Topaz Photo AI v2.4.1

[jkaethee (jathushan.kaetheeswaran)]

G’day! This week’s patch release has been focused on addressing critical feedback we’ve received from our major workflow changes introduced in 2.4.0. Some changes are going to take longer to implement, but we hope the ongoing improvements to the app are indicative of us listening to you. It is ultimately our goal to build the best possible product for you, the users.

Major highlights this week include enhancement sub-headers to keep track of selections and selected faces, hotkeys for quickly adding enhancements as well as a dimensions dialog to keep track of input, cropped, and output dimensions. In addition to this we have added a whole bunch of bug fixes to help make this new workflow a smoother experience.

As always, a full change log is below.

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Please give us any feedback or report issues with this release. We’ll be updating TPAI regularly to address those pieces of feedback and issue reports. If there’s a specific image you’d like us to see, you can send it us at this dropbox link.

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v2.4.1
Released March 14th, 2024
Mac: Download
Windows: Download

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Changes since 2.4.0

• Added selection preview and face preview sub-headers in right panel
• Added a dialog for dimensions information when hovering
• Added hotkeys for adding enhancements (Ctrl + K, arrow keys, enter)
• Added selection color and opacity options for Remove Tool and Preserve Text
• Added select All and None options for Preserve Text
• Added lower bound of zoom to be 100% when Fit % is high
• Added support for 1x upscale in PS Filter plugin
• Added support for Monochrome DNGs
• Added OS-specific app icon notifications (bounce or flash) when export finishes
• Added new cursors for crops and rotations
• Added dynamic preview background dots that adjust based on zoom
• Moved auto-selection preference into Sharpen
• Moved advanced brush controls into a collapsible section
• Fixed Sharpen auto-selection being None (now applies to All)
• Fixed processing lag when dragging model sliders
• Fixed sliders resetting to default values on image switch
• Fixed face previews not respecting crop and rotations
• Fixed images not centering on import
• Fixed Enter shortcut not focusing on slider input fields first
• Fixed crop aspect ratio resetting to 0,0 when cancelling first crop
• Fixed intermittent Remove Tool crashes
• Fixed image rotations applying to other images in a batch
• Fixed RAW images shifting when Lens Correction was off
• Fixed batch processing crashes with RAW images
• Fixed Olympus OM-1 Mark II camera images not saving
• Automatic Lensfun Update

[TPX (Thomas D.)]

I know why you may not see my bug.

I had switched off the lens correction.

The bug that the images become darker with stacked filters.

Affects everything since the beta up to 2.4.1

Lens correction off, stacked denoise filters

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Lens correction on, stacked denoise filters.

[TPX (Thomas D.)]

Without any mask selection sharpen does nothing.

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Performing selection

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Sharpening with selection.

[TPX (Thomas D.)]

Exported with TPAI Denoise Normal

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Exported with TPAI Denoise Strong

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Update, now it no longer works properly.

[TPX (Thomas D.)]

Problem found.

If I use the automatic settings, the profile fits, but if I change something and export it, it no longer fits.

Problem cannot be solved from my side, the profile is completely unusable.

Auto RAW Denoise settings

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Manual RAW Denoise settings ( denoise 7 instead of 4)

[Lingyu]

Please upload the original file and the output file to my Dropbox so I can reproduce. In this case having the ICC profile will help as well.

You can securely submit your image(s) to my Dropbox using the link below. Please be sure to send me a note to let me know you sent something.
Dropbox File Request

[TPX (Thomas D.)]

I sent another picture, the topic is the same, now it doesn’t work again, i.e. not at all (the profile).

_F9I2156.cr3
output file: F9I2156_231-denoiseraw-3

The ICC profile is integraded into Capture one.

[TPX (Thomas D.)]

After three times of exporting the same file it did work again.

The behavior is not understandable to me.

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Now after i did set denoise to 10 its broken again.

[golder-50350]

All 3 issues I had with 2.4.0 have been confirmed to be fixed!

• sharpen function doesn’t appear to work
  Fixed Sharpen auto-selection being None (now applies to All)

• The location of everything in the image is shifted slightly in the same direction
  Fixed RAW images shifting when Lens Correction was off

• Crashes at time
  Don’t see anything specific to this on the change log, but it appears to be fixed

[golder-50350]

I like the GUI. The “done” button is gone, the image is updated as the sliders are changed and the control panels can be moved to the task bar. Tried it on several images and looks good to me.

[david.123 (New Profile Picture!)]

[golder-50350]

Just noticed that a very small number of images still have this issue:

The location of everything in the image is shifted slightly in the same direction
Fixed RAW images shifting when Lens Correction was off

[david.123 (New Profile Picture!)]

Unfortunately this version is crashing with every image I’ve tried so far - also note that 2.4.0 was doing the same but I didn’t bother reporting it because I was waiting for 2.4.1.

Enhancement gets applied, preview updates. When I try to drag around preview, it crashes/disappears.

Also crashes/disappears when adding additional enhancements.

Where can I send the logs to?

Thanks

UPDATE: changing the ‘AI Processor’ setting from AUTO to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 seems to have stopped the crashing. This should still be looked into/fixed though.

[david.123 (New Profile Picture!)]

Please give us a sticky zoom level option so we can set to 100% for upscaled images.

Thanks.

[Lingyu]

@golder-50350

Just noticed that a very small number of images still have this issue

Please send me the files which have this issue and I can verify. You can securely submit your image(s) to my Dropbox using the link below. Please be sure to send me a note to let me know you sent something.
Dropbox File Request

@david.123

Where can I send the logs to?

Please send to my Dropbox above. Reproduce the crash with your AI Processor set to Auto and send me a few logs with the crash. You can switch back to the NVIDIA 4090 after for normal use.

[david.123 (New Profile Picture!)]

The image shifting issue when dragging the split window line to compare before/after seems to be fixed in this release (may have also been already fixed in 2.4.0). Finally! Good stuff!

@Fotomaker

[golder-50350]

Just uploaded a NEF (golder-50350 Nubble_Lighthouse_12202023_243.NEF) file with it’s side car XMP (golder-50350 Nubble_Lighthouse_12202023_243.xmp). FYI - Lens correction is turned off and running PAI from LrC via Pugin-extras

[david.123 (New Profile Picture!)]

@Lingyu

Please send to my Dropbox above. Reproduce the crash with your AI Processor set to Auto and send me a few logs with the crash. You can switch back to the NVIDIA 4090 after for normal use.

Uploaded ‘david.123.zip’ containing log file from crashing when AI processor set to AUTO.

[andymagee-52287]

It would be better if we could toggle an individual adjustment on and off to see the effect without having to delete it just to see what it’s doing when combined with other adjustment layers. Not having the toggle capability leads to a lot of reinputting of parameters. First you delete, and then reapply over and over again to see the changes.

Also the ability to easily reorder the adjustment layers (drag and drop) is an important part of being able to fine tune the finished product…

[samb15]

Unfortunately, two of the biggest issues are still present.

1. It is still almost impossible to do complex work on low-res noisy photos, because any changes to the amount or type of any adjustment only show on a preview that shows adjustments before it.

For example, if you noise reduce and then sharpen, you may want to go back and modify your noise setting, but when you go back to noise reduction, it only previews to the orignal unsharpened one.

Perhaps you used lighting adjustment, and then want to change noise reduction settings, but as soon as you open NR – bang! – you can only work on a dark picture. You can’t change the order of them without deleting an adjustment and starting over with it. (And upscale is stuck at the end, so you’ll never see the result of that, no mater what you do, unless you complete exiit the adjustment each time you want to look at the result.)

While it is sometimes possible to apply a second adjustment of the same type, this may not give the best results – noise reducing or sharpening a picture that’s already been done often works poorly.

This is simply unacceptable and a significant downgrade from 2.3.2, when it all worked easily.

2. One of the great advances in Photo AI was Preserve Text. But this does not work in 2.4.0 or 2.4.1. The pictures illustrate:

Above is the original. Noisy and low-res, but quite readable.

In 2.4.1, no matter how I set Preserve Text, it came out like this – about the same as not trying at all to preserve it.

In 2.3.2, it worked. Now that I’ve reverted, I can not worry and be happy again.

(This was actually someone in a crowd, not the subject, and I’ve not tried to improve his image otheriwse – it’s only to illustrate the text issue.)

If these two issue were fixed, 2.4.2 would usable, and probably nice.

…Sam Brown