Topaz AI vs. Photoshop and Adobe Camera RAW

Hi, can anyone comment on how well Topaz AI performs noise reduction, upsizing, and sharpening compared to the Adobe capabilities? I don't care about video. Thanks.

Hi, the vast majority of my photos are of people and events indoors. I rarely use a flash so I often need to use a relatively high ISO.  Whenever I need to reduce high ISO noise, I tend to use the Topaz AI filter from Photoshop. In general, I think it does a good job of removing noise from 'large surfaces' (walls, clothing, faces, etc.) while preserving details. It's not perfect for all photos, but usually good enough for cleaning up noisy photos. The same applies to the Topaz Sharpen AI filter. I find it good in picking out details to sharpen. That said, sharpening can of course increase noise in some areas!

The main reason I use the Topaz filters is their ease of use. I like the 'split screen' (before and after) view and the movable 'zoom in' window that show me what the effect of the filter would be in various parts of the photo. And of course, I can adjust the filter parameters to see whether either more or less noise reduction would be beneficial. Similarly, I can select between a number of different types of 'blur' and adjust the parameters to optimize sharpening.

I can't really compare the Topaz filters to Adobe's native capabilities because - these days - I rarely use the native Adobe filters. As far as I can see, Photoshop allows you to remove noise in 2 places. Either in the 'Camera Raw' (detail) filter or in the 'Reduce noise' filter. The latter also has a movable 'zoom in' Window that allows you to adjust the parameters. Compared to Topaz, what I

I'm not quite sure what you mean by upscaling but Photoshop usually does a good job of resizing a photo to a larger size automatically. But it allows you to select your preferred 'resizing algorithme.

Three different questions:

re Sharpening: I like the Adobe suite because it provides a variety of different sharpening methods, and the best depends on the image. I do most of my sharpening with three tools: the sharpening sliders in Lightroom, which are quite good for some images; Smart Sharpen in Photoshop, and a high-pass filter in Photoshop.

Re changing size: I don't know how well Topaz does this, but the Adobe suite does it well. For printing, I find the built-in up- and down-rezzing algorithm in Lightroom does a very good job, so I have given up bothering with doing it manually in Photoshop. There is now also the enhance option in LR/ACR for raw images, which I have used when I am really short of detail, e.g., severe crops. It works some of the time.

Re noise reduction: I don't use it much because of the way I shoot. However, if you shoot raw, the new AI-based NR in LR/ACR is very good. For example, I used it recently on faces in images I took at a high ISO, and it was better than I could do at distinguishing between areas that needed detail preserved (e.g., eyelashes) and areas that could take more smoothing (e.g., cheeks).

If you have Adobe already, you might find that it does well enough, once you learn it well, that you won't want to bother with an additional piece of software. That was my decision.

How much do you want to conduct on the raw data vs. non-raw-rendered data? If it's primarily raw, stick with Adobe if that's your raw converter. 

First of all, hello. Long time away.
I find that Topaz Denoise and Topaz Sharpen do very well. Topaz Photo AI leaves me cold. It fails to sharpen images that need it. The "Enhance" function in LR is good, but slooooow on my computer.

Thanks, all. As you may have guessed, I use Photoshop plus ACR but was wondering if I should spring for the Black Friday Topaz deals. I decided not to because the Adobe tools are very good and periodically get worthwhile updates. No one I asked made the case that Topaz is better than Adobe for the three things I mentioned. 

Gary

On 11/21/2023 at 9:08 PM, gary_anthes said:

Thanks, all. As you may have guessed, I use Photoshop plus ACR but was wondering if I should spring for the Black Friday Topaz deals. I decided not to because the Adobe tools are very good and periodically get worthwhile updates. No one I asked made the case that Topaz is better than Adobe for the three things I mentioned. 

Gary

Good decision,  Gary. No point on splashing out on Topaz If it doesn't offer you any significant advantages. I bought the (non-AI) Topaz suite many years ago because the Denoise app was highly rated. Since then, I've received 'free updates' on most Topaz apps. Notably the 'AI' versions of Denoise and Sharpen.

In other (not necessarily photo-related) apps, there's often a 'reduced update price'.  I really like Topaz's policy that if you've ever bought the Topaz suite, than any and all updates are free

For someone not already tied to a RAW converter, that has need to be concerned about noise reduction, they need to also consider DxO Photolab. IME DxO has the best NR program when applied in RAW conversion. I still have Topaz AI to work with iPhone images, but for RAW images, DxO and Topaz are pretty close to the same, which is excellent. I slightly prefer Topaz AI's sharpening tool as it's very intuitive to work with and very effective.

Here's an image taken at ISO 32000, with RAW conversion in DxO PhotoLab: