Sharpen AI by Topaz

[plugsnpixels]

What is the difference between AI Sharpen and AI Gigapixel. The both create detail and sharpen. Is it the same underlying technology in different packaging?

Gigapixel is intended for enlarging (with clarifying and sharpening), though I agree Sharpen AI does sometimes remind me of Gigapixel (without the enlarging part). Though Gigapixel does not deal specifically with focus and blur issues, it can help there as well.

I did some tests with Gigapixel and Sharpen separately on the same image, and the results were different, as expected.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

What is the difference between AI Sharpen and AI Gigapixel. The both create detail and sharpen. Is it the same underlying technology in different packaging?

Hi,

AI Gigapixel is used for upscaling the image, up to 6x the original linear dimensions.

Sharpen AI is used for sharpening at the original size.

Actually, after upscaling, one can use the sharpening, with rather good results.
And downscaling the by now added detail, will result in an image with more resolution.

Since both use AI, trained on a large number of example images, it depends on the specific training set how successful the detail replacement models work.

Cheers,
Bart

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Aside from the successful samples I've shown above, I didn't have much success with Sharpen AI yet.
In most cases, Sharpen AI adds (in-paints) new detail, introduces micro-patterns that are foreign and that kills authenticity of the image.
This gets especially evident when image is enlarged for printing.

Hi Michael,

Always be careful with sharpening before enlarging. AI Gigapixel doesn't need a lot of sharpening of the source image, but it does allow the resulting image to be sharpened further.

Also, in most circumstances I see a sort-of a tiling pattern. Not always rectangular, and not always with sharp edges/transitions.
If de-focusing large skin area, where part of the skin is in focus, Sharpen AI results in blotches of areas of improved sharpness intermixed with un-sharpenned areas. This creates rather a chaos in the image that no longer looks naturally focused/sharp/captured on camera. I hope these bugs would get sorted out, as it looks promising.

It depends a bit on the type of sharpening one applies.

Both 'Stabilize' and 'Focus' can add detail that's situated at different unconnected places in 3D space.
Humans are capable of spotting that much easier than computers can do that.

'Sharpen' really focuses on the detail that is already relatively sharp.
Lens design can create spurious resolution in OOF areas, and that then risks being somewhat sharpened.

I would highly welcome de-focusing/sharpening with user-selectable option that could
1. avoid in-painting detail that did not originate from the same image and that could be
2. applied uniformly to the image for further manual masking.

That's why several beta testers requested a kind of masking or Region of Interest selection type of control. The developers were looking into adding that, but it didn't make it in time for the first version's release.

Cheers,
Bart

[Redcrown]

My 2 cents after about 4 hours and 20 images:

No tech problems on my Win10 desktop with I7 processor, 16gb main memory and Nvidia GTX 960 GPU. It did crash immediately on the first attempt to run as a Photoshop plugin. But then I ran the stand alone which did the trail license dialogue. After that the Photoshop plugin runs OK. I was a little confused that it's not part of Studio.

The UI was initially confusing. There are 3 "Processing Modes", Sharpen, Stabilize, and Focus. Are the stackable? Can you apply all 3 to different degrees in one process? The answer seems clearly NO. It's one and one only.

Noise suppression and grain addition are useless here. You are much better off dealing with these before and after AI Sharpen. Don't know why Topaz included them.

SHARPEN gives some good results, but not as good and not as convenient as many other tools, including Topaz' own Detail tool.

FOCUS failed to produce usable results on all my tests. It would produce strange artifacts in areas immediately adjacent to areas where nothing was done. I went thru many shots that were definitely out-of-focus and not camera shake or subject movement. The Focus process failed to produce any usable results. When it came close it would be only in small areas that would require extensive manual masking. On shots with shallow DOF, the FOCUS setting to get the best foreground would literally destroy the out-of-focus (bokeh) background.

STABILIZE does some very good and surprising things. However, it too would ignore some small areas and give bad artifacts in other small areas, leading to more extensive manual masking. It did a much better job than FOCUS at restoring out-of-focus images. On portraits, the setting used to get good eyes would produce ugly artifacts in hair. On angled face shots, the best setting for the near eye didn't work well on the far eye. So two passes and masking was needed - at 3 to 5 minutes per pass.

Some Annoyances: There is no "sticky" logic. Every time you launch all settings are at default. In the stand alone, the Save-As defaults to 16bit Tif in sRGB with LZW compression, regardless of the attributes of the input Tif. LZW + 16bit is a definite no-no.

Conclusion: Not ready for Prime Time, but STABILIZE shows some promise for the future.

[plugsnpixels]

Redcrown, some of the things you mentioned (especially the sticky settings) were discussed and will be added later.

I discovered as well that Stabilize gave good results in images that weren't motion-blurred, so there is some flexibility among the presets.

[kirkt]

Calling it from PSCC2019 does not launch SharpenAI, but it generates an error message that states that Photoshop has crashed - which it has not - I can dismiss the dialog and continue to use PS.

Mojave, 10.14.3, PSCC2019 20.0.3.

kirk

[Jeremy Roussak]

Calling it from PSCC2019 does not launch SharpenAI, but it generates an error message that states that Photoshop has crashed - which it has not - I can dismiss the dialog and continue to use PS.

Mojave, 10.14.3, PSCC2019 20.0.3.

If I launch Topaz Studio from LR and then pick SharpenAI from the plugin menu, a small window pops up for less than half a second, there is no other change, and shortly afterwards I get a message that Studio has crashed. It hasn't - I can carry on using it - but I can't find a way to use Sharpen AI from within it.

Odd.

Jeremy

[Rajan Parrikar]

Calling it from PSCC2019 does not launch SharpenAI, but it generates an error message that states that Photoshop has crashed - which it has not - I can dismiss the dialog and continue to use PS.

Mojave, 10.14.3, PSCC2019 20.0.3.

kirk

Exactly my issue, too. I have reported it in the Topaz Forum and they are working on a fix.

[myotis]

It would seem that I am missing something here.  There is no statement to the effect that if one owns Topaz InFocus this "new" product is a free download. 
Would someone please clue me in on this. 

Did you buy as part of a bundle offer? 

I haven't had any free upgrade notification either. I bought all the Topaz Plugins as a bundle, and have had issues with free updates since Topaz Studio was introduced.

It seems that the system doesn't recognise users who registered with a bundle, and so far, since Studio, every update (e.g Clarity) has ended up being put through manually by Topaz, where they give me a free "new" copy, because the system doesn't recognise me as an existing user eligible for a free update. They did say the issue had been fixed, but apparently not.

I have emailed Topaz, who hopefully, as they have done in the past, sort it out for me.  I would email them.

Cheers,
Graham

[lhodaniel]

Old hardware isn’t necessarily a problem. A friend with a 2013 Mac Pro, 6 core, and D500 video (2x 3gb vram) is getting 6 second preview updates and D800 or D850 renders in about 1 min 10 sec. so it does use 2 cards ok. He is having the plugin crashing issue though, on High Sierra.

I did some testing: on Mojave, my previews take about 1:40 for sharpen on a particular 165mb file. Render is 5 min. Under Win 10 via Bootcamp on the same files and hardware, preview updates drop to 20 seconds! This is consistent on several files up to 217mb. Rendering is in about 4 min. So, either the windows code is better or MacOS is inherently slower. And, plugin works in windows. FWIW...

Lloyd

[Paul2660]

Impressive results. Dog slow both for preview generation and processing.

MacPro high Sierra. 6 core 32gb

Seems to only use gpu as processors are only used 4.5 percent.

On a 16 bit D859 tiff stabilize processing taking close to 15 minutes. For 1 file.

Stabilize does seem to provide good results but not for the time it takes to run a single file. At least for me.

Hopefully they can improve on processing time as they did for gigapixel.

Paul C

[Arlen]

Did you buy as part of a bundle offer? 

I haven't had any free upgrade notification either. I bought all the Topaz Plugins as a bundle, and have had issues with free updates since Topaz Studio was introduced.

It seems that the system doesn't recognise users who registered with a bundle, and so far, since Studio, every update (e.g Clarity) has ended up being put through manually by Topaz, where they give me a free "new" copy, because the system doesn't recognise me as an existing user eligible for a free update. They did say the issue had been fixed, but apparently not.

I have emailed Topaz, who hopefully, as they have done in the past, sort it out for me.  I would email them.

Cheers,
Graham

This is my issue, too, as I own Infocus via a bundle. And I handled it the same way as well; submitted a help ticket, and am waiting for them to respond. I'm confident they'll take care of it.

[Garnick]

Yesterday after Bart and I conversed here about my issue with InFocus I went to Photoshop (CS-6) in High Sierra to make sure InFocus was working properly.  Unfortunately I couldn't get it to perform no matter what I tried.  I then tried in Studio and no luck there either.  I also found that two other plugins that I hardly ever use do not work in PS or Studio.  I sent an email to Topaz concerning these issues, but it would seem that they have a lot to take care of at the moment, so I don't expect to hear from them soon.  One interesting discovery was that InFocus does not appear in "My Products" list on their site, so I included my KEY Number in the email for them to check.  I imagine the fact that I didn't receive an upgrade link in the email I received is due to the fact that apparently they have no record of me purchasing InFocus.  Hopefully this issue can be rectified as well.  All other plugins I have are in the list.

Graham - I believe I purchased InFocus in 2013, so I don't remember if it was part of a bundle.  I think not, but not sure.  You point could be viable, since it seems to be happening to others here as well

Gary 

[bobfriedman]

plug-in hangs photoshop CC 2019

iMacPro Mojave 10.14.3.

[Paul2660]

Plug in does the same in Photoshop CC 2018 Mac,.  attempts t open, then errors out.  same in 2019 CC.  Mac Pro High Sierra. 

Stand alone works OK albeit terribly slow.

Ran comparisons with win10, much older 3.4 Ghz i7 32Gb of ram, with a 4GB Radeon 580 installed.  Same files process in about 1/3 of the time on windows.  Plug in also works with Photoshop CC 2019 or 2018.

So overall, I seem this same slow down in a Mac environment.  Gigapixel also runs about 2/3 slow on MacPro, High Sierra, 6 core (stock Apple radeon graphics cards)

Paul C

[kirkt]

Impressive results. Dog slow both for preview generation and processing.

MacPro high Sierra. 6 core 32gb

Seems to only use gpu as processors are only used 4.5 percent.

On a 16 bit D859 tiff stabilize processing taking close to 15 minutes. For 1 file.

Stabilize does seem to provide good results but not for the time it takes to run a single file. At least for me.

Hopefully they can improve on processing time as they did for gigapixel.

Paul C

It relies entirely on GPU, like all of the AI apps from Topaz.  I disabled auto preview updating, making changing the settings and scrolling around the preview easier - once I get everything set up, I generate a new preview manually.

kirk

[Brad P]

Super impressed with a demo right now (as I am with all Topaz’s AI products).  It/they aren’t necessarily for every image, but as background, I just had a 7 day event shoot which went well except for the all important group shot, on which I bumped the manual focus.  Yesterday I went through about every refocusing, deconvolution and sharpening technique known to humankind and hobbled together a result that was barely acceptable but still quite embarrassing.  Last night reading this forum I found this thread, just downloaded the demo (which I will purchase) and voila.   I will have a lot of cleanup and photoshopping this morning, but I can tell I’m starting with output that will yield a much better result.  Bravo Topaz!!!

Like one commenter above, I also noticed on some parts of the clearly out of focus image the Shake Reduction module did better than the Stabalize module, but still imperfectly. So both modules may be worth trying and as I will blending in the results. 

[leuallen]

Tried AI-Sharpen on a file that I liked but thought I missed focus. Well I did a little but the problem was actually stabilization. File was 800 ISO, 75mm Oly at 1.8, and 1/125 sec (m4/3). Should have used ISO 1600. Most of the unsharpness was caused by camera/subject movement. In FF terms I was using a 150mm lens at 1/125 sec which is a little iffy for a shaky guy like me even with stabilization.

File was processed in LR and I liked the results and wanted to save them. The first step was to use AI-Clear. This works best on a raw file with no adjustments. So I turned off Details (sharpness and noise reduction) because Topaz was going to handle this for me. To save the Develop and other settings I used a preset I call "temp". Hover the cursor over the temp preset and right click, check Update with Current Settings. Check All in the following dialog box so everything is saved (remember Details if Off).

Clicked reset so I had the original raw file and ran AI-Clear at default settings. Liked results. Noise was reduced but of course it did nothing for the blurry area. Saved file.

Back in LR. Ran preset Temp on AI-Clear tiff file and my original settings were restored. But it was still blurry but with better grain and overall sharpness.

Decided to try AI-Sharpen. Since this is a finishing process I used the LR settings. I tried Sharpen but not much change, then Focus with not much change, and finally Stabilize. Bingo a very noticeable change for the better. Left it at defaults and saved.

You may compare.

1st image. Finished image in AI-Clear and AI-Sharpen. Full size. Not too much of a noticeable change over original file at web viewing. But if a reasonable size print is going to be made the AI-Sharpen file is much better.

2nd image. 100% of my original file. Note blur.

3rd image. 100% of file processed in AI-Clear and AI-Sharpen. I can easily see a difference. Much better.

Larry

[plugsnpixels]

I just had a 7 day event shoot which went well except for the all important group shot, on which I bumped the manual focus.

Brad, I used to shoot weddings on film so you can imagine the stress there (I had no idea what I was getting or if the lab would destroy them regardless). But even with digital, you'll want to make multiple exposures of such shots and check them quickly as you go. ;-)

[Brad P]

Brad, I used to shoot weddings on film so you can imagine the stress there (I had no idea what I was getting or if the lab would destroy them regardless). But even with digital, you'll want to make multiple exposures of such shots and check them quickly as you go. ;-)

I knew when I was typing someone would chime in with that -- but the truth is sometimes we all miss protocol.  In any event, who needs to check anymore now that we have this!