Sharpen AI by Topaz

[plugsnpixels]

Ha, and that was the money shot too! Glad you're making some progress restoring it.

BTW, I'm told we can expect much better results from Sharpen AI in the coming weeks as they train it further.

[lhodaniel]

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.

Paul C

Paul, JOOC which video cards do you have?

Lloyd

[Brad P]

Ha, and that was the money shot too! Glad you're making some progress restoring it.

BTW, I'm told we can expect much better results from Sharpen AI in the coming weeks as they train it further.

You know, I have 6.99 days of great shots, and yes -- that was the one I'd trade any of the others for.  Not trusting the contrast autofocus on my X1D, I set focus manually just before they arrived and have at hand twelve shots all perfectly focused about 8 feet behind the group.  I tried Focus Magic, SmartDeblur, Blurity, Topaz Infocus, Clarity, Detail, AI Denoise, Jeff Schewe's multi pass smart sharpen technique, high pass filters, different Photoshop and Raw developer sharpening/contrast/clarity layers of all kinds, darken only layers, and blends of many of them.  I even tried rezing up and down with AI Gigipixel.  I've been agonizing for the last day just trying to process that one shot, and the event leader was about to print the result for distribution to the group until I stopped her this AM. 

There are plenty of artifacts that I'm cleaning up now left behind by AI Sharpen (mostly by hand blending the primary Focus layer with a Stabilize layer).  But thankfully due to my large file size and Sharpen AI, I'm going to produce something that will I can see will be satisfactory.  I'd post it here if not for privacy concerns.  Nothing came close.

Do you know whether it (or AI Gigapixel) will be integrated into Studio and/or a PS plugin?

[plugsnpixels]

I don't have an answer about what's going to be included in Studio, but I can commiserate with you switching to manual focus. I did that a decade ago while on the Circle Line cruise around NYC. Lost some scenics due to it. I did not have to do that, grr.

PS: Maybe you can post a crop of their shoes or something so we can see before and after.

[Paul2660]

Paul, JOOC which video cards do you have?

Lloyd

On the Mac, it's Dual Radeon D500 Firepro cards, each shows 3GB of ram.  1 1/2 year old Mac Pro 6 core.   I see this same general slow processing with Gigabyte on Mac.  Topaz just seems to run faster on a windows platform.  I have not upgraded to Mojave on this machine yet, but I guess I will do it sometime soon.  Not sure it will make much difference.

Windows is a Radeon D580 Card, 4 GB of ram.  Windows 10, with latest updates.

Paul C

[Rajan Parrikar]

Topaz has just issued a fix to the issue of the plugin not launching in Photoshop CC on the Mac. Fire up the standalone version, then Check for Updates, and install the latest version 1.0.8. I had to reboot my Mac for the update to take effect.

[plugsnpixels]

Thanks Rajan!

[Rajan Parrikar]

I tested Sharpen AI on another image using the Sharpen tab (animated gif attached). For some reason the shadow areas go darker. Bart, any idea why this is happening?

[faberryman]

Adding black "detail" that wasn't there in the original?

[kirkt]

Topaz has just issued a fix to the issue of the plugin not launching in Photoshop CC on the Mac. Fire up the standalone version, then Check for Updates, and install the latest version 1.0.8. I had to reboot my Mac for the update to take effect.

FYI - I did the update, restarted - still does not work, fails as previously described.

kirk

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I tested Sharpen AI on another image using the Sharpen tab (animated gif attached). For some reason the shadow areas go darker. Bart, any idea why this is happening?

Hi Rajan,

What was the "Suppress Noise" control's setting you used? Try 0.

Cheers,
Bart

[Rajan Parrikar]

Hi Rajan,

What was the "Suppress Noise" control's setting you used? Try 0.

Cheers,
Bart

Bart,

That did it! No more darkening after setting Suppress Noise to 0. Thanks.

[kers]

simple way to suppress noise!

[bobfriedman]

with the latest 1.0.9 the PS CC plug in only works if you have saved the image as a TIF.. using the plug in with a .psb (for example) crashes

iMacPro Mojave, PS CC 2019

[bobfriedman]

the PS CC plug in also changes the RGB Color Profile to sRGB whether you like it or not.  (my example was originally Adobe RGB)

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

And when it works as intended, it works wonders ...

Attached, a crop of a not Sharpened direct Raw conversion with Capture One Pro Version 12.0.2.
While that's already something to not be sneezed at, things really become alive after some Sharpening.
The same crop is attached as a sharpened version as well. Structure turns into texture, it becomes almost tangible.

The "Sharpen" setting of Sharpen AI also strikes a very nice balance between focused and defocused areas.

I have not done my normal postprocessing, with Topaz Precision Contrast and Precision Detail, on the image yet so the final version will look even more stunning.

Cheers,
Bart

[Arlen]

And when it works as intended, it works wonders ...

Yes, that is my finding, too.

But it does pretty often generate artifacts that have to be dealt with. For instance, I'm finding that dark shadows sometimes have a prominent and ugly crosshatch pattern, in the same way that AI Clear does. At this point the only way I see to deal with that is to put it on a layer and mask out those dark areas.

Bart,

That did it! No more darkening after setting Suppress Noise to 0. Thanks.

I noticed the same thing, and Bart's suggestion fixed it for me, too.

the PS CC plug in also changes the RGB Color Profile to sRGB whether you like it or not.  (my example was originally Adobe RGB)

It doesn't change the color profile for me, when starting with a tif that is in Prophoto, under Windows 10. Maybe another issue just for Macs?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Yes, that is my finding, too.

But it does pretty often generate artifacts that have to be dealt with.

Hi Arlen,

Artifacts may arise when using the "Stabilize" or "Focus" models, but I've not encountered them on my tests with "Sharpen". Also, try to not overdo the "Remove Blur" amount settings. They should match the amount of blur in the original image. More is not necessarily better.

When trying to recover from camera shake or subject motion, or from attempting to restore from serious defocus, wrong guesses can be made, which are obvious for humans, but not for computers. That's where the quality of the training data set comes into play. Some of the current issues may go away when more trained models are released. Also, when the ability to mask areas in/out becomes available in later versions, that will help a lot.

Cheers,
Bart

[brandon]

Seems a remarkable product! Frankly Im blown away by the early attempts Ive made on images.
Because I had previously bought  TOPAZLABS SHARPEN PRO  they sent me an upgrade price ($20reduction) on SHARPEN AI, which I took, but it seems some have had a free upgrade: is that right?

It works well as a standalone, but due to the sometimes unpredictable effects of sharpening some areas and not others it would be great to have a masking function in SHARPEN AI. For some reason invoking it (the most updated version current 1.0.9) from the latest STUDIO update (or my not latest PS CS5) it crashes...except it doesnt actually crash those programs..it just won't run on them. so I can mask within those and have to do a circuit out to desktop (or a folder) then open original and sharpened in PS and mask etc. Would be so much easier the other way esp coming from CaptureOne (eg via PS)

I really like TOPAZ programs but its a maze with some standalone only, some in studio as adjustments (basic or purchased), some plugins to studio (and obviously all are for PS as "filters"). Would be great to have some convergence.

[kirkt]

After updating a second time to V1.0.9 (thank you for that advice Rajan) calling Sharpen AI from Photoshop works as it should.

kirk