Topaz Labs has announced the newest release in their AI-powered Photo AI product line, Photo AI 3. It brings improved processing along with the ability to create presets, re-ordering enhancements, raw adjustments and more.
I have to admit, I haven’t followed the image upscalers and AI-powered features for a while. A lot of them haven’t impressed me. But Topaz Labs Photo AI3 has started to change my mind. This isn’t a review, but I have included some screenshots below from using it over the last day or so.
Note: All images are 100% crops for comparison, so you’re seeing 1:1 how the camera made it vs how Photo AI 3 made it.
Topaz Labs Photo AI 3 – Presets and more
Photo AI 3 is not just a one-click-and-its-done piece of software. If you want that, you probably need Topaz Labs Gigapixel upscaler. That being said, you can treat it that way if you wish. If you just want something that at least makes it look better than it was, even if it’s not the best it could be, then by all means, load your photo, click go and call it a day.
But where Photo AI 3 shines is that it allows you to deep dive into the various enhancements its made and tweak them. If you feel, for example, that it’s a little too oversharpened in some areas, you can dial it back. If you feel it’s not quite sharpened enough in other areas, you can increase those, too.
There are various enhancements that can be applied, and you may often find yourself making those same enhancements to every image. Now, you can save them all in presets.
You’re also able to re-order those enhancements, similarly to re-ordering adjustment layers in Photoshop. So you get compete control over the order in which different processes happen. It’s a lot easier (and quicker), for example, to process an image than it is to upscale it 400% and then process it.
So order matters.
Raw colour adjustments
As well as denoising, sharpening and generally cleaning up your image, Photo AI 3 can now process the colour in your raw files, too. You’re able to adjust the colour balance and even the lighting in Photo AI 3. So, for some workflows, Lightroom could become a thing of the past.
The images at the top of this post of the very wet springer spaniel are some I shot in 2007 with a Nikon D100 and Nikon 300mm f/4D AF-S lens. This was a 6.1-megapixel DSLR before we had AF Fine Tune (I think that came in the D200), so you never nailed it perfectly when shooting wide open.
Seeing how much it’s enhanced that image by just letting it automagically do its thing has really shown me just how far such software has come. I can see it breathing some new life into many of my older digital images. And perhaps some older cameras lying around that I haven’t used in over a decade, too.
Price and Availability
Photo AI 3 is available to buy now for $199 from the Topaz Labs website. You get to keep the software forever, but that price gets you free upgrades for 12 months. After that, it’s $99/yr if you want to keep getting the upgrades.
