Sharpen AI by Topaz

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I just used it to save an image that I previously couldn't display on the web due to camera shake.  Very impressive software for an initial release.  Close up crop, original on the right:

Hi Bernie,

Looks like a successful restoration of a nice portrait. The original made me dizzy looking at it, and distracted from appreciating the cheerful looking woman. Thanks for sharing.

BTW, the magnification of the image is a bit odd, I had not noticed it in my tests of the "Stabilize" model. I'll check it out if other images do the same. I have to search for, or maybe make, some with motion blur.

Cheers,
Bart

[bernie west]

To be clear I mean Luminous Landscape is enlarging the image when you click on the thumbnail preview in my post.  It's defaulting to filling the forum container.  It makes the corrected image look a little degraded.  The un-enlarged version shows better how well the shot has been corrected.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

To be clear I mean Luminous Landscape is enlarging the image when you click on the thumbnail preview in my post.  It's defaulting to filling the forum container.  It makes the corrected image look a little degraded.  The un-enlarged version shows better how well the shot has been corrected.

Now I got it.

Cheers,
Bart

[rabanito]

To be clear I mean Luminous Landscape is enlarging the image when you click on the thumbnail preview in my post.  It's defaulting to filling the forum container.  It makes the corrected image look a little degraded.  The un-enlarged version shows better how well the shot has been corrected.

As a rule and trying to do justice to the image I always open them with IrfanView. Color managed whatever browser I'm using and gives me more control. BTW, I hate having to go to whatever those apps are called, Instagram, flickr or similar 
Just personal of course

[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.

It took a while because of their help request backlog, but today Topaz took care of it and I got my free license for Sharpen AI.

[bluloo]

It took a while because of their help request backlog, but today Topaz took care of it and I got my free license for Sharpen AI.

FWIW, they did the same for me, so people should shoot them an email and just sit tight and they'll take care of it. Two thumbs up for CS

[Garnick]

It took a while because of their help request backlog, but today Topaz took care of it and I got my free license for Sharpen AI.

Same here with my question about the Sharpen AI free upgrade to InFocus.  I emailed Topaz Support with this and another issue as well, knowing that it would probably take some time to receive a reply.  I own InFocus, but oddly enough when I logged in to my account InFocus did not appear on my list of purchases.  I explained all of that in my email and included the KEY # for InFocus as well.  It took about a week and a half, but late yesterday I received a reply with a link to Sharpen AI, no charge.  I haven't had any reply to the other two plugin issues, but that doesn't really matter since I very seldom use them.  Taking into consideration the load of emails they have been receiving in reference to Sharpen AI and JPEG to RAW, I think the timing of the reply was actually very good, as usual.

Gary 

[kers]

On my mac High Sierra 13.6+ Radeon RX 480 8192 MB - it only uses the GPU not the CPU and takes 10 minutes to process a d850 image ( 46MP) ( a 600€ GPU is 2x the speed- so still 5 minutes)
The results are not so interesting.. almost unchanged. Maybe it works on special kind of unsharpnesses better than others... ( like a clear movement of the whole image - not by a part)
Anyway the slowness makes it not workable for me.
PS it takes all he processing power of the GPU making my computer to slow to do anything else

[bobfriedman]

still no fix for "stripping EXIF" problem

[Jeremy Roussak]

On my mac High Sierra 13.6+ Radeon RX 480 8192 MB - it only uses the GPU not the CPU and takes 10 minutes to process a d850 image ( 46MP) ( a 600€ GPU is 2x the speed- so still 5 minutes)
The results are not so interesting.. almost unchanged. Maybe it works on special kind of unsharpnesses better than others... ( like a clear movement of the whole image - not by a part)
Anyway the slowness makes it not workable for me.
PS it takes all he processing power of the GPU making my computer to slow to do anything else

I'm having a similar experience: I have a 1-year-old iMac Pro and each processing of a Canon 5Ds image (50MP) takes nearly 2 minutes. It's frankly unusable.

Jeremy

[KenS]

I am mostly interested in sharpening landscape images for output to a printer, shot with my Canon 5Dsr; prints are often 24 in x 36 in, or larger.  I am also finding Sharpen AI processing times are relatively slow on my 8 month old Maingear Vybe computer (i7-7820x, Turbo, 32 GB RAM, SSD drives, nvidia-Quadro P2000 5B)... typically about 2 min.  However, this is relatively short compared to the 20 or 30 minutes it might take for a print to complete!  With limited image inspecting on my monitor only (so far) I can clearly see differences between the following sharpening programs: Photokit Output Sharpener 2/Glossy, Topaz Detail 3 (Overall Detail Light 2), Topaz  InFocus (e.g. Est Blur (0.75,0.65, 1.15), and Topaz Sharpen AI (0.8, 0, 0).

For monitor views at 50% and esp 100% the Sharpen AI results are most pleasing to me... for lack of a better description, they seem more refined and natural, more detailed without the artificial microcontrast build up produced by Photokit Sharpener and Topaz Detail 3.  Topaz InFocus, with appropriate settings, comes closer to Sharpen AI in what I've seen so far.  The real test for me is what it does for color and B/W prints.  I don't have result for that yet.  I don't expect any of these sharpening methods to have any effect on my website images (I always shoot on a tripod so the "Stabilize" mode of Sharpen AI probably won't be needed).  I should also mention that I do find Topaz Detail useful for website images on occasion vs. it's possible use for prints.  Also, I have see some possibilities for Sharpen AI with my Pentax 67 film shots, although I doubt Topaz trained the algorithm on film images.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I am mostly interested in sharpening landscape images for output to a printer, shot with my Canon 5Dsr; prints are often 24 in x 36 in, or larger.  I am also finding Sharpen AI processing times are relatively slow on my 8 month old Maingear Vybe computer (i7-7820x, Turbo, 32 GB RAM, SSD drives, nvidia-Quadro P2000 5B)... typically about 2 min.  However, this is relatively short compared to the 20 or 30 minutes it might take for a print to complete!

Hi Ken,

Yes, while 'Sharpen AI' isn't fast, nobody said it would be, even on recent GPU accelerated hardware. But relative to the rest of the workflow, things could be worse. But it's output quality seems to dwarf many alternatives. That's what counts for a lot in my book.

Would I like it to be faster?
Sure, who wouldn't?

Will it become faster?
Maybe a little, depending on how many people buy it and thus justify/encourage the folks at TopazLabs to invest resources in the further development of the application.

With limited image inspecting on my monitor only (so far) I can clearly see differences between the following sharpening programs: Photokit Output Sharpener 2/Glossy, Topaz Detail 3 (Overall Detail Light 2), Topaz  InFocus (e.g. Est Blur (0.75,0.65, 1.15), and Topaz Sharpen AI (0.8, 0, 0).

For monitor views at 50% and esp 100% the Sharpen AI results are most pleasing to me... for lack of a better description, they seem more refined and natural, more detailed without the artificial microcontrast build up produced by Photokit Sharpener and Topaz Detail 3.  Topaz InFocus, with appropriate settings, comes closer to Sharpen AI in what I've seen so far.

You have a keen eye for detail. The terms I use trying to describe the differences with results from most of the other applications you mentioned (except for 'InFocus' and 'Detail') are that they accentuate the structure, whereas 'Sharpen AI' enhances the texture. Micro-highlights get sharpened even better than some Deconvolution sharpening algorithms can achieve, without halos or ringing, because the texture is replaced (by plausible replacements) instead of mathematically restored (which is the next best thing if no information was lost, which it usually is).

Topaz Detail does something different, namely, control the amplitude of certain ranges of spatial frequencies and thus allows more of a Creative kind of 'sharpening'.

The real test for me is what it does for color and B/W prints.  I don't have result for that yet.  I don't expect any of these sharpening methods to have any effect on my website images (I always shoot on a tripod so the "Stabilize" mode of Sharpen AI probably won't be needed).  I should also mention that I do find Topaz Detail useful for website images on occasion vs. it's possible use for prints.  Also, I have see some possibilities for Sharpen AI with my Pentax 67 film shots, although I doubt Topaz trained the algorithm on film images.

Indeed, it's unlikely that film images were part of the image training set. However, after first taming the graininess a bit, it might see the remainder as digital (photon and electronic) noise. We won't know until we try ...

Cheers,
Bart

[Paul2660]

It’s slow to the point of being useless on a Mac. Picure plus was a bit slow but gave great results.

Topaz Sharpen AI on a MacPro running High Sierra takes up 12 to 15 minutes to process a D850 16 bit file.

On my much older PC much faster times.

It’s apparent Topaz must have developed on a windows machine and ported to Mac.

Issues were similar with uprez AI software. It’s still slower on a Mac but has gotten better with updates. Hopefully Topaz will do the same with Sharpen AI

Paul C

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

It’s apparent Topaz must have developed on a windows machine and ported to Mac.

I wouldn't know. Maybe it has more to do with the design restrictions for software developers put forward by the Mac OS guidelines (which seem to be quite restrictive, I've heard).

Issues were similar with uprez AI software. It’s still slower on a Mac but has gotten better with updates. Hopefully Topaz will do the same with Sharpen AI

I suppose that people can vote with their wallets. I'm sure that the folks at TopazLabs will listen (and who could blame them?)

Cheers,
Bart

[Redcrown]

It’s slow to the point of being useless on a Mac.

It’s apparent Topaz must have developed on a windows machine and ported to Mac.

Windows has 88% market share. MAC has less than 10%. If you were running a software company where would you put your emphasis?

[rabanito]

Windows has 88% market share. MAC has less than 10%. If you were running a software company where would you put your emphasis?

Ferrari has around 18% market share in the luxus segment.
Their target groups are different that those of VW 

More seriously, I wonder what is the market share of Mac among photographers and graphic artists, other users maybe care less for sharpening and the like

[KenS]

Topaz Detail does something different, namely, control the amplitude of certain ranges of spatial frequencies and thus allows more of a Creative kind of 'sharpening'.

Indeed, it's unlikely that film images were part of the image training set. However, after first taming the graininess a bit, it might see the remainder as digital (photon and electronic) noise. We won't know until we try ...
Cheers,
Bart

Yes... I have used Topaz Detail in some of my images on a masked Photoshop layer as a way to hopefully draw the viewers attention to specific areas. Used this way I feel it is similar to local applications of tools like saturation, constrast adjustment, dodge/burn, etc. In my small test sample of Pentax 67 Velvia Film images  I noted Topaz Sharpen AI did increase film grain, but this was only detrimental in the sky, where the unwanted sharpening artifact was easily masked out. Image areas where there was detail were sharpened successfully (again, no print tests done yet).

[vjbelle]

I use the program on a Windows PC and everything is very fast.  It would be nice if the program would allow viewing at lesser magnifications such as 25% or 50%.  AI Giga files need some additional sharpening before printing and viewing at 100%, for me, is very ineffective.  I much prefer 50% or even 25%.  It is, though, one of the few programs that work on files as large as AI Giga produces - almost all others crash with PS smart sharpen being my go to exception.

Victor

[bluloo]

I'm using AI Sharpen on an iMac 4.2GHz i7 and Radeon Pro 580 8192MB, run on a 2TB SSD. It's mostly fast enough. Slower than Piccure, but it takes maybe a minute or less on a huge Tiff generated from a 43MB Sony RAW.

For it to be much more than a curiosity, it does need to get much faster otherwise multiple file processing will take forever.

Also, what is up with the math test when posting to the thread? Supremely irritating.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

I use the program on a Windows PC and everything is very fast.  It would be nice if the program would allow viewing at lesser magnifications such as 25% or 50%.

There are some other users that have also requested that. Maybe the developers at Topaz will find time to add that to the application, who knows?

AI Giga files need some additional sharpening before printing and viewing at 100%, for me, is very ineffective.  I much prefer 50% or even 25%.

Gigapixel AI is currently undergoing a new version's beta test, and sharpening is being investigated (amongst others).

Cheers,
Bart