Topaz Photo Review: Is it worth your money?

Is Topaz Photo worth your time and money? In this in-depth review, I explain the pros and cons of this plugin that I’ve been personally using for many years.

Topaz Labs is a software company focused on developing AI-based tools for photographers who want to improve image quality without overcomplicating their workflow. For this reason, they have created Topaz Photo that promises to improve your images by removing the noise, sharpening your pictures, and improving their resolution with just one click using its advanced AI.

All these features were previously available as three separate stand-alone packages, DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI, and Gigapixel AI, but have since been merged into Topaz Photo.

The main advantage of this new release is that you can find everything in a straightforward interface. The downside is that the number of settings you can customize is limited compared to the three separate releases.

Topaz Photo can be used alone or as a Photoshop or Lightroom Plugin and is compatible with most image file types, including RAW format. Using it as standalone software, you can export the file in DNG format, thus retaining the best quality.

AI plays an essential role in this software, and that’s why I mentioned Topaz Photo in my article, where I talk about the best AI tools for every photographer. A new feature called Autopilot is where the magic happens.

Main features of Topaz Photo

When you first open Topaz Photo, you’ll see the option of selecting one or more images, and then an autopilot switch that automatically analyzes the scene and applies some of the recommended edits.

It has three main sections: Start Here, Enhancements, and Finishing Steps.

Autopilot and Start Here

This is a new feature introduced in the recent releases of Topaz. It’s an advanced tool that uses AI to examine your images and detect which elements are in the picture, what needs to be improved, and which settings are ideal. It’s similar to how Luminar Neo works (here is my review), although Luminar Neo is a bit more advanced.

The autopilot automatically masks the picture’s main subject, but it’s not always correct. You can refine the selection by moving a few sliders if it’s not good.

If the settings applied are too strong or irrelevant to the image, you can always fine-tune them.

The other settings in the Start Here section will help you fix the image before doing the color grading (for example fixing minor focusing issues).

Enhancements

In the Image Quality section, you can find four tools: Denoise, Sharpen, Adjust Lighting, and Balance Color.

• The Denoise tool works great. I think this is where Topaz shines. The only downside is that the image can have a “plasticky” feeling if you apply a very aggressive noise reduction.
• The Sharpen tool is a kind of hit-or-miss thing. Sometimes, it dramatically enhances the image, and other times, it simply ruins it. The AI automatically detects the subject, creates a mask, and improves the image. There are many different settings, and the best way to figure out which one works for your image is by trying various combinations.
• The Adjust lighting tool is a smart tool that is supposed to enhance the image by looking at the whole scene and by fixing the issues it finds. You can manually edit the exposure, highlights, and shadows if you are not satisfied with the results.
• The Balance Color tool helps you to fix the white balance of the whole image or parts of it. For every setting, you can manually edit the mask Topaz created.

Finishing Tools

The finishing tool section includes menus that will be automatically disabled if the AI doesn’t think you need them. For example, in a landscape picture, you won’t be able to recover faces.

One of the most important features is the Upscale tool. It works well with files with a lot of information and that are not too compressed, like those generated with a mirrorless camera. Don’t expect miracles if you have an image shot with a smartphone. Most likely, you’ll only increase the artefacts.

This being said, it’s a handy tool to 1) recover older pictures from lower-resolution cameras, 2) allow for larger print sizes, 3) allow for extreme cropping even with high-res shots from modern cameras (handy for wildlife shots), and 4) to increase the size of AI-generated images (which have, as of now, a very low resolution).

You can choose between four sizes (1x, 2x, 4x, or Max). The Max setting increases the image size 6 times, but the limit is 32,000 pixels on the longer side. This limit applies to the other settings as well. So if you choose 4x, but the image is larger than 32,000px, you’ll only get to pick 1x, 2x, or Max.

When should you use Topaz Photo?

This is not software that should be used every time you edit an image, unlike Luminar Neo (you can try it here for free) or Radiant Photo (here is my review), Luminar applies several filters and enhances all sorts of images. Meanwhile, Topaz Photo is specifically designed to fix some common issues. So, if your images are not affected by those issues, there is no need to use it.

If you are editing images with too much digital noise, Topaz is the perfect tool. You can quite literally recover a picture that would have been otherwise unusable. Topaz also offers a fantastic upscaling tool. This is a must-have if you want to sell your AI-generated images (find out more here).

This is because, at the moment, all text-to-image AI tools, such as Midjourney, create images with a very low resolution, way below the minimum required by stock agencies. So, the only workaround is to use Topaz Photo to upscale them. You can do it in bulk, thus speeding up your workflow.

Topaz is also great if your portraits are slightly out of focus. Of course, don’t expect miracles, but I was surprised by how well the AI works: it can identify the faces, correct the focus, and sharpen it (although it tends to oversharpen a bit), and it does all of this in just one click: as simple as that.

Pros and Cons of Topaz Photo

Final thoughts about Topaz Photo

To conclude my review, I can say that Topaz Photo is an excellent tool in particular scenarios. This software can be a lifesaver if you have a one-in-a-lifetime portrait shot in high ISO and slightly out of focus. It’s also (as I mentioned earlier) the best option to allow you to upscale your AI-generated images, a must if you want to monetize them by selling them.

The two main issues are the price and the slow rendering time. Given that it’s pretty expensive and you won’t use it to post-process every image, it can be hard to justify its price. This being said, Topaz Photo does what it’s supposed to and does it well.

If you enjoyed this review, check out my review of Drone Launch Academy; it’s a great video series if you are just getting started with your drone. Here, you can read my review of FX Library Pro, a complete set of Overlays for Photoshop.