Very interestingly, with the new GPU, the older computer1 ran AIG considerably faster than the newer computer2 did when it had that GPU. So there must be some important other differences between the computers that also have a bearing on GAI processing time.

Besides Gigapixel AI, I also ran similar speed tests on Topaz Denoise AI and Sharpen AI; the latter program in all 3 modes of Sharpen, Stabilize and Focus. The newer computer/newer GPU combo was in each case about 3-4 times faster than the older computer/older GPU. But for these programs and modes, when I put the new GPU into the older computer (older computer/newer GPU), it reduced processing times to about the same level as had been the case for the newer computer/newer GPU, but no lower. So apparently the differences between the other components in these two computers had little impact on DAI and SAI, and the faster processing times were entirely due to the new GPU.

Computer1 + 960 2GB GPU
GAI                                 ~07:08
DAI                                 ~00:48
SAI sharpen mode            ~01:32
SAI stabilize mode            ~04:10
SAI focus mode                ~04:10

Computer2 + 1080 6GB GPU
GAI                                 ~03:07
DAI                                 ~00:15
SAI sharpen mode            ~00:20
SAI stabilize mode            ~01:03
SAI focus mode                ~01:02

Computer1 + 1080 6GB GPU
GAI                                 ~01:36
DAI                                 ~00:13
SAI sharpen mode            ~00:20
SAI stabilize mode            ~01:00
SAI focus mode                ~01:00
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Bart_van_der_Wolf

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Re: Topaz Gigapixel
« Reply #59 on: April 21, 2019, 09:47:45 pm »

I realize this thread is a little old, but I recently ran some tests on the effects of the GPU on Gigapixel AI performance that I though might be of interest to some who are grappling with performance issues. Might as well keep such info in one place I guess.

Hi Arlen,

Thanks for the feedback. This proves to be useful for understanding that hardware choices will be important going forward. More and more processes will thrive on GPU+CPU performance.

In addition, for this specific line of software anyway, the different user selectable preference modes will produce somewhat different quality output!

Cheers,
Bart
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