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
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"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!