How to Edit Photos for High ISO w/ Photo Mechanic | Denoise AI | Lightroom | Photo AI | Free Preset

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Check out my merch, including the presets I use:
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Here are my tips for workflow and editing low light, high ISO images for maximum noise reduction and colors that pop. I take you through a short course in Photo Mechanic, Topaz Denoise AI, Adobe Lightroom, and Topaz Photo AI. I also give you some free presets!
Here's the link to the free presets I talked about in the video:
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Affiliate link for the Topaz products I use:
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Want personalized sports photography instruction and photo critiques? We can schedule one-on-one virtual and in-person (Phoenix metro area) sessions! See my website for more details!
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Disclosures: All opinions are my own. Sponsors are acknowledged. Some links in the description are affiliate links. If you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
#sports #nikon #nikonz9 #sportsphotographer #sportsphotography #camerasettings #camera #topaz #topazdenoise #topazphotoai #topazgigapixel #lightroom #nikon #nikonz9

[@MarttiSuomivuori]

A ton of relevant advice without any unnecessary posturing. You know what you are doing, that's clear.

[@VonHughesStanton]

This video is a time saver! I was using Aftershoot with AI and noticed that I had to cull a second and third time due to not trusting the AI choices! Your video showed me that Photo Mechanic is the standard for culling.

[@michaelgracephotography8308]

I am so glad that I found your channel, and this video. I have been shooting local motocross, and normally bring home 4 to 5 thousand shots per event. I've been culling and editing each one manually with photoshop. I see here that photomechanic and lightroom are in order. Thank you sooo much for showing us your workflow. I tried photomechsnic a couple years ago and struggled with learning it so I went away from it. I think I need to try again. Thank you again. Love your methods and videos, as I am shooting my first soccer game in a couple days.

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Glad I could help!

[@Chickboom34]

great stuff. thanks for sharing!

[@StevieDrama]

Love the straightforward advice. I'm a beginner focusing on concert and event photography and I think you have me sold on Topaz! Subscribed!

[@Erik638]

Jack, Thanks again for another great video. Ok I have been seeing people talk about photo mechanic for culling for years and I always thought why the extra step when I can do this in LR. I decided based on this video to give it a shot. Let me tell you this extra step is going to save me so much time. This is a game changer. Like wow. Very mad at myself for not doing this sooner. Now the reason I watched this video in the first place. I always shot raw (but my kids played rec football in daylight and did not have high iso pictures. Fast forward a couple of years and one kid started playing basketball and one started having football games at night. I could never get my pictures to look that great with LR noise reduction. I switched to Jpg for those situations and the in-camera noise reduction was doing fine. I just got a z8 and have been trying to up my game and decided to try to figure out the raw piece and apply my own noise reduction. I watched your video and culled them in photo mechanic and I then went into topaz denoise. I Got the program going and went to sleep. I woke up with 75 processed dng files ready to bring into Lightroom with your preset. For some reason Lightroom will not let me bring the photos in. Not sure why. I have been messing with it for a couple of days and no luck. I decided to import the original NEF files into Lightroom with your preset crop/edit then run through denoise as a plug in. That process worked. I guess my question to you is why do you run them through topaz before bringing into Lightroom. I am trying to decide if I should keep trying to figure out how to get it to work properly.

[@championsportsphotography2195]

Thanks Jack, great video. I learned some interesting techniques which I intend to put to use immediately. Many thanks. 🌏👏

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Thanks for watching!

[@aysolar]

Thanks for sharing. My indoor basketball photos do have annoying noise and i've been able to solve that with topaz denoise!

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Wonderful!

[@rkwimages]

Photomechanic is the best Jack!

[@jbaswoll3221]

Great video Jack! I have same exact workflow but I use Fast Raw to cull, although I think Photo Mechanic is superior. I also find that adjusting the details section in LR does help my photos slightly more as well. I'll have to try the blues in calibration that you mentioned to see how that looks next time I edit my sport photos.

[@alexg0742]

Great video Jack. Thanks for sharing.

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Thanks for watching!

[@davepeeters6518]

Great video, clear and comprehensive

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Thanks, I appreciate it!

[@PetrThaGr8]

You make me realize I have been uploading way way too many photos!

[@sergejzoubok1078]

I figured it out. The presets were properly imported but the names are different so I didn't spot them. I ultimately realized that the file names don't always match the preset names in the file themselves (opened in a text editor). For example, "JBeasley - Old School Sports - B&W Night" shows up in LRC as "Film Kodak TRI X 400 ++" and JBeasley - Level up (RAW) shows up as Wedding Bliss. I'm guessing preset files were renamed to better organize them for sharing. I just renamed them in LRC. All good now, thanks!

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Glad it worked out!

[@christywheaton5070]

Thanks!

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Wow, thank you so much!

[@mikeregas3342]

hey Jack - Great video, very helpful. I have a couple of questions, that I was hoping for clarification. When I use PM I assign metadata and do my cropping and such so when I get in LR I am already through that process, I feel it is faster in PM. Would your method of noise reduction using Topaz impact the metadata and crops from PM to LRC?

[@westoneichner8089]

Hi Jack, I have the exact same flow as you do. I wanted to let you know to make sure you have the GPU selected in Topaz's preferences, if you have an onboard graphics card or withing the CPU. I have a dedicated GPU and cut it from 15 seconds to about 3!

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Nice, I'll check it out.

[@markokamp]

Jack, Topaz is cramming three programs into one (or two into one with denoise and AI). Have you moved over to the all-in-one offering? If so, any issues with your workflow?

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

I've done several videos since this one talking about Topaz Photo Ai and the demise of Denoise and Sharpen. Yes, Photo Ai is troublesome for those of us who want to do batch processing of hundreds of images. I hope to produce a video in the near future about how I set up Photo AI for batch processing.

[@jm0624]

Great video and thank you. I see that you loaded your RAW (.NEF) files form my Z8 into Topaz Denoise. When I load them Topaz Denoise does not work with them. I'm using the HE* for the image quality. Topaz Denoise says the format on the Z8 & Z9 are not supported. What am I doing wroing? Or is it that you used your Nikon D6 for those RAW images.

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Unfortunately, Topaz Denoise was never upgraded to work with Nikon HE files. I had to use regular RAW files in Denoise. Their Photo Ai does work with those HE files.

[@sergejzoubok1078]

Great video! I haven't tried bulk processing in Topaz before editing in LR but I'll play around with it. I'm not usually in a rush to get photos out and anything that speeds things up with today's higher number of keepers is a bonus. One question - I wanted to try out your presets but can't get them to show up after import. The import seems to go smoothly but they don't show up, even after restarting LR. I'm using the current Lightroom Classic 12.1 on Mac. Any suggestions?

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Are you sure you are looking in the right preset folder? I've had them show up under different folders sometimes.

[@jodyrose106]

Thanks Jack for the great info. I have a question not sure if you can answer this! I got the new Z-9 been shooting the D5 for over 6 years so I know a little bit of shooting indoors so I went out a got the new Z9 but this z-9 grain is killing me the place I work for tells me my stuff don't meet their high standards now. why is the z9 so grainy and I watched your GREAT video on topaz but is their something else I can do in camera besides all the other great ideas you already told us about ( and I have been using it ) but I was hopping now that you have had the camera for a while now you might have some other ideas . or newer tips for the Z9. Thank your for your time!

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

I shoot for MaxPreps and they are very picky on grain. This video tells you exactly how I get past their editors.

[@jodyrose106]

@@JackBeasleyMedia ditto! thank you.

[@davewatlingphotography]

Loved this video!! Almost the exact same PM workflow that I use. I use "F3" after tagging, and then "select all" for drag n drop into LR, along with my own pre-sets for the import. I haven't tried Topaz yet, but after watching your video, I think I'll try it. Confused on the "resolution" for export. Doesn't resolution (PPI) only affect when a digital file is printed?

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Yes, I should have said that. I use 300 for print purposes, 74 for social media.

[@davewatlingphotography]

@@JackBeasleyMedia Ah good...cuz I export at 300 only because some clients might want to print my images. I never thought of reducing that for web viewing, but can see where that might be an advantage only for file size and loading. I was unsure if I understood it correctly. Thank you. Great video!!! It shows people how much more is involved than just "snapping the photo and sending out the file".

[@ralphmawyer9492]

Jack, why not use AISharpen vs Photo AI, since you just wanted to sharpen the image. Either that, or run Photo AI at the start. My biggest issue with AI Sharpen is background artifacts that mangled if no careful.

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

You could, but I like the fact that I can fix faces and sometimes enhance low resolution images at the same time. I’d have to switch to Gigapixel to do the later if I was just using Sharpen AI.

[@rogermanning4353]

I thought you preferred DxO Pure Raw's performance. Any reason you have settled on Topaz? I am still holding out hope DxO will be updated to process the new HE NEF files soon. Cheers!

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

I think Topaz Denoise and DxO Pure Raw are both very good, and I would use either one, but while the DxO product has better colors in some cases, I prefer the smoother grain pattern I get in Topaz Denoise.

[@joeymichel30]

Love your workflow. Just about the same as what I do but Denoise AI crashes on me too ofter to run more than about 25 images at a time. It has always been unstable for me on the M1 Macbook Pro.

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Luckily, I haven’t had that issue. I’m honestly surprised how many images it’ll let me run on my comp.

[@jeffowen8535]

Just curious, why do you run the noise reduction before any exposure edit in Lightroom or Photoshop?

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

So I know the image is as noise free and sharp as it's probably going to get before I start editing. If it doesn't meet my standards for sharpness, I don't edit it.

[@alwaysfaithfulK9]

How do I download photo mechanic to a mac? I can't seem to find it at all

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Home.camerabits.com

[@whoistafari]

Can you please put your preset in DNG file too? Us Apple users are failing to open zipped files.

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/zip-and-unzip-files-and-folders-on-mac-mchlp2528/mac

[@whoistafari]

@@JackBeasleyMedia For mobile?

[@JGZphotography]

Why denoise a RAW file that takes up to 24 - 30 seconds? First, export to Adobe Camera Raw for quick syncing of exposure, color, individual cropping, etc, then export to JPG, even at max resolution. Then bring the exported files into Denoise for JPG batch output. You will discover images can be denoised in an average of 2 seconds each!! While this workflow style in your video works for you, personally, it wouldn't be acceptable to media agencies to have images delayed to their servers the following morning. Anyway, most sports photographers already have their proven style to get images out with little delay.

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Like I said in the video, this is not a technique for cranking out photos quickly - and I don’t use it for those customers that need them right away. And, if you’re a working pro, you probably don’t need my advice anyway.

[@sportsphototv]

What? Giving away presets? That's unheard of. ha ha

[@JackBeasleyMedia]

Yeah, and mine have boring names too!