Topaz dejpeg latest install#
Topaz dejpeg latest manual#
Topaz dejpeg latest trial#

Topaz dejpeg latest manual#

The manual warns repeatedly to proceed gently because the tools are powerful I found indeed that the warnings are well-taken.

“Recover Detail” is for recovering image detail and texture, while “Reduce Blur” restores edge sharpness. Once Overall Strength is set, the others work incrementally off of that setting. The sixth is for cleaning-up clumps of colour noise. The other sliders are for Highlight, Shadow, Red Channel and Blue Channel noise. The first slider is for “Overall Strength” which controls everything else. It also allows us to look at where the noise is, by providing RGB, luminosity, red channel and blue channel views. Topaz DeNoise has six sliders for removing noise, two for improving detail and edge sharpness, and one for adding grain. Next step was to see how well Topaz DeNoisecould improve this image.įigure 2. Notice the characteristic green/magenta speckles all over the wall, which is off-white in the real world, and how the titles of the books in the book case are partially obscured by noise. Figure 2 shows a portion of the same image scaled to 100% screen magnification in the Topaz GUI. Wow! Did that ever work well! (Figures 1 and 2). To create the noisy digital images, I went for my point-and-shoot – a Panasonic Lumix LX-1 (the first in a succession of this camera line), set the ISO to 400 (the maximum), selected an under-lit subject and under-exposed the image on purpose, then in Photoshop cranked-up the exposure to fully reveal all the noise. Rather my purpose is to show what it does, with some comment on the settings as we move along.

It’s easy to follow and the GUI is very user-friendly – it has only a small number of options to tweak and in fact can be self-taught in little time. That’s all contained in the manual accompanying the download. This review is not a step-by-step “how to” for using the plug-in. So I tested both digital image files and colour negative film scans and report on those results here.

Applications designed for removing digital noise aren’t designed with scanner noise and film grain in mind, but if they can handle that too, it’s icing on the cake. Removing film grain while retaining image detail, however, remains a challenge for all those people scanning their archives and the small minority still shooting film. In fact, to test the application and prepare this review I took steps I’d never otherwise deploy in order to generate noisy images. Why? Digital noise reduction is looking after itself these days with the latest crop of DSLRs – the images are more often than not so clean that it’s only under stress conditions (really high ISO, low light, underexposure) that an industrial-strength noise remover is needed. My interest in this is two-fold: minor – reducing noise in digital images major – reducing grain and scanner noise from film scans.

Topaz dejpeg latest install#

It’s easy to install (a plug-in in the Photoshop Filter menu, but also works with Lightroom, Photoshop Elements and several other applications), easy to use and the results (noise reduction with detail retention) are the best I’ve achieved from any noise mitigating application.

Topaz dejpeg latest trial#

But Topaz Labs claims it’s the best on the market and the download of a fully-functional 30-day trial is free, so why not give it whirl? I did and I was impressed. My first reaction when they announced it was kind of ho-hum, yet another up-date of a noise removal program – we already have at least three very decent ones (Neat Image, Noise Ninja and Noiseware), not to speak of the improved tools in Lightroom, Camera Raw and other image editing applications.