The New Topaz Photo: How well does it compare to Lightroom and DxO?

Topaz says it’s “Trusted by the Best”. Perhaps so, but . . .

7,031 words; 10 photographs; 37-minute read

I’m revisiting some work I did earlier in the year. Back in February, I completed some fairly extensive testing of DxO PureRAW, Lightroom, and Topaz PhotoAI in Raw File Optimization. Since then a few changes have come about:

1. Adobe Lightroom integrated denoise into the regular workflow. No longer does it create a separate DNG for denoised images. A definite improvement in workflow and file management.
2. DxO brought out its updated DxO PhotoLab 9, which I reviewed back in October (Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).
3. Topaz Labs moved to a subscription model when they introduced Topaz Photo (and Studio), without AI in the name, but most definitely still reliant on AI.

I could have you read all the way to the end for a conclusion, but let me save you some time. From what I’m seeing, Topaz Photo (v1.0.2) is no better than Topaz PhotoAI. The GUI has changed slightly, but the results appear the same. Are they better than Lightroom or DxO? In some cases, yes, in others, no. Much depends on the end use and what you expect to use Topaz Photo for. Keep reading . . .

Before I began testing, I had to ask myself, what circumstance would cause me to take the time to leave Lightroom to use Topaz Photo? You see, Topaz Photo is not a full-fledged processing suite like Lightroom or Capture 1 and, to a lesser degree DxO PhotoLab 9. Fundamentally, both Lightroom and Capture 1 ‘do it all’, like no other editing suite:

• All the Metadata stuff: flagging, rating, keywording, location data, etc.;
• Image Organization in Folders, Albums and Smart Albums;
• Processing: auto exposure or not, auto whites, blacks, highlights and shadows, or not; colour balance, grading, and mixing; black-and-whites;, denoise; effects such as texture, clarity, dehaze and vignetting; detail adjustments; export sharpening; masking par excellence; optics adjustments; lens blur; and geometry.
• Export for multiple uses, geared primarily to digital output; Lightroom Classic has greater capabilities here;
• Fully searchable Library, geared to the needs of photographers, even without keywording.

And this describes the plain version of Lightroom, not Lightroom Classic, which is even more capable. Which brings me around to price. Typically I prefer discussing the features before addressing price, but I really must get this off my chest . . .

Price

I’ll come right out and say it: any way you slice it, at USD $17/month, Topaz is waaaaaayyyyy over-priced. Lightroom is a far more capable app and it’s USD $12/month. And, that comes with:

• 1 TB of cloud storage;
• Lightroom Mobile for phone and tablet use;
• Lightroom Classic (if you want to avoid working in the Adobe Cloud);
• Lightroom Web editing;
• online sharing of Lightroom albums; and
• a professional-looking Adobe Portfolio website (example here).

Topaz Photo might be worth it at half the price, but seriously, it is nowhere near as complete an app as Lightroom, so there is no reason for it be more expensive.

I don’t get it. Where does Topaz get off charging more than Lightroom, yet delivering far fewer features. In fact, what I discovered is that you really cannot use Topaz Photo for editing without having an additional, more feature-rich photo editor, like Lightroom or Capture 1. Am I missing something here?

Topaz Photo Features

Despite the array of filters for Remove, Adjust light, Balance color, etc., Topaz Photo is missing many of the features offered by Lr and C1. It’s like a blunt object in that it lacks the artistic finesse adjustments within each Filter. Don’t get me wrong, Topaz Photo excels in Raw Denoise, Sharpening and Upscaling. What Topaz Labs have done is add a few other bon mots such as Spot Healing and Recover Faces, but many of the Filters rely on push-button refinements without the nuanced options available in Lightroom, Capture 1, or DxO PhotoLab 9. Even Apple Photos has a far richer processing environment.

It appears Topaz Labs have chosen breadth of tools to ‘rescue’ photos, over depth of user refinements, perhaps relying on AI to make the ‘correct’ decisions for it.

I’ll state upfront that I don’t like software making decisions in a vacuum. If a photo needs sharpening, or an adjustment to lighting, then I prefer to analyse it myself to make decisions. I also want to see the actual adjustments reflected in the sliders/values, which I can then either finesse or ignore by going back to the drawing board. I find too many of the options in Topaz to be black-box ‘push-button’ decision-makers with few options.

Example 1: Sharpen

Under Sharpen, there are eight push-button options, each with only Strength and Opacity as options. Nowhere is there the more industry-standard Radius and Masking or Threshold, for example.

Example 2: Adjust lighting

The ‘Adjust Lighting’ filter is similar: push a button with fine tuning limited to Exposure, Highlight and Shadow. Now, I’ll admit to often using Lightroom’s ‘Auto’ button, as it is fairly accurate. However, when using Auto, Lightroom also shows me exactly what it changed on the sliders. And, I still have full control over those adjustments for further tweaking: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows, Whites and Blacks. Lightroom also provides Auto Whites, Auto Blacks, a histogram and out-of-gamut warnings, all fundamental tools for accurate exposure adjustment.

Topaz only provides Exposure, Highlight and Shadow. And, after the push-button changes, they are all zeroed, providing no information to the user about what was changed. To me, knowing what the application is doing behind the scenes is essential for learning how to improve my approach to processing. Information is power. Reliance on back-box decisions is, at best, tenuous.

To make matters worse, when Adjust lighting is used, users cannot output the file as a DNG, only as a TIF file. Huh? What happened to non-destructive raw editing?!? TIFFs bake-in the changes, destroying the whole concept. Not good.

Example 3: Balance color

As with ‘Adjust lighting’, Balance color can be applied to ‘All’ or ‘Subject’ or ‘Landscape’ or ‘Portrait’ (and others). This is helpful, but once applied, the only two user options are Temperature, which is not stated as industry-standard °K, and Opacity. There is no option for Tint, Vibrance or Saturation. And, I wonder, how is colour balance being determined in the first place? It turns out, by AI, but more on that later. As with Adjust lighting, when Balance color is used, raw files can only exported as TIF files. Again, not good.

Two other nigglies, as if I haven’t shared enough already! When I make a change to, for example, Exposure,

(a) the change is not live as I drag the slider (as it is with Lightroom). I must wait for processing to occur; and

(b) there is no simple ‘Undo’ for a change I’ve made; e.g. using Cmd+Z and Shift+Cmd+Z to ‘Redo’, like I can with Lightroom. Seeing is believing; toggling quick before and after changes is essential for finessing edits without having to locate and precisely drag an overly small slider back to where it was.

To me, it seems Topaz is focussing on the two things: (1) the push-button crowd who don’t want to get their hands dirty; and (2) the rescue of photos, not the processing of them. This means that, once a photo is initially processed in Topaz Photo, the app’s distinct lack of depth for refinement demands the use of another, more complete editing suite such as sLightroom or Capture 1.

File Size

Interesting . . . After applying Raw Denoise and Sharpen in Topaz Photo, my 20.7 MB raw file blossomed into a 121.6 MB DNG. That’s 5x larger. In Lightroom, the same 20 MB raw file remains 20 MB after denoising and sharpening. It’s not a huge issue, but something to be aware of if you intend on processing every file or batch processing a number of files at once.

So, why Topaz?

Again, I ask myself, for what reason would I take the additional time to leave Lightroom, do some work in Topaz Photo, then go back to Lightroom? Some of the images presented above help to explain it—when a photo needs some kind of rescuing. Those high ISO images that need raw denoising and more precise or targeted sharpening. For me, these are wildlife and bird photos plus any others that are slightly unsharp, due to lens blur or very slight subject/camera motion; i.e. the ones that need a little more TLC. I don’t have too many images like that, but I have a few.

Rufous Hummingbird

This fellow was on display for all to see. He would periodically fly between feeding at a flowering shrub to perch, then display, on this bare branch. It was an overcast day, ideal for allowing colours and feather detail to show without shadows. It also meant I needed to crank up the ISO to 6400 to maintain a shutter speed of 1/320, not really high enough to stop wing action. It is what it is.

Autopilot

I figured, the best place to start processing was with Autopilot, Topaz Photo’s built-in guru for deciding what’s best for an image. According to Topaz, Autopilot relies on AI algorithms to analyse the type of photo before making the adjustments it feels are necessary. This has the potential to be a valuable tool, especially because it can be customized in Preferences. It also gathers your personal editing history which it assesses and applies to its decision-making algorithm. In one sense, it is automatically creating your own personal Preset. However, users cannot save groups of settings within Autopilot for different types of images, say landscapes, wildlife, portraits, etc. User presets of groups of filters are made and saved outside of Autopilot, allowing users to tailor settings to image type.

So, let’s have a look at what Topaz Photo Autopilot does, compared to Lightroom’s auto Light, auto Color and auto Denoise.

Both apps do a reasonable job using ‘auto’, though the strengths of each become immediately apparent. Topaz does a better job with Raw Denoise and Sharpening in Autopilot whereas Lightroom does a better job of exposure and colour balance. The additional advantage with Lightroom, is that users still have full control over all aspects of Light, Color and Sharpening, whereas with Topaz Photo, options are limited to one or two sliders plus Opacity (the strength of the filter). Overall, the Lightroom version looks ready-to-go, unlike the Topaz image which still requires some colour correction, which, unfortunately, must be done in another app; e.g. Lightroom.

Auto Masking

When I opened the raw file in Topaz Photo, the app did an excellent job of Denoising the image, maintaining good feather detail while appropriately smoothing out the out-of-focus background, though I did notice some mottling of the background. When I selected Sharpening from the list of Filters, Topaz made a fairly accurate subject mask to ensure just the detailed areas received sharpening. Great. One less step for me.

Sharpening alternatives

With the variety of Sharpening options to choose from, which one to choose? I ended up going through each one to see how subtle or aggressive they were. I was pleased to see a ‘Wildlife BETA’ option. In the past, I’ve written about how artificial Topaz PhotoAI sharpening was when it came to fur and feathers. It added patterns that weren’t there, making fur and feathers appear ‘combed’ or ‘groomed’ like a pet might be, but certainly not wildlife. While, I couldn’t really see any appreciable difference between Standard or Strong, Wildlife was significantly more natural-looking than ‘Natural’, so there has been some progress.

Click on an image to scroll through these screen captures in Gallery mode. Which Sharpening would you choose?

One thing to note is the time lag that occurs when switching from one sharpening option to another. The app takes time not only to sharpen, but also to re-Adjust lighting. This is a significant departure from Lightroom, where all changes are live, on-screen, as the user makes them.

Computing Power / System Requirements

Now, before you claim I’m using an underpowered computer, all work is being done on an 2025 M4 15″ MacBook Air with 16 GB of ram. Lightroom, Preview and Safari are open as well as Topaz Photo. With this configuration, the only lag time I experience with Lightroom is when Denoise is initially deployed. To have lag time with each change in sharpening, as is the case with Topaz Photo, is, well, annoying.

In the specs for Topaz Photo, they say 16 GB of ram is the minimum, and 24+ GB ram is recommended. Funny that. Lightroom specifies a minimum of 8 GB and recommends 16 GB. I find it interesting in that a far more capable app has half the requirements. Not only is Topaz Photo more expensive to subscribe to, it also demands a more expensive computer system.

Back to the photo . . .

It took some work on my part, as the original photo appeared dark, though it was correctly exposed to preserve highlight detail. As a result, feather details were not entirely clear in the on-screen Preview. To improve that, I temporarily used Adjust lighting to bump the shadows, then turned it off before exporting the final DNG (to keep it as a DNG and not a TIFF). Upon exporting, the DNGs typically appeared over-sharpened compared to the on-screen Preview. Unexpectedly, the image also required an additional Denoise filter, specifically to smooth the mottling of the background. Therefore, my trial-and-error result was time-consuming and required a total of eight DNGs at different settings to match what I had achieved in Lightroom.

Part of this extra work could be chalked up to me learning the nuances of Topaz Photo. However, there is still a disconnect between the on-screen Preview and the DNG file as well as the need to temporarily brighten the image to more accurately assess the sharpening on-screen—all time consuming and not anything like the smooth workflow of Lightroom, where I can adjust light, colour and masks fluidly before or after attending to denoise and detail sharpening.

So I’ve left you in suspense, or have you figured out which one is which? Left is Topaz Photo; right is Lightroom. The discrepancies are so small that for anything other than a full-size fine print, i.e. for online, screen, photo books and calendars, the difference would be indistinguishable. For a full-size fine print, side-by-side, one would see differences. However, if they were not compared side-by-side, I doubt anyone would find fault with either result.

Backyard Racoon

This youngster paid us a visit one evening last May at 8:40pm, 10 minutes after sunset. The poor lighting demanded a wide-open aperture, a slow shutter speed for that focal length, combined with a high ISO of 32000, far beyond what I have used before, making this an ideal candidate for an app that claims to be cutting edge in raw denoising and sharpening.

Adjust lighting

Upon opening, Topaz Photo applied ‘RAW denoise’, choosing RAW Strong which provided a clearer result than RAW Normal. No problem, though it now needed some sharpening. Except, with the snout being very bright, it needed some exposure adjustment first to allow me to see how sharpening would be applied to the bright areas. I used Adjust lighting v2 and the image became overexposed with all highlight detail wiped out. I also discovered how aggressive the changes to Exposure are with –0.5 making it quite dark, rather more than the –½ EV a photographer might expect. The changes to highlights were maxed out at –1.0, much more than –1 EV.

Remove Filter

I thought this was also a good time to try the ‘Remove’ filter. Big mistake for a few reasons.

1. Changing the size of brush is a bit hit and miss. It would be very helpful if Topaz could show users the change in brush size in real time as the user drags the slider (as Lightroom does). This would save a lot of back and forth like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Lightroom also allows brush size changes simply by using a mouse or trackpad—very intuitive.
2. With the area brushed (e.g. the yellow reflection in the raccoon’s right eye), the actual process of removing took forever. What is instantaneous in Lightroom took 20 seconds or so.

I know, “Big deal,’ say the Topaz defenders. Sorry, but I don’t have all day to fiddle with brush sizes and sit around while Remove does its thing, on top of the lag time for each and every other adjustment.

A third concern I noticed is that after ‘Removal’ took place, the Raw Denoise filter disappeared from the panel. I’ve learned directly from Topaz Support that: “The ‘Filter Flattened’ message appears when using one of our generative AI models or Upscale enhancement, such as Remove, Dust & Scratches, Super Focus, [and] Upscale . . . it’s best to apply generative AI models / Upscale first, and then make final adjustments like Sharpen, Denoise, or Recover faces afterwards.” Good to know, however . . .

Generative AI

. . . instantly, the Generative AI red flag went up. For some, it’s acceptable to have half their photo re-generated using AI. Not me. I have no trouble using Assistive AI, but I’m sensitive to exactly what Generative AI is doing and where it is sourcing the pixels from. I wrote about AI in Photography in a previous article which goes into some detail about the differences. Lightroom uses internally-generative AI (pixels from the image) for Denoising and Lens Blur. External Generative AI is used only for Retouching ,but for me, that option is always toggled off. So what is Topaz Photo doing?

According to a Topaz Labs support request I put in: “The AI models used in Topaz Photo (including Remove, Dust & Scratches, Super Focus, and Upscale) are trained on a large set of internally curated training data explicitly created for model development. We do not use third-party or customer images pulled from the web or external sources for training.”

Bottom line: the pixels being generated by Topaz Photo are from external sources, not from the photograph being processing. To me, this is unacceptable. My fundamental belief is that a photograph should reflect the vision, talents and abilities of the person who made it. I prefer to stay true to the ideals of #RealWorldPhotography, and not use any external generative AI. This means, I’ll leave any retouching for Lightroom.

Sharpen

Initially, Topaz selected Lens Blur 2. It looked okay, but not great, certainly not as good as I had already achieved with both Lightroom and DxO separately. Again, I tried each of the Sharpening options and, well, you decide. Each of these screenshots show the different sharpening selections. Click to open them as the scrollable Gallery.

To my eyes, none of the Topaz-sharpened images are ideal, especially when compared to DxO PureRAW and Lightroom. Wildlife BETA and Standard, though soft, look the most realistic. With additional Detail Sharpening in Lightroom, they improved. However, we need to be careful here; many people prefer the more defined Natural or Refocus. But to anyone who knows wildlife, the smooth ‘combed’ appearance is not natural. Also, It’s important to remember that these are 200%, nose-to-print, pixel-peeping views.

Be that as it may, I continued with my processing of the file through Topaz then Lightroom. Here is the result compared to DxO PureRAW+Lightroom and Lightroom alone. Which is ‘best’ in your eyes?

The Topaz version is in the middle, and is excellent. But, at 100% there is no distinguishable difference between the three. This tells me that online, on-screen to 4K ,and for photo books and calendars, any improvement would be minimal. Topaz Photo just might be worth the extra effort for a full-resolution, full-sized fine prints, but not for anything less.

Landscape: Dörlinbach, Evening

I chose this image due to its complexity. It seems simple enough, a landscape photographed at twilight after sunset, with a few stars visible in the sky. But, at ISO 3200, it is also a higher-than-normal ISO for my landscape work. I was walking home after a delicious dinner at the local Gasthof and didn’t have my tripod with me. With a handheld shutter speed of 1 second (maybe the beer I had with dinner helped!), it also gave me an opportunity to test the limits of the IBIS in my Olympus / OM System OM-1. Pretty amazing, if you ask me. Tack sharp with no support; not even a pole or fence post to lean against.

The challenge in processing was denoising while retaining the details captured in areas darker than average, commonly referred to as ‘Shadows’, though not all of those areas are ‘in shadow’.

This is where Topaz Photo shines. When viewed at 100% as it would be printed to its full 5184×3888 size, equivalent to at 13×17″ print or a full-page in a calendar or photo book, Topaz Photo does a better job of maintaining detail in dark foliage and dark roof tops. The image below summarizes it successes.

However, there are two caveats:

1. In less distinct areas, such as the dark background hills covered in forest, there is a patterned grain in the Topaz Photo version that gives the impression of detail, though none is actually there. I also notice a slight mottling that is visible in the full image, but not in this side-by-side comparison.
2. A significant amount of colour ‘correction’ was needed when bringing the file back into Lightroom (Colour Temp: –1150°K; Tint: +35; Vibrance –23; Saturation: –8) plus a small amount of distortion correction (+2). Not a problem, but noted for full disclosure.

Here is a comparison for you to judge between DxO PureRAW, Lr and Topaz, the order of which will be revealed below.

So, what do you think? Like Topaz, DxO PureRAW does a better job of maintaining detail in dark areas of foliage and rooves. Either one would be ideal for printing at full resolution, Lr less so. By the way, from L to R, it’s Lr, DxO, and Topaz Photo. To me, it’s a toss-up between DxO and Topaz Photo.

Topaz Photo ‘Filters’

While working on the file, I thought this photo would be a good candidate to test Topaz Photo’s abilities with ‘Balance color’ and ‘Adjust lighting’ filters (Light in Lr and Exposure + HDR Lighting in C1). I like the ability to create multiple masks to treat different areas of the image differently, for example, Landscape and Sky. The masks are also customizable using a brush to paint in or paint out areas. This is essential for nuanced processing.

Unfortunately, the results were ghastly. The colour and lighting were not at all natural-looking. They changed the fundamental nature of the scene. To make matters worse, the auto masking was imprecise (see image on right). Auto-generated masks may work well for Raw Denoise and Sharpening, but not for lighting and colour balance. Furthermore, masks can only be altered by painting, not by using colour or luminance or gradients.

I also found that the limited adjustments with each filter makes them unusable; in Balance color, only temperature and opacity are available. And remember, when either filter is used, files can only be exported as TIFFs. So, again, Topaz Photo falls short due to its imprecise masking and adjustment limitations. Then, there’s the lag: every time I chose a filter, the app spent an inordinate amount of time generating a preview to show whatever it was doing.

In terms of exposure and colour balance, Lightroom’s ‘Auto’ settings are consistently more accurate for enhancing scenes while preserving their natural look. And the auto masks Lr generates for the sky, foreground, subject, etc. are far more accurate and can be altered by more than just painting; e.g. based on colour and luminance range as well as with linear and radial gradients. Any adjustments I make are instantaneous; changes are live as I drag the slider. Not even close with Topaz Photo.

The Root Cause: AI

Upon further investigation, I learned that it’s not just Raw Denoise and Sharpen that use AI, Adjust light and Balance color are using AI models, hence the lag-time after each selection. I’m not against the use of Assistive AI like this, but when decisions are being made in a black-box, with no context, and it takes longer to show me the result, and the results are sub-par, I get annoyed. The underlying assumption when using AI for decisions like these is that the results will at least have artistic merit. But, that’s where it all breaks down.

We photographers are human, and we want our photographs to express our lived experiences, not those of a computer algorithm.

AI might be fine for ‘correcting’ run-of-the-mill images, like catalogue shots, portraits or sports cards, but not for artistic expression and not for preserving the natural ‘look’ of a scene or subject as I and many others strive to do with #RealWorldPhotography.

What to do?

If I was printing the Dörlinbach evening landscape full size, I would want the Topaz Photo (or DxO PureRAW) version of the image, finessed using Lightroom (or Capture 1). If I was entering the same photo in a photo competition, depending on the image size submission requirements, I might also want the Topaz Photo or DxO PureRAW version. However, for a photo book or a calendar, I’m not sure either is worth it. Sure there is a difference on-screen at 100%, but not on downsized images. Besides, typical offset printing does not preserve shadow detail anyway. I can say this because the Lightroom version of this photo is on the back cover of an 8½ x 11″ photo book and the loss of detail is only visible upon nose-close pixel-peeping, which people don’t do with photo books. The same can be said for casual screen viewing either online at 1600px or even up to 4K TV size. Again, for casual sharing, the difference is simply not great enough to warrant the additional time and money to send the file out of Lr or C1 to Topaz Photo and back again.

If you’re serious about photography, chances are you are already using either Lightroom or Capture 1, the two industry-leading full-featured photo editing applications. If not, then you should be, as no other editing package does what Lr and C1 do so well and so completely. Lr and C1 really are the complete deal and worth every penny. If you have either of these, then you may find the Raw Denoise, and Sharpen of Topaz Photo (or DxO PureRAW) helpful for making full resolution, full size fine prints. That being said, I highly recommend performing all other edits in Lightroom or Capture 1. If you are using DxO PhotoLab 9 (see my review of it), I recommend the same: use the DxO PureRAW attributes of DxO PhotoLab, and leave the finessing to Lightroom or Capture 1.

One Last Example

This photo was used in the original comparison of DxO, Lr and Topaz PhotoAI. It also demonstrates the level of finesse available with Lightroom that is not available in Topaz Photo. For example, something as simple as masking the sky in Topaz produced an inaccurate fringe. And to change both lighting and colour temperature of the sky each required a different mask. I also needed a mask for each for whole image changes. The time lag for each mask and each change simply became impossible to work with, especially knowing how easy and immediate the results were in Lightroom.

So, the question now becomes, at what point does using Topaz Photo make sense? It all depends on what you’re doing with your photographs—their end-use. Are you selling them as large, fine art prints? Then, it’s worth the time to go from Lightroom to Topaz Photo and back again (or DxO if you have that instead). Are you entering photo competitions? Again, you might use Topaz Photo (or DxO), just to be sure. But then again, the examples given here show how competitive Lightroom is for Denoise and Sharpen at sizes less than full resolution. Are you casually sharing photos online, in photo books or in calendars and perhaps making the odd large print? The differences are there, but again, they may not be worth the additional time and money. Topaz Photo (or DxO) would not even be an advantage for large canvases, as canvas prints typically do not preserve the same level of detail as fine art prints.

Upscaling

One feature Topaz Photo has that Lightroom and Capture 1 do not is variable and dedicated Upscaling. Yes, Lightroom has Super Resolution, but it’s a one-click-and-done deal; no further refinements are available. Previously, I compared and reported on up-scaling with Topaz PhotoAI, Lightroom, and ON1. I found that Topaz and Lightroom were both excellent, with Topaz having a slight edge. I also learned that upscaling works best on perfect or near-perfect images, as every flaw gets magnified.

The Great Blue Heron photo is a near-perfect image. Cropped from the 36 MP sensor of the D800E, it shows slight motion blur in the head in addition to the significant, intentional blur of the wings. Initial processing of Raw Denoise and Sharpen went smoothly in Topaz Photo. However, I noticed that once Upscaling is invoked, Topaz Photo flattens the previous Sharpen and Raw Denoise layers. This was slightly annoying as the first thing I noticed upon upscaling was that a different sharpening method might produce better results. That meant deleting the Upscale filter, changing the sharpening, then starting fresh again with Upscaling. It’s unfortunate, the Upscale filter cannot be worked into the overall workflow as Super Resolution is with Lightroom. It was minor delay, but one worth pointing out. As It turned out, the different sharpening I chose (Standard) looked worse, so I went back to the original (Wildlife BETA) and upscaled from there.

In Upscale, Topaz Photo selected ‘High Fidelity v2’. After trying the others, I could see the app had made the right choice. From there, I noticed a couple of areas that could use additional sharpening and added another layer of sharpening, customizing the mask for the area I wanted. Brilliant!

Once rendered, the file bloomed from 42.4 MB to an 872.3 MB DNG, and took a good few minutes to render. But the results were worth it. Below is a comparison with Lightroom’s Super Resolution, which is an automatic 2x resizing with no additional options. Interestingly, the Lightroom file is still only 42.4 MB, even with Super Resolution invoked.

Wonder BETA

I was curious about Wonder BETA—a one-stop, one-button do-all filter. As you know by now, I don’t like push-button black-box processing, but I thought, what the heck. Let’s see what this baby can do.

I applied Wonder BETA to the same 42 MB Nikon D800E file of the Great Blue Heron. Wonder BETA provides the option of Cloud Processing to speed things up. However, “Cloud Process is only available for images up to 128 MB”. My thinking was the 42 MB image should be fine, but the 128 MB limit must be for the final image size as Cloud Process was greyed out despite having 400 credits in the bank. No worries; I chose computer processing instead. During the first few minutes of processing, the ‘Time Remaining’ gave various predictions of between 102 and 113 minutes. Huh? Seriously? Needless to say, I cancelled that. To my thinking, a 42 MB file is not large these days when working with 35mm sensors. And 110+ minutes of processing? Ya. No. I guess I’ll pass on Wonder BETA.

Conclusion

So where does all this leave us? I get the strong feeling that Topaz Labs have lost the plot. With all the additional filters, it seems Topaz is trying to go head-to-head with full-featured apps such as Lightroom and Capture 1, even DxO PhotoLab 9. They’ve come out aggressively advertising new features, a re-designed GUI, and re-designed packaging with a choice of Topaz Photo or Topaz Suite. But Topaz Photo is not there yet. Not even close. Despite the addition of a greater variety of ‘Filters’ and the ability to create multiple masks, does Topaz Photo meet the processing needs of photographers? Not as a full-featured editing suite. You will always need something else; which brings me back to their pricing decision.

Topaz Photo is class-leading (along with DxO) for Denoise and Sharpen. Having Upscale is helpful for the odd time one might need it. These are its core strengths, especially when paired with masks for subject, background, etc. But this is all it does well. Despite the best attempts of Topaz labs to dress it up, Topaz Photo is nothing more than a glorified Raw Denoise, Sharpen and Upscale plug-in. In trying to be more than it really is, Topaz Photo comes out as a wanna-be.

I think DxO made the right choice in separating out its core competencies of Denoise and Sharpen into PureRAW and providing Photo Lab 9 as an almost-fully-featured editing suite. Topaz Photo isn’t at the same level, despite giving the impression it can ‘do more’. Topaz Photo comes nowhere near replacing full-featured editing suites like Capture 1 or Lightroom, or even DxO Photo Lab 9.

If I did not have Lr or C1, and was choosing between Topaz Photo and DxO PhotoLab 9, I would choose DxO, hands down. It would leave me without Upscale, but PL9 does so much more and it does it very well. PhotoLab 9 is slightly higher in price (USD $240/$120 upgrade), but it is a buy-once cost, not a subscription, and is far more capable, complete with a file browser. You see, that’s the difference—Topaz Photo appears to be full-featured with its array of filters, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of finesse processing and photo management, it is not.

I would strongly recommend Topaz Labs drop the façade of Topaz Photo being a full-featured editing app. Topaz Labs should concentrate on what they do best—Raw Denoise, Sharpen, and Upscale—then, recalibrate the pricing of Topaz Photo to match those capabilities.

For me, my current workflow will remain as it was. I will continue using Lightroom for just about everything: exposure, cropping, detail sharpening, masking, library, etc., etc., etc. When I am printing a more difficult file, one that requires better raw denoise due to high ISO or shadow detail, I’ll export the original raw file to DxO PureRAW, have it work its industry-leading raw denoise and sharpening (particularly with lens modules), then re-import the DNG to Lightroom for finessing. As a buy-once, stand alone/plug-in app priced at USD $130 new ($72 upgrade), with no subscription, DxO PureRAW does what I need it to do, in circumstances where Lightroom still struggles a bit.

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