For photographers, images editors are pretty much essential nowadays if you want to get the most out of your photos. However, if you’re not particularly adept with this kind of software, you’re going to be at a clear disadvantage.
Topaz Photo AI is one of many applications designed to make image enhancement and correction accessible to everyone. It uses AI models to help you upscale, sharpen, and denoise your photos, and it’s able to do everything automatically, while still allowing you to make adjustments when necessary.
Load your images and let the app decide what to do
The best way to flatten a learning curve is to do away with it altogether. Topaz Photo AI allows you to just drop your photos all at once, and it will analyze them to figure out how they can each be best enhanced. This feature is called Autopilot, and it can make it much easier for users who are unfamiliar with image editing.
Once the files have been analyzed, hovering over the thumbnails will provide a quick summary of the changes to be made, and you can inspect a side-by-side preview to see how the photos will be altered. If anything is amiss, you can customize every parameter freely.
Upscale, sharpen, and denoise
If you have lower-resolution images that lack detail, the app can increase their resolution while using models based on similar images to figure out how to fill in the new pixels. Up to 8x enhancement is possible, but results will be less reliable the higher you go.
With upscaling or photos taken in less-than-ideal conditions, noise removal is typically necessary. Again, the app relies on AI models to differentiate between noise and essential details, and you can set how strong the processing should be.
While you always want to make sure everything is in focus, you don’t always have time to avoid a blurry shot, and subjects in motion can make things even more difficult. With the app’s sharpening tool, you can often add more crispness to a shot without having to retake it.
Quite effective, but some manual adjustments are often necessary
Topaz Photo AI does a good job of identifying where improvements can be made, and the suggested enhancements are usually on point. However, you still have to be prepared to tweak things occasionally, as AI can only be so smart.
Overall, this is a great app for amateur photographers who are still learning the basics of photo editing, as it makes use of automation and AI models to both locate issues and figure out how to add and maintain image detail when enhancements are made.
What’s New:
Version 2.0:
Added v2 of the Sharpen Standard model
Added v2 of the Remove Noise RAW models
Fixed tiling artifacts
Added Adjust Lighting enhancement
Added Balance Color enhancement
Added automate plugin for Photoshop, which allows for cropping and upscaling
Access the plugin within Photoshop by going to File > Automate > Topaz Photo AI
Added many new configuration options over how Autopilot works
Added new panel displaying the status of Autopilot
Hover over the status bar to review the completed steps
Updated design of the different panels of the app
Updated status bar and autopilot section to use less space
Updated design of sliders
Fixed right panel scroll position not resetting when switching images
Fixed inconsistent behavior regarding the enhancement being collapsed or not when toggling on by clicking the label (not the switch)
Fixed some Panasonic & Minolta images having incorrect orientation
Fixed some Sony images having incorrect orientation on export
Fixed some exported non-RAW files opening in Camera RAW
Fixed noise levels sometimes being “undefined” in Remove Noise tooltip
Fixed crash when detecting faces
Fixed Autopilot not enabling Remove Noise when it should
File size estimates are now cached
Improved performance when opening many images at once
Updated lensfun
Title: Topaz Photo AI 2.2.2
Developer: Topaz Labs
Compatibility: macOS 10.12 or later
Language: English
Includes: Pre-K’ed
Size: 4.14 GB
