Here are a few more photos.Īdobe Photoshop’s “Preserve Details 2.0” resampler did not create any artifacts like this. Unfortunately, it looks like Gigapixel has created these artifacts all over the black sand dunes in the photo. This is problematic for any photographer, not only because it ruins the photo, but because they may not necessarily notice details like this until after printing. There is a large chunk of the sand that wasn’t processed correctly, and Gigapixel has created artifacts that are visible to the naked eye. It’s much easier to see the shortcomings of Gigapixel AI using the curves layer. Let’s now take a closer look at this problem area. It’s since become an invaluable tool for finding artifacts like the ones we’re seeing with Gigapixel. I recall a YouTube video with a Photoshop engineer explaining the use of curves like this to identify banding and other artifacts, and so I created an action for this a long time ago. To get a closer look at this, I’ll apply a curves layer that solarizes the image.< This is very likely to show up both on screen and in print. You can see blocks of black against portions of the sand here.
Topaz gigapixel ai 5.4.0 series#
Gigapixel AI’s output shows a series of blocked-out areas where the luminosity of the sand is clearly splotchy. Now let’s get into it a little deeper, and have a look at some undesirable artifacts that showed up in Gigapixel’s output. If I were to pick a winner here, it would be Photoshop. Gigapixel’s mountains look noticeably over-sharpened, bordering on pixelated, while the Photoshop output looks usable. Here, the sharpening looks more natural than Gigapixel’s, both on the rock face, and also in showing less of an outline around the mountain. Here is an example of Photoshop’s resampled image after the basic sharpening filter was applied: Sharpening tends to always do this, and since Photoshop’s image is less sharpened, it will naturally show less of this. The sharpness of the Gigapixel image creates an unnatural transition between the mountains and the sky, magnifying the slight aberration that was there. You can finally begin to see some of the variations between the two. This too is subjective, and so the two continue to function equally well. There is very little color variation between the two, however, because Gigapixel’s output was sharpened more, the blades do have some added brightness in their definition. Getting into the details of the fine blades of Icelandic grass on the dunes, we also see that both filters performed well, with Photoshop’s output sharpness slightly less than that of Gigapixel AI’s. Let’s take a closer look at some other portions of the photo. So far, the two are performing equally well! Other positive points worth mentioning: It does not appear that either filter magnified the chromatic aberrations on the photographer any more than the other, which can often happen with enlargements. NOTE: I left all of these images unsharpened for comparison. If you’re looking to achieve an identical level of sharpness with Preserve Details 2, applying the most basic sharpening filter in Photoshop seems to do the trick. The first thing immediately noticeable is that Gigapixel AI tends to sharpen the final image more than Photoshop does. You’ll see several examples of the two here, and it feels “over sharpened” in my opinion, but that is largely subjective. Let’s compare the output of these two products. I then ran the photo through both Topaz Gigapixel AI and Adobe Photoshop’s “Preserve Details 2.0″ to produce two 24×48” images (2x), then saved each jpeg at maximum quality, which is what I would normally send to the printer. I renamed my image to “The Other Photographer” to avoid accidentally overwriting anything. If I did any minor resampling, I don’t recall, but I typically only resample before emitting a print jpeg, and so when working with the original Photoshop file, none of my images should ever be resampled. This print currently lives on my wall as a 12×24, which is probably the native resolution after cropping.
I took this photo, “The Photographer” on a trip to Iceland in 2015, at the popular black sand dunes in Stokksnes overlooking the Vestrahorn mountain range, using a Nikon D810 and a Zeiss 35mm f/1.4 at f/5.6. Given how much Topaz products have been hyped lately, it seemed like a worthy endeavor to compare Gigapixel AI to Photoshop’s “Preserve Details 2.0” upscaler. I have several 2:1 cropped photos with a native-ish resolution of 12×24″, and wanted to see if Gigapixel was up to the task of handling a 24×48″ enlargement. I purchased Topaz Gigapixel AI as part of a bundle last year, but haven’t had much need to do enlargements until recently.
Adobe Photoshop by Jonathan Zdziarski (click on images for larger view):
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