Topaz Denoise AI: Worth it??? It depends

[@JasonPolakPhotography]

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[@dian970]

thank you!

[@JasonPolakPhotography]

You are welcome.

[@RonK]

not sure, but it looks like you did not use the builtin, dedicated "denoise"-Tool/-slider in Capture One at all?

[@JasonPolakPhotography]

I did use denoising in Capture One. I don't know what settings I used now since it was a long time since I made the video but I definitely used the dedicated tool.

[@kenphused]

Excellent comparison... I agree with Todd that DT v3.8 will yield better results than v3.2 using the scene-referred process.

[@JasonPolakPhotography]

You and Todd are right! I just finished testing Darktable 3.8 and its wavelet profiled denoise does a much better job at chroma denoise. It's actually amazing how much better DT is than Capture One, and how close it comes to Topaz Denoise with only a little more work. In my opinion, Darktable has now surpassed most commercial programs in almost all areas of Raw processing.

[@emrg777]

Why bother with DT if you are going to use such an old version???

[@JasonPolakPhotography]

It's definitely a fair question! Thanks for asking. My answer is multifaceted. (A) The main computer which I use to record videos still has an older version of Linux Mint for which there is no new version of darktable. (B) I downloaded the newer 3.8 on a different computer and tested it and there were no significant improvements to the noise reduction so I wouldn't get much different than what I do in this video. (C) In general, pretty much everything I need for photo editing is already on the 3.2 version. I have tried 3.8 extensively like I said so I don't feel like I'm missing much. That being said, I definitely DO plan to upgrade, but unfortunately I've had very little time for such things but I realize that for video tutorials it would definitely look better to use 3.8. I am planning on making more darktable tutorials in the future and darktable related videos, so expect those to use the later version. It's just been a very busy past year for me :D

[@emrg777]

@@JasonPolakPhotography It may not look too different but there was quite a bit of work done on the underlying code and a shift to a wavelet model as the default ..also a different colorspace model is used for Luma and Chroma so it likely does produce superior results to 3.2.

[@JasonPolakPhotography]

@Todd Prior ... Well Todd, you convinced me. I just updated my entire system and installed Darktable 3.8, so I'm going to post a rematch just for you :)

[@emrg777]

@@JasonPolakPhotography I have no idea if you will notice a huge difference...if you have not seen them the videos by the module creator are awesome...esp the one he did for version 2.6...lots of strong basic information there including per channel NR. His newer ones for the 3.x series are good and likely should be viewed before doing your comparison ...Enjoy 3.8. filmic works way better as do several other modules ...color calibration is awesome as is rgb colorbalance

[@dubstepzsi]

Capture one is god awful for deniosing affinity is much better for deniosing not tried dark-table

[@JasonPolakPhotography]

I have personally tried Capture One and Lightroom and they are both horrendous for noise reduction, so I agree.