Can Your Photos Pass The Sharpness Test? :)

[SCoombs]

I know, I've seen people use it and claim it works, but often their images seem in indicate otherwise. Still, whatever makes 'em happy

I'm really not sure what to make of Topaz. For the longest time I always said you could see it a mile away when a photo had been "Topazed" because of the plasticy, almost vinyl look to it. I had a theory for a while that the way it worked was to actually blur an image but to do so in a strategic way so that the sum total looked sharper when viewed at a sufficiently small size.

Still, I've seen plenty of images people have shared having used Topaz which really do look great and I don't understand what they're doing. I actually own Topaz now because I bought it as a sort of last ditch effort to salvage a few photos from an event I photographed which didn't turn out quite usable but which would have been good ones to have. I will say it was generally fit for that purpose - it was able to get those photos to a usable place for the use case I had for them.

However, having bought it I then naturally went back through my catalog of old wildlife photos that I have which were bad enough sharpness-wise not to have ever done anything with but good enough in terms of what was in the frame that I had never deleted them. I was pretty underwhelmed at what Topaz did for any of these. I don't think there were any that I was able to say were now usable - and some of them really weren't that far off to begin with.

Yet I see what other people get out of it and it can at times be impressive, even if I've never seen anything that remotely compares to some of the examples they show in the marketing. People tell me it yields great results if you adjust the settings correctly, but now owning it the settings just... aren't that wide-ranging and diverse. They're essentially a single slider. Thus, I still have no idea how people get some of the results I see, even as the majority of the results I see are not that great.

 

[Steve]

I'm really not sure what to make of Topaz. For the longest time I always said you could see it a mile away when a photo had been "Topazed" because of the plasticy, almost vinyl look to it. I had a theory for a while that the way it worked was to actually blur an image but to do so in a strategic way so that the sum total looked sharper when viewed at a sufficiently small size.

Still, I've seen plenty of images people have shared having used Topaz which really do look great and I don't understand what they're doing. I actually own Topaz now because I bought it as a sort of last ditch effort to salvage a few photos from an event I photographed which didn't turn out quite usable but which would have been good ones to have. I will say it was generally fit for that purpose - it was able to get those photos to a usable place for the use case I had for them.

However, having bought it I then naturally went back through my catalog of old wildlife photos that I have which were bad enough sharpness-wise not to have ever done anything with but good enough in terms of what was in the frame that I had never deleted them. I was pretty underwhelmed at what Topaz did for any of these. I don't think there were any that I was able to say were now usable - and some of them really weren't that far off to begin with.

Yet I see what other people get out of it and it can at times be impressive, even if I've never seen anything that remotely compares to some of the examples they show in the marketing. People tell me it yields great results if you adjust the settings correctly, but now owning it the settings just... aren't that wide-ranging and diverse. They're essentially a single slider. Thus, I still have no idea how people get some of the results I see, even as the majority of the results I see are not that great.

I'd say Topaz is very dependent on individual images and individual standards.

For images, it seems like if it's going to work it'll be with an image that has maybe just a very slight amount of "straight" motion blur - like the blur when in a very shot, straight line. If it was more of a curl, it's not as great. I've yet to have any that were just out off focus that I thought looked OK afterward.

I also think it's the standards of the individual and the size they are showing you. I've seen photos that, at first glance, seem OK when small, but when I saw those same images at full size, they were a disaster. BUT - the person didn't care and they were happy with the shot, and I suppose that's what really matters.

 

[DRwyoming]

If the camera says the subject is in focus, and your focus point is the eye, who am I to disagree with the computer on board. It surely looks in focus to my eye, but you would have us disagree. How could one possibly be better than the computer??

As Steve posted above, achieving focus on the correct part of your subject is one thing (a big one for sure) in terms of achieving a sharp image. But don'f forget things like motion blur and atmospheric distortion or even a foggy or dusty lens that can yield a soft image even when the camera's AF system has achieved the best possible lens focusing.

These forums are full of questions from folks wondering why their images are coming out softer than expected and the AF system missing focus usually isn't the problem but things like motion blur from insufficient shutter speed, shooting through too much atmosphere or through too much heat turbulence are common reasons the resulting images are soft even when the camera's AF system nailed the focus. The video presents good tips on figuring out whether the resulting images are sharp regardless of the underlying reason for lack of sharpness.

 

[ajrmd]

I'd say Topaz is very dependent on individual images and individual standards.

For images, it seems like if it's going to work it'll be with an image that has maybe just a very slight amount of "straight" motion blur - like the blur when in a very shot, straight line. If it was more of a curl, it's not as great. I've yet to have any that were just out off focus that I thought looked OK afterward.

I also think it's the standards of the individual and the size they are showing you. I've seen photos that, at first glance, seem OK when small, but when I saw those same images at full size, they were a disaster. BUT - the person didn't care and they were happy with the shot, and I suppose that's what really matters.

Dovetailing on that, I find that Topaz' various sharpening modalities are largely hype and often produce exaggerated and unnatural results. While I have had it "improve" some marginally sharp images to improve their appearance for web display, that has never translated to print or "rescued" an otherwise unsalvageable image.

 

[DRwyoming]

Dovetailing on that, I find that Topaz' various sharpening modalities are largely hype and often produce exaggerated and unnatural results. While I have had it "improve" some marginally sharp images to improve their appearance for web display, that has never translated to print or "rescued" an otherwise unsalvageable image.

Yeah, that's more or less my experience as well at least for Topaz Sharpen. The one exception is when there's a small amount of linear motion blur Topaz Sharpen in motion blur mode seems to do a much better job than I can do manually in LR or PS. I've definitely used that to rescue some panning images in ways that would take a long time using conventional tools. But even then strange artifacts can crop up so I tend to layer up the sharpened image with the pre-sharpened image in PS and use layer masks to limit the sharpening to just where I want it.

But overall I haven't been thrilled with Sharpen even after its countless and annoying software updates though I still find Topaz Denoise handy though less so now that LR has its own denoise tool built in.

In terms of Topaz Denoise, I like it but in my experience the choice of model matters a lot and overall the tool works better with some cameras/sensors than others. For instance I found Topaz Denoise was pretty incredible with both the D5 and D6 with their largely monochrome fine grain noise even at very high ISO settings. But it struggled a bit with the Z6 II that in my experience had more chroma noise in high ISO, low light situations. I could make it work but would usually push up the color noise reduction slider in LR prior to sending a Z6 II file to Topaz Denoise.

The Z9 and Z8 files seem somewhere in between and I've had decent luck with them but I do tend to back off the Topaz slider default settings. As mentioned above I've been moving to just using the built in LR Denoise feature more and more as it doesn't seem so finicky and just makes for an easier workflow with perhaps more gentle results without a lot of cleanup required.