Topaz Labs, the company behind the hugely popular DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI and Gigapixel AI, has made a big change. These apps, once a trio of separate programs for editing your photos, are now combined into one powerful app that’s always ready to save time. Meet Topaz Photo AI, your new best post-processing friend. Let me show you how I’ve used it to save wildlife photos in low light.
If you are familiar with a previous article that I wrote about “How to improve your wildlife photography with the Topaz . Image Quality Pack,” you may recall that I’ve used DeNoise in my workflow for many years. As a wildlife photographer, some of the great moments happen in the absence of light. photographing animals in a blizzard when the sky is completely overcast, and the bright snow and dark subjects and backgrounds really challenge your camera.Other times, I photograph wild horses at dusk. Kissing and action begins as they fight for territory. The lights are off but the horses are fighting. So I keep taking pictures. One special moment many years ago, I was in Alaska photographing brown bears. It was blue hour, and a bear suddenly jumped into action while fishing for trout and racing in the water. I took a picture of it, but the light was so low that the image quality and exposure Well, the release of Topaz Photo AI is the perfect time to get to know some of those older photos as well as some new ones with noise, motion blur, etc. can do.
Before I dive in, it’s worth noting that there’s currently a massive Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale on Topaz Labs website. You can get the Everything Bundle for $279 (usually $757.97), which includes Topaz Photo AI, DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI, Gigapixel AI, and Topaz Video AI. The popular image quality bundle is on sale for $159 (this bundle is usually $458.97), featuring Topaz Photo AI, DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI, and Gigapixel AI. They also have discounts on upgrades and standalone products if you just want one app. Check out the deals here. Now, about the good stuff.
What’s New in Topaz Photo AI Vs. AI Denoising, AI Sharpening and Gigapixel AI?
With Topaz Photo AI, three apps have been combined into one to save us all time in our post-processing workflow. Now, instead of switching between the three, you can do it all in one. If that wasn’t big enough, they also added a new feature called Autopilot. When you upload an image, Topaz Photo AI analyzes it and tells you what it needs, then automatically applies the necessary changes. It can tell if your image has motion blur, lens blur, or noise, and what kind. It uploads the changes and you can use the slider to adjust the intensity. The green mark shows you recommended settings. I found it surprisingly accurate and rarely had to tweak any adjustments.
The cool thing about Topaz software is that it uses artificial intelligence. This smart program learns from the photo, and after being tested on millions of images, it understands complex textures like feathers, hair and foliage and how it will affect those areas. Topaz Photo AI can remove noise or blur with high detail and generate new pixels to replace noise to match actual photo content. It was interesting to see it run on an image and detect the cause of the blur, such as loss of focus or movement, and then fix it. Not only does it increase edge contrast, but it actually separates your pixels and sorts them out for you based on the cause of the problem. The software also detects the object and will approach that area differently than negative space or flat area. This is truly modern software at your fingertips.
Another cool update is that Topaz Photo AI definitely feels faster when it runs the settings on my photos and exports the photos to my hard drive. In addition, with all three software in one, it will perform all three processes in less time than it took to perform one process before! Saving time in our busy days is always welcome.
My Results Topaz Photo AI Test
When it comes to testing image quality correction software, I really struggled. I found some of my sad, old wildlife photos full of all kinds of noise and blur. I also took a few newer images that could use a bit of highlighting. I wanted to have a good selection of options to see how Topaz Photo AI would work.
I start off easy with photos that are a bit noisy or out of focus. These may be your common everyday problems. The software handled them quickly, and the Autopilot feature coveted them to produce very pleasing results. I increased the difficulty, added blurry images due to movement in low light or lost focus more when doing. From backlit swallows at sunrise to wild horses with no light, the software has improved it all. It is sometimes difficult to notice changes on small computer or phone screens because the software is reducing noise and sharpening, so I made sure to include super close-up screenshots as well as before and after images. so that all of you can see the miracle.
Basic editing
Difficult editing
Extreme Edit
Confident that Topaz Photo AI could fix our everyday image quality problems, I now sought to challenge the app a bit. Yes, it’s time. I grabbed the roughest photo I could find. Luckily, I always take pictures in raw format because to save this we need every bit of data available. I still have this photo because it was such a special moment. As I mentioned earlier, it was a wild bear fishing in Alaska. The light has disappeared; it was the last hour of blue hour, just barely. However, wildlife has its own schedule. So the bear I was photographing suddenly took action, dashing across the river in pursuit of a trout. I didn’t miss a beat and took the entire sequence with a favorite image from the set. Drops of water flying in the air, a bear’s claws clawing forward, eyes closed, feathers flying: this photo has everything I wanted, except light! The resulting image is dark, extremely noisy and dull. So it’s been in my archive, dusting until now.
To fix the photo, I first drag the photo into Lightroom to increase exposure, remove shadows, reduce highlights, and make color correction adjustments. As you may have experienced in your own photos, when you have to adjust a photo and drag the sliders too hard, it just causes more noise and further degrades the image quality. I let that happen and let it go to make the necessary lighting and exposure adjustments to the photo, regardless of the quality. This is where Topaz Photo AI shines. While you can use it as a plugin for your favorite main post-processing software, then I prefer to use it as a standalone software. So I closed Lightroom and dragged the image into Topaz Photo AI, took my hands off the wheel and let the app take control. It skimmed through the photo, easily detecting and warning me of high image noise, then applied its Autopilot setting. I decided to be a little more aggressive, choose strong mode and drag the sliders further to achieve surprising results. A photo that should have been deleted is now usable, moment is restored. It tells the story of the scene without the annoying distractions caused by motion blur and extreme noise. Are there any photos of you that you can edit?
Final thoughts
Since I often shoot in low light, Topaz Photo AI is now part of my post-processing workflow. I’m excited to have cleaner photos and can’t wait to run it on my wildlife, landscape and even night sky shots. With software like this, it can even change my thought process at the scene, because when the lights go out, I know I can still create work. Why pack when I can adjust my ISO and still take great photos? How cool is that?
If you also want to add Topaz Photo AI to your workflow, you can find it on Topaz Labs website here. If you’re going to buy something, make sure you do it in the next few days to take advantage of their Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. There’s a deal for everyone to help you enhance your photos with state-of-the-art AI technology.
