Topaz Labs Image Quality Apps 2023 REVIEW

Topaz Labs makes it possible to salvage photos that are out of focus or grainy.

I recently shot a wedding that was in a difficult lighting location. The room had very high, dark ceilings and there was both indoor and outdoor available light pouring into the room. This made it very hard to control the lighting for anything other than portrait set-ups. The action shots during the ceremony and the dances as well as all the candids had varying degrees of noise on them. While Lightroom has some good tools for helping to decrease the effect of noisy photos, those tools are nowhere near as good as Topaz Labs Image Quality apps.

Overview

The Image Quality apps from Topaz Labs include DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI, and Sharpen AI. Each app works together with Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop as a plugin to ensure users get pixel-perfect photos.

Topaz Labs is an AI tech company that works to build one-click image and video quality software with deep learning. The software has more than 1 million users and has 2.4x annual growth.

We believe great products are built with heart and soul – the culmination of thousands of tiny decisions made by engineers, designers, writers, and support folks doing the real work every day. ..We start with a great user experience and work backwards from there. There’s no better feeling than starting with a blank canvas, molding and remolding something until it works, and then polishing it until it’s iconic.

“Career.” Topaz Labs, 10 Aug. 2021, topazlabs.com/careers/. Accessed 15 Jan. 2023.

The Image Quality apps were originally released in 2018 and 2019. Their most recent addition to the group of apps — Photo AI — combines all the image tools into one automatic photo editor. It was released in 2022. All of the applications use deep learning to detect and fix image quality issues.

DeNoise AI uses deep learning to remove noise from photos. It does this by learning from millions of image how to distinguish between real image detail and noise. This process allows users to recover important image detail while denoising them at the same time.

Gigapixel AI also uses deep learning to increase the resolution accurately when upscaling photos.

Most upscaling algorithms don’t know how to accurately fill in missing pixels, so you end up with blocky low-quality results. To solve this problem, Gigapixel AI’s neural networks are continuously trained on a wide variety of sample images to understand how photorealistic detail looks. 

“Gigapixel AI.” Topaz Labs, 10 Aug. 2021, www.topazlabs.com/gigapixel-ai. Accessed 15 Jan. 2023.

Sharpen AI works by targeting and reversing motion blur, focus, and softness to create more natural results than other sharpening tools.

Main Features

DeNoise AI → Eliminates distracting noise from images

• Good for use with: wildlife photography, night photography, macro photography, and portrait photography
• Works with either JPEG or RAW files
• Recover detail and eliminate noise
  • More natural noise reduction
  • Recover image quality
  • AI that is always improving

Gigapixel AI → Upscales and enhances images up to 600%

• Recover natural details and textures in low-resolution faces with Face Recovery AI
  • Add image detail that looks completely natural.
  • Enhance the texture of feathers
  • Improve fur texture and sharpness
  • Higher-resolution landscapes
  • More detailed cityscapes
  • Crystal-clear upscaling with no blocky artifacts
  • Fix extreme pixelation in low-resolution images
• Create better prints
  • Increase DPI by increasing the image’s real resolution
  • Remove close-up compression artifacts
• Better zooming and cropping
  • Enhance different patterns in fabric and flora
  • Natural texture that looks like it was never upscaled

Sharpen AI → Recovers images from missed focus, lens softness, and motion blur

• Make your photos pop naturally
  • Extra sharpness that looks completely natural
  • Powerful depth of field throughout your photo
  • Take significantly sharper handheld photos
  • Accurately sharpen different kinds of subjects
• Rescue very blurry photos
  • Reduce perceived movement
  • Focus on the eyes
  • Recover image detail
  • Increase real (not simulated) sharpness
  • Rescue multiple types of motion blur
  • Save misfocused images

Privacy Policy

According to the privacy policy provided on topazlabs.com, the developer collects information from users when they register, place an order, subscribe to the newsletter, respond to a survey, fill out a form, or email support. The full privacy policy can be found here.

Pricing and Availability

The Topaz Labs software is exclusively available through topazlabs.com. Users get live support chat and a 30-day money-back guarantee. The software license includes standalone Lightroom and Photoshop plugins for Mac and Windows. Users can download and install the plugins on two computers.

Each piece of software can be purchased individually or as a part of a bundle.

• Image Quality Bundle → $199.99
• DeNoise AI → $79.99
• Gigapixel AI → $99.99
• Sharpen AI → $79.99

Each license is yours for life and includes one year of free upgrades. Upgrades can be purchased for $99 as an upgrade plan, which includes unlimited upgrades for every image app you own for 1 year or individually for each software license for $49.

Topaz Labs does offer a free trial for their Image Quality apps. Click here to review the system requirements for Topaz Labs Image Quality apps.

User Experience

One of the biggest perks of using Topaz Labs Image Quality apps is that they are integrated into a workflow you are probably already using. Each of the apps can be used in Adobe Lightroom Classic or Adobe Photoshop AND they can each work as a standalone product.

The first step in the user experience is to get the software on your machine. There are a couple of ways to manage this. First, you can download the application from your Topaz Labs account. There are installerlinks for the version you own as well as the newest version provided on your Topaz Labs account page. Users also have the option to download the apps from the Download Page, which only includes the most recent versions of the currently available software.

Once you have the software packages on your system, you can work to install them in your selected programs.

• Install into Lightroom Classic (Mac instructions): Go to Preferences in Lightroom > External Editing tool > Choose > Applications/Topaz Labs LLC > Preset = Custom > Save Current Settings as New Preset > Name the Preset

I can say that for my particular use case — the low-light wedding — I found it easier to use the apps one by one rather than run them through Photo AI. Here is the process I went through.

1. I color-corrected the images in Lightroom and did light touch-ups to the photos to improve the skin tone of some of the subjects. I would also crop and straighten photos before running them through the Topaz Labs apps.
2. I reviewed each photo individually because there were different lighting situations and activities happening in each photo. For example, the dancing images took place later in the evening than the set-up photos which still had some exterior sunlight entering room.
3. I started the image editing with noise reduction and DeNoise AI. For most of the photos, I was able to use the Standard setting but for some of them I needed to use the more advanced options available.
4. If the photo still needed some enhancement due to motion, I would edit them in Sharpen AI. Again, the Standard setting was adequate for most images.
5. The last step in my process was to utilize the Fade preset in Image AI to match color tones throughout the images.

Once an image went through these steps, I consider it ‘finished’ and ready for my client. One thing I found to be cumbersome was editing each image one by one. I was much more accurate this way but it would be nice to be able to apply a set of edits to multiple photos if it appears they have the same issues. Within Lightroom, there is an option to copy attributes and paste them into images by using the copy/paste function in the app. That would be a great option to have for the Topaz Labs app, too. Once you make an edit, it can then be copied/pasted onto another photo in Lightroom — just like other effects.

I have found that the Image Quality apps work exceptionally well and have been highly successful in improving the quality of images. Not only does the software do what its supposed to do with great accuracy, but it’s also incredibly easy to use, making it accessible to people of all skill levels. The user interface is well-designed and intuitive, making it simple to navigate and quickly access the features you need. In addition, the results are remarkable, allowing users to produce high-quality images with minimal effort. All in all, the Image Quality apps are a great choice for anyone looking to enhance their images.

Conclusion

The incredibly useful Image Quality apps from Topaz Labs have been praised for their immense capabilities and overall performance. They provide users with an array of features that help to improve the quality of their images in a variety of ways, such as sharpening, smoothing, and denoising, as well as providing helpful tools for correcting exposure and color. Not only do they work really well, but they are also quite intuitive and easy to use, making them the ideal choice for both novice and experienced photographers alike.

For more information, visit topazlabs.com, Facebook, and Twitter.