Why Topaz Labs DeNoise AI and Sharpen AI BLEW MY MIND

i learned a very important lesson the other day and that is sometimes it's not always the best thing for your photo software to be a jack of all trades in some situations it makes more sense to use software that is specifically tuned for a particular task in this video i'm going to show you what i mean by that what's going on everyone brian mathiash welcome to the video so here's basically what happened a few weeks ago i made the decision to move from adobe lightroom cloud new lightroom over to lightroom classic and if you want you can check out the video i did a live video with rob sylvan where we went into painful detail about what's involved with that but as part of the process before i made the migration i went on this binge of purging old photos that i just didn't need i knew i'd never want in that process though i found a bunch of photos that i completely forgot about i must have not ever done anything with them or i just got busy with other shoots and other tasks and i wanted to edit them so i did and in the process i realized that certain things that i needed to apply certain tasks like noise reduction and sharpening using lightroom or camera i tried both they just failed they didn't live up to what i needed and they ended up actually making the images look worse so i talked with a buddy of mine matt kloskowski who's an awesome photographer and even better photo educator and he was telling me how much he relies on two products for noise reduction and sharpening and both of them are by topaz labs one of them is called d-noise ai and the other one is sharpen ai and so that really piqued my interest i never really considered using an application that was custom built for a specific task as part of my workflow most of the times in the past few years i've just been using the tools that were available to me in lightroom and in photoshop and what i realized after using these products is that i was able to identify certain characteristics in the photos that would most benefit from using either denoise or sharpen ai so let me tell you what i mean by that i'm in lightroom over here as you can see and here are some photos that i took and like i said there are certain use cases where i found using denoise ai and sharpen ai to really kind of save the photos that would otherwise probably be lost they just wouldn't be worth sharing so here's what i mean here i've got two different photos this one i took in 2017 october this one is even older in 2013 and then mobile photos and that's what i'm going to get to in a minute but i feel like these two applications are amazing when you pair them with mobile photos but i'm getting ahead of myself let's start with this photo here so like i said i was going through older photos and um i completely forgot that i took these photos uh here's a kind of a wildlife photos something i don't do very often and part of the reason is because i don't have the longest lenses necessarily or the cameras with the fastest burst modes but still this was taken um i was at a really long distance you can see here that this was with a sony a9 and the 100 to 400 millimeter with a teleconverter and if i bring up the information here it was the the two-time teleconverter and i was at 400 millimeters with the two-time teleconverter i was at 800 millimeters now if i zoom in i can see there's a little bit of artifacting and some noise already happening and we haven't even touched the photo yet so let's do that i'm going to go ahead and go to the develop module let's just fix the photo really quickly first obviously we need to rotate so that the horizon is level uh that's looking pretty good right around there but the other thing is that this is still way too far even at 800 millimeters um it's just too far i want to be closer so we'll go back to the crop mode and i'm going to really tighten the the composition so now you can really see the just kind of how much noise there is on top of that let's go ahead and fix it as far as the exposure you can see that this is kind of underexposed if i look at the information in the metadata it was at iso 8000 1 125th of a second at f11 so that's kind of what i used to get the shot to get the uh the animal over here sharp and it is sharp thankfully it's not soft but we'll go ahead let's bring out the white point a little bit let's open up the exposure uh let's open up the black point just so that we're not necessarily blowing out highlights or clipping shadows and so you can see here i mean there is a ton of noise it's just it's not very good in my opinion let me add a little bit of contrast i'm going to darken it just a tiny bit all right so there you go actually i'm also going to warm it there now if i were in the lightroom i'd go down here to under the detail panel to the noise reduction here and i would start trying to add some noise reduction and you really don't start to see that effect until you get way up here where it's it kind of makes it mushy it's really really weird you also lose all the detail in uh the the fur and uh up here just it's just not very good same thing with color noise reduction if i try to remove some of that it's a little bit better but you still start to lose a lot of detail and you still have a bunch of noise so this is why i reached out to my buddy matt because he does a lot of wildlife photography and i wanted to ask him what he does to kind of mitigate this and this is how you know this whole conversation of using topaz denoise and sharpen came up so let's go ahead here the photo is kind of at the place where it's fine i'm going to go ahead and right click we're going to send it to photoshop and the first thing i'm going to do is just duplicate this layer just so that we have the original you do that by hitting command or control j and then let's rename this to topaz denoise ai now i'm not going to do anything else i'm just going to send it into topaz i'll go to filter topaz labs and then go to topaz denoise ai now in the noise there are three primary settings for the ai mode there's denoise ai ai clear and low light the way that i like to use denoise and sharpen is there's a slick view here it's kind of like a four up view called comparison view when i click it it shows me all three modes with the original up here in the top left quadrant and i can see okay this is the denoise ai mode this is the ai clear mode and this is the low light mode and i can kind of move around if i want to reposition to get a better view and between the three here i actually like this ai clear it looks the best so i'm going to go ahead and return to the single view and click on ai clear and you can see just i mean it really is very impressive just how much of an improvement there is if i press and hold you can see this is the original without any edits and if i let go uh that's what with the ai enhancements with noise reduction so the thing that i love most is that it retains a lot of the detail especially here in the fur that was lost when i was using lightroom's noise reduction and so with just a few clicks i mean i was able to get a really good result without losing any of that important detail so i'm going to go ahead and click apply to return back to photoshop and if i toggle here is that denoise layer this is the original one and just for comparison i'm going to go ahead to this original background layer we'll do another duplicate layer i'll put on top over here we'll rename this one acrnr for adobe camera raw noise reduction and i'm going to go to filter and we're gonna go to camera raw filter and this is effectively the develop module that you'd find in lightroom but in photoshop so let's go ahead we'll go to detail and again just like before let's go ahead and add some noise reduction and you know kind of slowly start to see when we get some of that noise removed which is i guess right around here we're starting to get it but it's introducing even more artifacting even if i increase some of that detail to restore some of that detail it's still kind of mushy throughout the fur over here and also over here in the foreground it's all very mushy and again even if i turn this off and try with color noise reduction not really seeing much of a difference here so noise reduction is what we're going to use try to get rid of that noise try to mitigate it add some detail and also a little bit of contrast uh and that's about as good as we're gonna get if i kind of toggle i mean it is removing the noise but i'm also losing all that detail so let's click okay over here and now we'll turn on the topaz denoise layer just to compare the two so you can see i mean one the noise reduction is much cleaner in the background but the other thing is look over here in the fur the detail of the fur is much crisper and then also look in the background here where the noise culprit was you can still see there's still plenty of that noise it's just kind of smudged whereas here the noise is actually mitigated to the point where it looks realistic it looks like i haven't lost any detail and that is what's really impressive to me and that's basically what reinforced to me why it's important to consider using an application that is custom built for a specific purpose as opposed to just using this for instance in this case the noise reduction as part of a much larger set of tools by using something like denoise ai it just solves the problem much more effectively all right now let's go back to lightroom over here and here this is a different photo again this was taken in 2013 with an old canon 5d mark iii and a 500 millimeter prime lens so i'm gonna go in here again it's one of those photos where i uh i don't know i just seeing other people do wildlife photography kind of i'm starting to get that bug a little bit i just want to see if i have anything that i've taken in the past and whether i can salvage any of it now this photo for the most part you know it's obviously underexposed so let's go ahead we'll fix it we'll go to the develop module and you can even see in the histogram there's plenty of room to play with so we will open up the exposure let's bring that white point out let's open up the black point open up the shadows and we'll add just a little bit of contrast i'm also going to warm it just a tiny bit and so that's looking better and if i zoom in here's the problem uh and let me go ahead i'll zoom in a little bit more you can see that it's just a little soft um either i didn't get the right focus or there was just a little bit of motion blur but point is that it's not critically sharp and that's a problem um and so again i thought all right let me try the sharpening in lightroom so i went down to the detail panel and again we went to sharpening and i let's put the target right here on the eye and i'm going to press and hold the option key and i'm going to try to get it sharp but it just doesn't look very good even if i adjust the radius and the detail of the sharpening and remove it from the rest of the scene it just it looks overly crispy doesn't look like it's sharpened properly so let's go ahead we'll if i turn that off you can see what it does it's just it's not good it actually introduces a bunch of noise as well so let's go ahead we'll remove the sharpening i'm also going to go and crop because that's the other thing is i wanted this photo to be a little bit tighter on the bird so right around here see if that's good there okay so that's looking good but if we zoom in we're still not fully sharp so let's right click we'll send it to photoshop just like before and i'm going to go ahead and duplicate that layer again command or control j let's rename this one to topaz sharpen ai and we'll go ahead and let's invoke it so we'll go to filter topaz labs and topaz sharpen ai and even if i don't do anything just with this default view if i press and hold that's the original i'm looking at the eye over here and i can see just how much detail is brought in but i'm going to go ahead like before in denoise ai i'm going to go to that comparison view and between the three i like the out of focus but it's a bit overly sharpened the motion blur is kind of that goldilocks it brings back enough of that detail without introducing any artifacts so let's go to view and then single view and again if i press and hold you can see how that detail snaps back in now remember this is a photo that i took in 2013 that i already heavily cropped so to be able to recover any detail without introducing you know any artifacting or noise that's a win for me and that's one of those things where again it's important to pair partly your expectations but also the reality of the situation it's a really old photo taken with a really old camera and i'm trying to recover one some information from it being underexposed and two for it being heavily cropped so i'm happy with this i'll go ahead and click apply and if we toggle the layers you can see just look at the eyes i'll go ahead and zoom in and let's just kind of toggle i mean look i mean look at the way the detail gets snapped back in now just like before i'm going to go turn this layer off and let's duplicate this layer we'll rename this one acr sharpening and put it up above let's go to filter camera raw filter and we'll go to the sharpening tool over here let's add some sharpening somewhere right around there is looking good let's remove some of that from the area that we don't want and i'm pressing holding the option key or the alt key to show me that mask now let's also add a little bit more of a radius to the sharpening as well as a little bit of detail and so i can see it's yes it's sharper but it also brings in this weird noise so i'm going to go ahead and click ok here and let's see the difference between acr and topaz sharpen so you can see let's let's go ahead i'll zoom in just a bit so this is the acr sharpening and that's the topaz sharpening do you see how it just gets rid of all that really nasty noise that was introduced and it gives you this nice clear it's sharper because here's the original this is just with acr it just brings in a lot of that noise but with sharpen ai it just kind of snaps that detail and that's again pairing the application that is purpose driven this is meant for sharpening soft or blurry photos it just works a lot better in my opinion now before we move on to the next series of photos i want to tell you about a special discount that topaz has given me to offer if you're interested in buying either of these products or all of their products click the link in the description below and use code matias15 to save 15 off your purchase even if the products are already on sale you'll still get 15 percent off now it's worth noting that topaz provided me with review copies of both of these applications and i appreciate that but this is not a paid or sponsored video uh they do not get to watch this video before you guys do they have no input on it uh they're seeing at the same time you guys are i was just really impressed with these applications i wanted to share with you how i use them and how i think they can benefit you so again link in the description use code mateis15 to say 15 off now here's where i found dino as ai and sharpen ai to really shine and that's with my mobile photography now listen i actually love shooting with my iphone i'm so impressed with the quality of photos that it produces but depending on the situation especially if it's not ideal lighting conditions the results can be less than stellar and i thought hey let's try pairing denoise and sharpen ai with my mobile photos so that's what we're going to do right now here's a photo that i took again with my iphone 12 and if we go to the develop module it's straight out of camera there are no edits to it but if i zoom in you can see that there is plenty of noise in the background so first thing i'm going to do let's just kind of warm the photo up a little bit i'm all i'm doing is just kind of massaging it a bit i'm going to open up the exposure bring out that white point not too much uh add some highlights and just make sure that we're not clipping the shadows too much so that's looking good let's also go ahead and crop and just straighten that horizon all right so with that we still got that noise and just like before if we use the noise reduction in lightroom uh basically what it does is it starts to smush everything you lose all the detail around the edges it's just not very good um yes it does get rid of the noise or at least it kind of mitigates it but all of those edges get really mushy and just looks like you added a lot of noise reduction so let's turn that off and we'll go and send this to photoshop and let's go ahead and create a layer here we'll call this topaz denoise ai and we'll send it to denoise by going to the filter menu and then going to denoise and just looking really quickly between these modes the denoise ai looks really good so let's just see we'll go back to the single view and if i press and hold one of the things i really like is that it actually brought out some detail in the foreground if i show you the original which i'm showing you right here it looks kind of soft but that detail snaps back in let's go ahead we'll go to a 100 view and we'll go up here to the background and it looks pretty good i could definitely see a difference but let's just see i think ai clear looks better and it does i still have the detail along the edges but it does a better job of removing that noise i can also if it's too much of that noise reduction i can click on the low mode but the more i look at it i actually like the denoise option over here it just looks more natural it got rid of a lot of that noise but it has more detail in the background same thing if i go here to the foreground it removes enough of that noise but it still retains a lot of that detail especially in the tree here you can see how that tree looks kind of soft but afterwards it adds a little bit of sharpness which is really nice and so let's go ahead and click apply i'm just toggling the denoise layer with the original it does a really nice job of mitigating that noise without mushing out the details and that's what i'm looking for especially with these mobile photos which are 12 megapixel photos not the best in terms of low light performance so again being able to use a purpose-driven app for a specific use case has its benefits and now let's go to the final image here this was a photo that i took a few months ago during the winter after all the leaves obviously fell we would get this frost and i just love these kinds of photos but if i zoom in you can see how it's just not very sharp and it should be i mean this was taken 1 200th of a second at a fixed aperture but should definitely be sharp so again this is where pairing purpose-driven apps for a specific use case will benefit big time let's go ahead i'll go to the develop module over here and there's really not that much that i need to do to the photo i might go ahead and drop the exposure just a little bit open up the highlights the white point a little bit and open up shadows so that's looking good here i'm also going to warm it up just a tiny bit now let's go ahead and we'll send it to photoshop and let's duplicate that layer we'll rename it topaz sharpen ai and we'll send it to sharpen ai so right off the bat without doing anything if i just press and hold you can see the details the way they snap in like i'm looking over here the details are brought back without it being overly sharpened like we saw in that previous example of the bird if you add too much sharpening using layer more camera it'll actually introduce these artifacts and noise here i'm getting that information the sharpened details without actually having that artifact it looks really really good but we'll go ahead and go to our comparison view and actually between these three modes the out of focus mode looks really really good so back to single view and i'm going to click on out of focus and just seeing the difference the way the details kind of snap into place we'll go let's fit the image to view and just toggling i can see just all the details especially in the center here the way they snap into place it's kind of soft over here almost looks like it's out of focus but with the sharpening effect put in it just looks great and again pairing a purpose-driven app for a specific use case in this case it's a mobile photo uh even with 12 megapixels and it's not cropped just wasn't really critically sharp so having that little extra nudge really adds to the quality of the photo so i hope this gave you something to think about it doesn't only have to be with noise reduction and sharpening for example i think it's important to figure out based on the specific tools or the utilities that you need whether what you have is most effective or if there's something else that is even better in my case i am actually very impressed with how topaz denoise and sharpen ai for their specific purposes performed with these photos some of which are almost 10 years old or taken with a mobile phone and a tiny camera sensor again if you're interested in getting topaz d noise ai or sharpen ai for yourselves click the link in the description below and use code matias15 to save 15 off your order even if the products already on sale and to continue your video watching journey just click right over here that is the live video i did with rob sylvan we go into all kinds of detail of what's involved if you want to move from the newer lightroom back to lightroom classic with that i'll see you on the next video thanks a lot

Channel: Brian Matiash

Views: 18,979

Keywords: topaz denoise ai, topaz labs, photo editing, noise reduction, topas sharpen ai, topaz denoise ai review, topaz denoise ai tutorial, topaz denoise ai lightroom

Id: B9B65DAwxVw

Length: 22min 44sec (1364 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 05 2021