Denoise AI or Photo AI - Which Should YOU Use?

In this tutorial, I run the same image through Topaz Labs Denoise AI and Topaz Labs Photo AI to see which might do a better job.
* I think I made mistake using an image that had as much noise as the image I used in the video did. I may do another video using an image that has a more "normal" amount of higher ISO noise - an image that one might want to print and share. That might give one a better indication as to which application is right for them.
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[@AnthonyMorganti]

In this tutorial, I run the same image through Topaz Labs Denoise AI and Topaz Labs Photo AI to see which might do a better job. * I think I made mistake using an image that had as much noise as the image I used in the video did. I may do another video using an image that has a more "normal" amount of higher ISO noise - an image that one might want to print and share. That might give one a better indication as to which application is right for them. Get my newsletter! anthonymorganti.substack.com/ For more information about Topaz Photo AI: bit.ly/3Qe3GM9 For more information about Denoise AI: bit.ly/3cDqa5J Please help support my channel - consider purchasing my Lightroom Presets: www.anthonymorganti.com/ YOU can help me help others learn photography. You can quickly offer your support here, where I receive 100% of your kind gift: ko-fi.com/anthonymorganti You can change the default amount to the amount you'd like to donate. ** I am an affiliate for all companies mentioned here, EXCEPT Affinity Photo. Please read my Code of Ethics Statement: onlinephotographytraining.com/code-of-ethics/ Anthony Morganti’s MUST-HAVE applications: At least one Non-Destructive RAW Editor Lightroom - bit.ly/2zwQ0nW Luminar - bit.ly/2JUJxKw (Save with the Promo Code AM16) On1 Photo RAW - on1.sjv.io/EaGR2K (Save 20% with Promo Code: AM20) PhotoLab 5: tidd.ly/2HhiN9X At least one FULL Editing App: Photoshop - bit.ly/2zwQ0nW Affinity Photo - affinity.serif.com/en-us/photo/ My MUST-HAVE Plugins: Topaz Gigapixel AI - bit.ly/3cDqa5J Topaz Sharpen AI - bit.ly/3cDqa5J Topaz Denoise AI - bit.ly/3cDqa5J Instead of Topaz Denoise AI: On1 NoNoise AI - on1.sjv.io/EaGR2K (Save 20% with Promo Code: AM20 - May not work on sale product) Nik Silver Efex Pro 3 - tidd.ly/3dc4gYm The Best Sky Images I've Seen Available -- Ocudrone - bit.ly/3vtDpjR *Save 10% with Discount Code: Morganti10 ** Note that the promo codes listed above may not work on sale products. *** I am an affiliate for all companies listed EXCEPT Affinity Photo. Please read my Code of Ethics Statement: onlinephotographytraining.com/code-of-ethics/ Please follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/anthonymorganti/ Thank you!

[@EricMustardman]

Yeah, I think it's a mistake to test a NR app by using noisy images so as to check whether the apps are really up to anything. Please use properly exposed ISO 50 and 100 images without strong lowlight sections only to see if a NR app can get the job done. 😁😂

[@tonyb2760]

My personal experience with PhotoAI vs the three separate products is that "PhotoAI" tends to work better on low quality images but not so on better quality images that need individual type adjustments. PhotoAI just doesn't offer enough control over the "corrections" and I have had to undo the PhotoAI adjustments and open the images in either Denoise or Sharpen ai separately to get results that are not weird.

[@charlesdavis6371]

agreed

[@jabbafatt]

I'll have to try that. For me so far, I've favored PhotoAI for images that I just want "good enough". For ones that I really want to dig into, I've liked the more stepwise process of the individual programs. But I still haven't really wrapped my head around how I want my workflow to go.

[@nash100ful]

I thought I was tripping because I kept getting unwanted things on the skin

[@RichardLaurence]

I’ve been using Photo AI on several thousand scanned family photos, some going back to the 1880s. I’ve been really impressed with the software, particularly in pictures where all the main features are clear. It adds real improvements to faces without making them seem artificial. I’ve showed the results to family members and the general results are “It looks fine” - until I show them the original, when they are impressed. The ability to tone down the result makes it very flexible. When I have pictures from the same camera/film etc, I batch process about 20. It works reasonably quickly because these scans are usually less than 10mb each.

[@davidligon6088]

Thank you for an excellent and informative review with a good, tough example. You can get rid of a lot of that color noise by using color noise reduction in Lightroom before editing in Denoise or Photo AI. I find turning off sharpening, as you did, while leaving on color noise reduction in Lightroom before opening in Topaz gives best results almost all the time with Topaz Denoise AI. When you test Sharpen AI, please include an example that uses masks. I find sharpening an image with vegetation and good bokeh almost always messes up the bokeh. I will often mask a bird, masking out the background. I also find being able to do a mask with part of the mask being 50%, or so, gets rid if artifacts that are often found in random noise areas; like sand or arbitrary hair direction, or dog hair or feathers at a distance, where it’s hard for Topaz to tell the difference between grain and detail. This allows Topaz to still do a little bit of sharpening in those areas, without generating artifacts. Finally, I have used Denoise, Sharpen and Photo AI for the past couple of months (I’ve used Denoise, and Sharpen for a couple of years), and here are my findings: 1) Denoise and Sharpen almost always produce better results; 2) Denoise and Sharpen cause my BenQ monitor to flash white, a lot, on my 14” M1 MAX; 3) Denoise and Sharpen crash a lot on my M1 Max; 4) I’ve run across 2 images where the Photo AI algorithm provided better results, out of dozens; and 5) Photo AI never says an image needs sharpening (when it does).

[@jeffrysmith1078]

Consider "light" balancing (a histogram that is balanced) your image in LR first with sharpening and luminosity and color noise adjustments and then move to Topaz.

[@ctzerbe1]

I use denoise for landscapes. I have found the "low light" setting to consistantly be the best. "clear" takes a long time to render and the standard tended to over do the contrast/sharpening on brighter rocks etc and so looked over processed. It does a great job on drone images too.

[@BURTBROWN]

I agree with Tony Blackwell below! I have been testing Photo AI for a couple of weeks and it does an outstanding job in taking an old, bad, dull, blurry image and making it VERY usable.... However a well shot photo often times does not have much improvement. I suppose one could say "well, that's reasonable" because why would you need much correcting on a good image to begin with???? And the Gigapixal sharpening in Photo AI seems terrific. But they are different animals, different tools, all together and depending on what you need to enhance (I have a LOT of old photos from my grandfather back in the 1930's) and Photo AI does a wonderful job on them. With my own, more recent shots using a newer camera but high ISO, Denoise and Sharpen AI usually do the trick very well..... Use the right tool for the right job and you'll come out with the best results! Just ask the Snap-On Tool Man!!!! LOL!!!!

[@farrasabdelnour]

Thank you for an informative demonstration. Regarding the image, I would denoise it unprocessed, including not increasing the exposure. I suspect DeNoiseAI uses noise models in its analysis, which make assumptions of the additive noise from the camera. Processing the image first then deonising it may lead to less than optimal results.

[@Anonymous-it5jw]

In one or two of your examples, the stone base on the left had clear stone grain, before the programs treated the area as noise. In another image, the detail of the fabric in the shorts being worn by the young woman on the right, walking in the midst of the of the columns, was quite clear, but not after the AI programs got through with their chosen renderings. To a certain degree it seems to be a matter of personal taste and the photographer's choice of how the image should be presented. To someone who has underexposed his share of images, I thought both programs were capable of saving the image, but Denoise had more tools to make fine adjustments with, and would likely be the "go to" program for editing difficult images with exposure and noise problems, if you were faced with more than a handful to try to fix.

[@ddsdss256]

Thanks. I had the individual apps so Photo AI was free. The latter seems like the obvious choice ("one-stop shopping") but I've wondered if there's a difference in results between using them individually or in Photo AI (I prefer DxO/Windows to Adobe/Mac). I assume that Photo AI (which is obviously a WIP) will improve over time, but I'm very pleased (mostly) with the results so far. I've not seen that strange residual noise you did and that may have to do with the particular image/file or another factor. In any case, I'd send a bug report to Topaz, as they (like DxO) seem interested in customer feedback. If that underlying texture is being misinterpreted as noise, then perhaps you can use the masking tools (obviously still in development) to try and exclude those areas from the NR. Also, you may simply have an image/file that's very difficult to process, as it's throwing curve balls at an AI system that lacks (as do most AI systems) the human ability to see what looks "off," relying on an algorithm that can't see the forest for the trees (which is why we can't trust autonomous systems to handle every situation--see 737 Max MCAS). If I wanted to "save" this image, I'd probably try blurring/darkening/vignetting/cropping those problem areas as they're not essential to the image.

[@michaelferguson6864]

Thanks very much for your excellent work. I use Topaz Denoise all the time and have found it a great product. In this kind of lighting set up I will take two spot metered shots, one of the dark area and one of the light area. The two shots are edited in LR for the basics of H,S,W and B and then combined in Aurora HDR then, back to LR for completion final editing and perhaps a trip to Topaz Denoise for clean up. The combination usually comes out very well.

[@stevedell4617]

thanks for the comparison. I don't know if this is important but Topaz has released a few updates for Photo AI. I see you were using version 1.0.2. The current is now 1.0.6.

[@johannestan6878]

Thanks Anthony, this is a helpful tutorial! I have one question though: Why did you always have to revert back to Lightroom? Can the Topaz Studio be used as a stand alone (to denoise, sharpen, etc.) without having Lightroom installed? (I'm aiming for minimal post processing, as I'm just a serious amateur and do photography just for fun.) Thanks again!

[@seabreezeof]

Thanks this tut made up my mind, I'll stick with the individual apps. Have you tried sending an image into denoise without any edits and just use raw, vs sending it in with the edits and choosing what looks best for the image. It is my understanding per Topaz site, its always best to send as raw with no edits. Most importantly as you did without any sharpening or noise reduction in LR.

[@knoxharington3173]

Do you apply your edits within LR prior to exporting to Denoise (or Photo AI)? If not, does that mean you have to do all your image editing using a TIF rather than RAW?

[@94regnar]

I have all the packages, for the tougher images I will use one of the individual programs, Sharpen AI, DeNoise AI or Gigalpixel AI, because there's more control, for general photos then Photo AI

[@InFocusPhotos]

I have found that Photo AI is much slower, Photo can take 20+ seconds and DeNoise is under 5 sec. I have also noticed that DeNoise and Photo seem to work better on jpg files. I stopped using the plug-ins, they seem to leave some artifacts in the images. I use them as my last step in my workflow.

[@JorgeMoredo]

In my experience with Denise AI and Photo AI, I get better results when I apply color denoise in Lightroom and then moving to Denise AI or Photo AI.

[@gordonmcintosh3159]

Anthony. don't the little up pointing arrows in the the filmstrip images mean that Lightroom has a problem with the edits done in an external editor? I believe that you need to click on the arrow & decide which edits to use.

[@BemCorrido]

Hey Anthony what you do to get the mouse smooth like that? 120hz monitor?

[@stevew7779]

Did you remove all of Lightroom's default (40) sharpening before sending it to Topaz? I use Photo AI all the time but if you don't remove the sharpening completely you'll get artefacts. Let AI do its thing on the unsharpened image and then sharpen in AI or even back in Lightroom. Doing this, I find Photo AI's results vastly superior to trying to drag something thru Denoise and/or sharpen.

[@charleshaacker9568]

Tony once mentioned that the Topaz apps work better when no other sharpening or noise reduction is used. Since he said that, I have been zeroing out the details in LR before sending to Topaz. If I am going to do a batch I first zero them all. I've never done a comparison, though, so I can't say if it makes much difference in a well-exposed image.

[@williamconrad77]

Thanks!

[@AnthonyMorganti]

Thank you William!

[@kurtissutley1485]

For me, one factor whether to use Photo A (PAI) versus DeNoise AI (DAI) or Sharpen AI (SAI) is the file size. I know, not real discriminating but if I need to fine tune the denoise or sharpening of a large file, usually 100+Mps, it takes FOREVER for PAI to refresh every small adjustment. In the interest of efficiency I just can't justify time spent vs. the comparison of output quality. If I've already made the decision to take whatever PAI gives me and run, I'll go with it. Otherwise...

[@Anonymous-it5jw]

How much processing power and ram are you using with PAI? Do you think a more powerful machine with more ram, etc., would speed things up for you, if that's a practical solution to the extended rendering times?

[@dsorx]

PhotoAI showed "subject detected" so it may have been applying settings to only part of the image. There isn't really a subject in the image, so I would have turned that off. I agree though that this photo isn't a great example to compare the apps.

[@briantooze3415]

Does anyone know if Topaz will keep supporting both products or if the plan is to drop the separate programmes and move forward with Photo AI.

[@ronnyjansson4207]

What I heard is that they will focus on Photo Ai, thus leaving Denoise and the other apps behind, it’s tha t correct?

[@donelliot7650]

Is there an image denoise software that supports X-Trans RAW? Topaz will only do RAW from Bayer sensors. X-Trans can only be processed as TIFF files and the results are not nearly satisfactory compared to the RAW sources.

[@DanOhPhotography]

I already subscribe for DeNoise, Shapren, Gega, and Masking. I have no reason to "upgrade" to Photo AI. I use DeNoise 100% of photos and use others on rare occasions.

[@InFocusPhotos]

It was/is a free upgrade, if you have DeNoise, Sharpen and Giga. Take a look.

[@davidpearson3304]

I tried photo ai and just couldn’t get decent results. I found (for me anyway) that running the image through the individual programs (denoise and sharpen ai’s) while it is more time consuming, I get better results. Others may have different experiences though. 🤷🏼‍♂️

[@erik1836]

My exact same experience.

[@robertcudlipp3426]

I only have the post software that came with various cameras purchased over recent years', though for my basic- obviously to others, have found the free download of Snapseed does all I want on the 2022 release Ipad. So far as noise reduction software is concerned, members of Olympus M43RDS forums have a very clear affection for Topaz, are some other apparently minor players.

[@billmartin1010]

I find that Photo AI does NOT play well with the latest version of Lightroom Classic. Although I have purchased it, I am extremely unlikely to try it again, unless something changes. On the other hand, Denoise AI works perfectly. I"m not sure why this is the case.

[@grandegulo]

Do you live in Sweden? I like those Swedish colours!

[@NJM1948]

Great to see this - I have recently been comparing these products after I detected some noise still visible after using Photo AI. This was cleared when I subsequently ran it through DeNoise and as it was a good quality resolution image, the result was very good. I feel I have lost some confidence in Photo AI and will probably revert back to the original programs....as tedious as it is using separate tools some times. I can't understand why Topaz did not just bring together all three of the programs, as they are in stand alone mode, into one program instead of tinkering with them which frankly hasn't worked. They have class leading products with the individual programs...so just bring them together in a new Photo AI - Just as an aside...DeNoise AI is rapid on my windows machine.....both in rendering and saving. It is Sharpen AI that takes longer for me

[@michael-lt2lf]

'I can't understand why Topaz did not just bring together all three of the programs, as they are in stand alone mode, into one program'. But surely, they have done? I have to say though. For me, I would hate it if they simply bundled it all into one product and dropped the standalone versions. Think about it. One has a photo which is, for example, just a bit out of focus - Topaz Sharpen to the rescue! Quick. Bang. Thank you Mam! With respect, what you're proposing is that we are supposed to open up the whole Excellent, getting better all the time, TopasAI programme, wait for it to load - then faff about, trying to make it do only the bit of de-blurring which is all you're wanting?

[@NJM1948]

@@michael-lt2lf Sorry, but I think you missed my point. They have the best DeNoise, Upsizing and Sharpen products on the market at the moment. The big selling point of Photo AI was to have these products to hand in one program instead of having to go between the 3 of them separately. Nice idea on paper, but I'm afraid it hasn't worked as well as some of us had hoped -That was my point. I agree they should keep the 3 separate as they are now - no-ne (certainly not me) has suggested "dropping" the standalone programs.....but they need to get it right if they are bringing them into one program, and my suggestion of bringing together tried and tested programs as they are now...as a convenience to our workflows....is a valid comment

[@retrocomputing]

@@NJM1948 DeepPrime works better if you have RAW files.

[@NJM1948]

@@retrocomputing yes, I always shoot RAW and after optics adjustments I always denoise the photo first before any editing.

[@Eigil_Skovgaard]

You should mail the image to Topaz. Maybe they can use it to educate the AI-monster further.

[@RPIXELN]

Do you have a Nasa's MAC? It's so fast

[@ChristiaanRoest79]

Its pretty obvious how to use these apps. I prefer using the individual ones

[@HaroldBrownJr]

If you have a troublesome pic photo AI can over process the pic.

[@onefortexas2379]

The latest Photo AI version is 1.0.6 you are 4 updates behind.

[@peturstefansson]

I noticed that. You can see in the top right corner that there are 4 updates waiting to be installed.

[@DickHoskins]

You have saved me time and money. Looks like photoAI is a big step backwards. Thanks!

[@ridderus]

so much noise in a iso 200 photo?

[@erik1836]

Photo AI, in my opinion, is more of a one size fits all, jack of all trades but master of none solution that, would serve the purposes of someone who doesn't want to take the time - or care enough - to learn to fine tune an image using their own knowledge and understanding of the various parameters the separate Topaz programs afford. Someone who simply lacks much personal, artistic vision and imagination. Why would I want to use a program that doesn't do an excellent job, that requires me to go back into it, make creative and time costly adjusts to it to make it usable - or, worst of all fix - things it messed up? I know that may sound harsh but time, money and creativity are costly and always in short supply. I will stick with DeNoise, Sharpen and Gigapixel. I think this venture is a serious mistake for Topaz to even try to think they can dovetail a commensurate level of quality - equal to the truly amazing - seemingly mind blowing - results one can achieve by taking the time - to learn and apply the separate programs - into a one stop shopping experience. In other words, wasting their limited precious time and enormous talents on a losing proposition and AI program. It sounded good though, I must admit.

[@kennethrohen5963]

Photo AI would be a good option for wedding photographers or for photos of the grandchildren, but DeNoise AI is better for the serious photographer. Topaz attempts deceptive advertising: if you already have DeNoise, Sharpen, and Gigapixel, you most certainly would waste money just to be disappointed with Photo AI.

[@BubbleGendut]

PC spec needs to be considered. Photo AI will not install the latest update (1.06) on my windows PC as it doesn’t meet the software requirements. So I’ll stay with Denoise & Sharpen until I decide to upgrade my PC

[@quaesitorveritatis777]

porra mas tu usou um arquivo fudidasso pro exemplo