Its advertising pure and simple. The world of photography is full of “ambassadors” who are all paid by manufacturers to sell their product. Do we ever believe what we see/hear in adverts - of course not!
Which makes me wonder why so many people, apart from a minority of photographers, never bother to calibrate their monitors.
4 Likes
I saw that video by Dave Kelly and responded to it. Dave was kind enough to send me the RAW file and I did the comparison myself.
Conclusion: DeepPRIME gave a better result - preserved fine detail while eliminating noise. The roll-off at the edges was more graceful, it generated no artifacts (Topaz AI generates artifacts such as colour fringing - you have to zoom to 300% or 400% to see them).
I used DeepPRIME in DxO Photolab 5 (not in PureRAW which offers limited control) and set the Luminance to 100. That made a difference on this ultra high ISO image.
2 Likes
This is BS. He does not explain the settings on Deep Prime like he did in detail for Topaz. Two thumbs down.
1 Like
The primary reason why I like DeepPRIME so much is because the noise reduction (and sharpening) is done at the demosaicing level. I basically set it and forget it and use it on all of my images. I used to have a license for Topaz but decided it wasn’t worth it and was redundant. I am sure that the new Topaz product is very good but I am not sure why I would use it when DeepPRIME works so well and is seamless in my workflow (I don’t even think about it anymore). As well, in the cases where DeepPRIME does leave a bit of noise due to an extremely high ISO image I actually think the noise looks good (like film grain) and adds character. Personally I think people obsess too much about noise and sharpness. I used to be that way but not anymore, primarily because I use DeepPRIME as a seamless part of my workflow. I have freedom to set my ISO on my camera at AUTO and not worry about noise. It was actually quite liberating.
1 Like
Same here. I use always auto iso and dxo make the noise reduction very good.
Yes, I always use topaz as a plug-in to affinity working on DNG’s from DxO
Because I already own the products I will download photo ai (it’s in early release). I hardly ever use denoise anymore, as you have all demonstrated, deep prime is better. But I do have uses for sharpen ai and gigapixel ai. So I will set photo ai’s noise reduction off or minimal and see if any new ‘magic’ is happening.
That is a little confusing. Why not just apply DeepPRIME directly when you create the DNGs in PhotoLab rather than after the fact using Topaz in Affinity?
Mark
1 Like
Sorry that was confusing, I start in DxO applying DeepPrime (or PureRaw) exporting as DNG. Affinity then reads the DNG and I can then use the SharpenAI plugin. I don’t need DenoiseAI at this point and only use sharpenAI when something has gone wrong like too slow a shutter speed = movement blur
2 Likes
Ahh. OK. Now I get it. This thread was primarily about the new version of Topaz Denoise AI, thus my assumption you were applying it in Affinity.
Mark
1 Like
He didn’t , because there is just one setting in Pure RAW. I have already mention that Deep PRIME in PL5 could remove more noise.
Agree on the loss of detail. I have Sharpen AI, but looking at Denoise AI, the loss of detail is a show stopper. To be clear, the Topaz is not bad, but not something I would use to replace PureRaw.
1 Like
After all this feedback, I have the feeling that the thread title might be misleading…
Topaz kept some details, while DeepPrime suppressed quite a few small stars in the comparison of @Joanna ? Can’t see a real winner in that comparison, and just to prevent being suspected as a Topaz fanboy (while Dxo PL has fanboys AND fangirls 
), I never used or bought one, but just found out how quickly a thread can blow up to lots of posts, it’s title should just claim something like “Something of Photoloab has been surpassed by blabla” – after that, some users will return form their summer holidays… very amusing. 
And that’s the next thing. I don’t want to unemploy the members of the “everything outside native ISO should be avoided at all costs” group. Never understood the panic about noise.
1 Like
I hadn’t refined the detail slider so, perhaps there is more and the image that you see is but a small crop of the whole image. But the main point of the comparison is to show that there is still considerable “noise” and very little more detail with Topaz.
A starry sky is a particular nightmare for noise reduction because the algorithm has to “guess” what is a star or a galaxy and galaxies look more like a smudge than a point.
The example shot was at 1,000 ISO because with DeepPRIME I really don’t worry any more about high ISO, often shooting at 10,000 ISO at concerts.
@Joanna, I should have stated that I don’t count you into that group. If a anyone finds noise in my pictures, I advice him to wear noise canceling sun-glasses. First, that looks much cooler, second, in all the shadow and bokeh situations, were the noise bugs start to populate into, they become nearly non-existent. The whole world is full of noise, would it be absent, we all were already dead.
ISO 102.400 just to find out how horrible noise can become. I didn’t have to bother DeepPrime to develop a RAW, overexposed by more than 2 f-stops. Or PL.
And actually, what good is noise reduction for, when people afterwards add film grain to simulate some ancient impressions?
If using a smaller sensor and there’s a need of strong crop because of (too) short focal length, I can understand the complaints about noise. But with today’s cameras I’m listening less and less to people complain about noise.
@JoJu
Even if a I personally prefer the look of of the PL image before the Topaz image in Joannas comparison I think your point is important to stress. Which one to chose will be decided by the usage and
With Joannas exampel we have no idea what she has done with either of these softwares because neither of them is a “black box” like PureRaw. The name PureRaw is quite funny when the internediate format is pure TIFF.
I guess people interrested in space phenomenons might find the Topaz image more intresting with it’s details and noise but I would not put it on my wall.
I have tried Topaz a year ago for some weeks on some Jpeg-files, just as an experiment and that Jpegs is something it does better than Photolab that is designed to exclusively demand RAW for the Deep Prime.
Topaz isn’t the only software to work with intermediate TIFF-files. That is a terrible legacy of all software designed to be used as plug ins to Adobe-software and that is my main complaint about DXO NIK Collection too. I don’t think NIK is properly integrated with Photolab before we get rid of these terrible TIFF-files it demands and creates.
1 Like
@Stenis
On my personal list of what makes a RAW a keeper and what doesn’t, noise reduction belongs to the latter. I never heard someone saying “composition sucks, lighting is terrible and sharpness just not there, but it has very little noise and is therefore the winner of …” I admit, seeing noise in an image never bothered me. Coming from an era when ISO 12.800 only could be reached with long development, higher temperature of development or some chemical specialities at the border of serious environmental pollution, the b/w film surviving this treatment had grain like rocks.
And Topaz being a special tool, in need of huge TIFs first to do it’s questionable magic… If it surpasses PL so be it, after all Topaz buyers also want to see a result for their investment. But it will never surpass it in a way to make PL or DeepPrime useless, so all this excitement about a bit less noise is beyond my comprehension.
3 Likes