I’ve used Topaz photoai 2.3.2 and I thought it was one of the best and easiest to use photo sharpening tool.
With photoai 2.4.0 it is unusable. The interface is not intuitive.
Trying to select something takes forever. Trying to process something is also extremely slow.
What used to take seconds is now 300x slower.
This product should never ever have been released to the users.
I want to go back to 2.3.2.
7 Likes
Download 2.3.2 from this link locally to your computer.
Uninstall your current version and install 2.3.2 from the download package.
I totally agree, the UI change in version 2.4.0 is completely weird and confusing to me. The UI for 2.3.2 didn’t give me trouble, I’ll go back to it. In 2.4.0, it is not clear to me what actually happens when selecting a function. I would like something simple, where I myself determine what and in what order should be done, how to easily adjust the parameters manually if necessary. Let the AI then perform the functions I choose in the order I specify – and not let the AI determine that as well.
And why does the view I set to “fit” keep changing to other values (some percentage of something), when, for example, I go back to a photo from an edited sequence? Why, once I set the “fit” do I have to set it again and again? I usually start by setting the view to “fit” and if I need a different one, I can set it myself. I don’t need the AI to set some “view” percentages for me; let the AI focus on the photo editing functions and not try to replace me as the user of the software tool.
4 Likes
Good to hear about your feedback. I didn’t even have a chance to use the UI much as it is sooooooooooooo slow in processing my photo. My macbook pro with i7 core worked fine with 2.3.2 version. Even after processing one photo, I was left bewildered on the results. Like you I prefer to do MY own determination of best areas to fix. If the company is trying to push more AI stuff let it be an option and NOT the default.
If you would like to revert to any previous Topaz Photo AI version, you can find a list of previous installers at the following link:
Topaz Labs | Community Forums | Topaz Photo AI | Releases
We have updated our Topaz Labs Documentation page with some helpful information to help users familiarize themselves with the new workflow that I will link below.
Topaz Photo AI | Quick Start | App Basics
We appreciate any further feedback or comments about the current v2.4.0, and I would love to share them with our developers. This can give us more insight into what Topaz Photo AI is needed for and, ultimately, what direction we need to take to fulfill the needs of our users.
Thank you for your support to install previous releases.
I wish someone with common sense tried out your beta version of 2.4.0 before releasing to general users.
The 2.3.2 version has the most user friendly UI and allowed me to interrupt any processing by selecting different options without waiting for minutes.
For 2.4.0 if you wanted to add a few more features like cropping you should have just added a selection button and NOT change the UI so drastically.
If you really want to push AI features, you should have gotten a lot more feedback from common users instead of biased users before making the big leap. And even then maybe push AI to 3.0 version. The current 2.3.2 delivers excellent image quality results which is number 1 priority along with ease of use and relatively quick processing. If you fulfill these basic needs you’ll continue to have loyal customers.
2 Likes
Strongly agree. Photo AI 2.4.0 is extremely slow. I also notice that every time Photo AI starts it need to re-download some models. I want to go back to 2.3.2 too.
1 Like
Yes 100%! THIS IS A MAJOR STEP BACKWARDS!
5 Likes
I have to disagree. I think it is a major step forward
- Cleaner interface
- Ability to apply denoise selectively
- Ability to add an enhancement more than once, for example to denoise or sharpen different areas of an image with different parameters.
There are some glitches that will hopefully be ironed out.
Like many others, you say this is a step backward without actually defining what’s wrong with this version!
2 Likes
You can
It may have very nice technical features but “usability” needs to be number 1 feature.
If it’s too slow how am I going to use it. I’m not going to wait 5 min to change
something that takes a few seconds in 2.3.2. I’m going to trash it.
Secondly, if you want to make big leap, one should prepare users for it
with training videos and not surprise them.
Please please listen to your user base or you’ll lose them to your competitors.
1 Like
“Please please listen to your user base or you’ll lose them to your competitors.”
You are addressing me (a user) not Topaz! Also, has it not occurred to you that the slowness may relate to your hardware/OS?
I can say that hardware has a significant impact, The move from 2.1.3 upward my system slowed to a crawl and i was extremely disappointed with the images I was getting once the image completed. I was seeing artifacts that I never saw in previous version. The support team suggested I make some adjustments to my preferences to reduce resource utilization and it helped but was still slow. As we moved to 2.3.2 the software was unusable, I had to go back to 2.1.2.
As Topaz continues to improve the applications it is going to place more demand on resources. Knowing I was on an older laptop and talking to Topaz support I decided to upgrade and bought a PC with a faster GPU and the majority of the issues went away, well except for some of the bugs that are currently be resolved.
Bottom line, I was working on a dated PC with limited resources. try running an image and watch your system performance, that is what lead me to know my system was right for the work I was trying to accomplish with the Topaz applications.
1 Like
I’ve been using topaz for a year now and was loving it until the 2.4 interface. It’s not the technical capabilities that most of us have a problem with. It is the USEABILITY. The User Interface is awkward and confusing, and yes, it was MUCH slower than 2.3.2 and I have near top of the line hardware. When you have an entire user base of people who have incorporated a product into their workflow, dramatic changes to the UI without some serious built in tutorials, will not be received well. I worked in IT as systems engineer, support, dev ops, security. I’ve dealt with issues like this before and the reality is the change in UI was confusing and awkward at best.
You can make all the technical improvements you want, but if your customers can’t figure out how to use the bells and whistles, you will ultimately loose customers.
It is also a TIME factor. A lot of us that have incorporated Topaz into our workflow do not have the time to decode a new UI when we were not expecting it.
I myself reloaded 2.3.2 and will stick to that until the UI is more intuitive.
