Comparison of AI denoising

[deleted]

Bear in mind that the color saturation is much higher in the Neo version, so naturally, that could make chromatic noise stand out more, even if it really isn't more.

What happens when color saturation is normalized? I bet they will be more similar than they are here.

I ran a similar test between Topaz Photo AI, DXO Pure Raw and Luminar. I picked up Topaz when the worked out a nice interface with Capture One.
Like any DXO product's the interface is a bit hokey and is prone to S/W quality issues, i.e., crashing and burning. Luminar over cooks colors to a point that I disqualified it. I don't use anything Adobe and I will allow very few Adobe products darken the disk drive of any of my computers. The one exception is Adobe
Bridge for some up front file management and renaming.

What I found - Topaz started out a little behind but has made a significant push over the past year. They are feverishly updating their AI database and with each subsequence update the results are better. Topaz was always a little heavy handed on the sharpening after noise reduction. Now it is much better. The DXO products have been the gold standard of noise reduction and they really got a dead start when they released "Deep Prime" several years ago. It has only gotten better.

My conclusions are as follows. DXOPL produces the most consistent and best noise reduction. On the other hand - the performance can be highly subject dependent. DXO depends highly on color and if an image has subtle colors its performance falls off. In fact DXO does not support any monochrome cameras in any of its raw processing. Number two is Topaz AI. However, Topaz is rapidly catching up. Topaz may even be better in scenes with subtle color - e.g., in a forested scene on an overcast day. I also noticed that Topaz is more computationally efficient - especially with Fuji files. DXO and Topaz take about the same processing time on my Z8 Bayer files. Topaz takes about the same time on my Fuji XTrans files where DXO requires takes a lot more time - may 2 to 3 times more.

Both are somewhat image dependent. That makes sense as it is a result of their database driving the process. I use both Topaz and DXO. Since DXO is currently a little better, I use PhotoLab on my really difficult images. However, as Topaz continues to improve I find myself calling up Topaz from C1 and then using C1 on the returned DNG. The interface is a lot cleaner and the S/W doesn't barf and puke like what can happen with DXO.

<withdrawn - too technical>

It should be borne in mind that DXO‘s Deep Prime noise reduction algorithms are only available for raw files, whereas Topaz will work on .jpg files. So if one only has a .jpg ot .tif file The available DXO noise reduction can be disppointing. I use DXO‘s Photolab 6 for most processing, including noise reduction on high ISO images, and am very happy with it. I have had no problems with s/w issues and do not personally find the interface „hokey“, though it took a while to get used to it. I have had a problem with colour balance on Leica Q3 raw files, but the DXO engineers are working on that.

What I find hokey about the DXOPL UI is it seems to be stuck in no man's land between a catalog approach and a single image at a time UI. When DXO Optics started out it was single image in - single image out, file management was up to you. Being a nondestructive editor it left the your folder with the images littered with the sidecar (*dop) files. Not a fan. Lightroom on the other hand seemed to mimic the Apple approach in Aperture and now Photos - sucked your images into a database, a.k.a., catalog and owned them. If the database got corrupted - too bad hope you have a good backup. I'm not a fan. Of course the quality of a UI is subjective.

Capture One comes along and with two variants of a catalog. The first is equivalent to Lightroom/Aperture - sucks up your images and takes ownership. The second is much more flexible and to my taste, the catalog contains all the sidecar files from edits, plus a file of pointers that point to the original images. So you still own your images in what ever folder you want them in but the convenience of a databased for your edits. It also has the management tools so one can move the images around if desired and still keep the catalog pointer file synchronized to the images.

DXO has tried to mimic the C1 catalog approach with its "Projects" database. One can create a hierarchy of "Projects" and import images into the various projects. One can also save those projects. The database in this case is simply the pointer file to the original images. DXOPL still pollutes the original file with the sidecar files. The tools to manage the database also seem to be missing. Maybe it will get better, but right now there are two many steps involved and to many pitfalls that could corrupt a database, for one thing automatic backup is not an option. Maybe it will get better maybe it won't. It's hard to tell with DXO. And with PL, the sidecar files still pollute the original image folders.

I use PL 7, but only for high ISO images either from Fuji (XH2) or Nikon Z8. I can't use it on any monochrome files from my Q2M, but the Q2M doesn't produce chroma noise which is the most distracting and what PL 6 does a good job with. So I might use PL 7 on one image in 20 on the average. It's worth keeping it around for now. However, as Topaz gets better, I find myself relying more an more on Topaz with C1 on high ISO images and at some point I suspect PL will be uninstalled.

The catalog that you refer to in my case is what I had always done before I heard of PL. I have a folder called FOTOS by YEAR, in that folders for decades (going back to 200n). In that I have folders for years, and so on: for months, days. The titles of the days folders have a brief keyword or two in their title, so I can usually go straight to an old photo. All this happens without PL. I agree that the addition of .dop files is a bit of a pain, particularly since I have discovered that there is a database that duplicates the info in .dop files. I like the nondestructive nature of PhotoLab, though I was more than a bit irritated to discover that deleting the .dop file does not allow you to start from the raw raw file -- you need to move it to a new folder to do that...

I have only ever worked on one image at a time and never copied any attributes to another image. Batch operations would never work for me. But then, I read of people who take many 100s of photos in a day. Except when I am in a library photographing musical scores for subsequent research at home (when my meximum is 600 pages or so a day) I have never got to 100: if I cant get it right after four attempts, I never will!

I read about Projects the other day, but am not interested enough to use them. In principle I make a backup of the FOTOSbyYEAR folder and its contents on another drive. I also dont tag files as it seems a waste of time. I should explain that I also gave up databases for things when I discovered that a text file listing them is rapidly searchable by CTL-F in Notepad! So all this library organisation just does not draw me in at all.

I havent yet found a need to move from Topaz Sharpen AI to Photo AI, and as I get more used to the Q3, the former gets less use.

YM obviously DV!

David

I mostly organize similar to you - except my library goes back to 1970 since I have digitized my important negatives from years ago. Within a year I also tend to organize by categories like "trips," "vacations," "nature," etc. The headings have changed over time and are a function of what I did for the year. However, I have a backup server and do an automatic backup first to a network disk and a local disk every other day.

I would be a lot more impressed with PL if they could figure out how not to trash your image folder with sidecar files. Nondestructive editors use sidecar files. DXO is the only one that hasn't figured out how to do that without trashing your folder with the original image files. There are a lot of nice features in PL 7. However, it is by far not a fully functional editor. Sure their control point local editing is nice for some things. However, it doesn't compensate for not having efficient masking support. I think it is pretty clear that Deep Prime is the best thing DXO brings to the party.

I've also have had issues with DXO support. On the other hand I found a bug in Capture One on a new update. I filed a problem report on C1 support. The next morning, I had a reply from C1 requisition logs and even core dumps. Within two days, I got an Email with a link to the fixed update. I was quite surprised and impressed. A friend on my is having an issue with Lightroom not being able to update to new releases. She has been dealing with Adobe who has yet to figure out why the update is not working on her box. This has been going on for a month with no resolution.

Sidecars are optional in PhotoLab. If you don't want them, disable them under Preferences > General > Correction. The same info is always stored in the database.

In PL 7, there is no such capability in "General>Corrections" That only relates to geometric correction. Under Settings>Advanced - there is an option
there are options on Sidecar files of "automatically export" and "automatically import." However, the meaning is somewhat unclear. So I guess I'll need to experiment a bit.

Yes. The options are under Preferences in PL 6, and why they were moved in PL 7 is not clear to me. As I understand it, the sidecars are meant as a backup to the database, and I imagine that they can be used in the event that the .dng and .dop files are moved to another folder, as the values in the database save the full path to the original folder of the .dop file. I have no idea why!

David

I can see it there quite clearly in PhotoLab 7 for Windows.

Maybe that's the Mac version.

Yes, do that.