StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

As I own several Topaz AI products, I recently downloaded Photo AI for their "sale" price. I have been using it regularly for about a week, with somewhat mixed results--Mostly very satisfactory. For the most part, I think it does a good job of selecting subjects, applying noise reduction and sharpening when necessary. I find that it saves time by not having to use the individual apps separately. However, there are several issues which I find rather annoying. I am wondering if other users have foundthe same. 1. Photo AI seems to make an effort to find EVERY face in a photo, rather than just the main subject. So, for example, if I have a picture of one or two individual faces, but there are other faces blurred out in the background, Photo AI will sharpen every face it detects. So, rather than have a nicely blurred background, all background faces that are detected are sharpened. This defeats the purpose of a blurry background and of separating subject from background. 2. If I take a photo of a group, let's say four children, and one of them is not in the same plane, Photo AI seems to sharpen the three faces in the same plane (which are already in focus) but ignores the one face in a different plane, which is blurry and actually requires sharpening. I have not yet found a way to mask out the other three faceas and just sharpen the blurry one. (Yes, I know I can eliminate this issue by using an aperture of f 5.6-f 8. However, I am an amateur, and sometimes forget to change my aperture from f 2 or 2.8). 3. This is minor, and doesn't really bother me much, but it is worth mentioning. I find that when I use Photo AI it seems to saturate the colors, making them more vibrant. I have no real problem with this, but I find no adjustment or tab in the program that indicates it will do this, or that will allow me to eliminate this step if I do not want the photos saturated. I prefer to do this in Lr after I use Photo AI. (My workflow has been: upload photos, process raw photos in Photo AI, make any additional edits in Lr). Any comments will be appreciated.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

One can turn off face recovery... also you can select area of improvement:
https://support.topazlabs.com/article/124-topaz-photo-ai-quick-start

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Thanks! I only had time to glance at that, but it looks like it should be quite helpful!

KillroyII Loc: Middle Georgia

Thanks, I did a VERY quick trial, noting that face and arms are improved but look plastic or China like. I assumed that could be backed off and bought the bundle. Have been working multiple other issues so have not used the purchased products yet… making your feedback valuable to me.

KillroyII Loc: Middle Georgia

Thanks & see my reply to StevenG

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Killroy, as doullum said, check out the link he included. The video is very helpful. If you watch it on YouTube, there are several other helpful videos that follow this one.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

Thanks again. I checked out this link and several other videos. Very helpful.

KillroyII Loc: Middle Georgia

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

I like to shoot in manual mode as it gives me more control over my images. It took a bit of study and experience to get there. For the same reason, I prefer to do individual operations in Post using Camera Raw, LRc, PS, Topaz DeNoise AI and Topaz Sharpen AI. I have played with Photo AI (ver 1.1.0), but I've yet to find an image I couldn't do a better job of enhancing. I've spent a lot of time learning the Post Processing software I use, and I have developed my own style. I don't want to take a step backwards. Maybe photo AI will get there, but IMHO, it's not there yet. I can't help thinking, but certainly wouldn't accuse anyone of using Photo AI as their primary image enhancement tool because they just don't want to take the time to learn the techniques needed to get better results.

StevenG Loc: Long Island, NY

I shoot in raw and manual, and use Lr and photoshop as well. Photo AI is another tool. Hopefully photo AI, as it improves, will eventually take the place of all the individual Topaz products you are already using. And save considerable time. It’s almost there now.