Recently I've been testing DxO2 and Topaz AI Sharpen. I've gone back and re-worked some images that were shot at high ISO in poor light. I compared results versus my typical PP for the past three or four years which involves basic lighting/color adjustments in LR and final lighting/color, NR, and sharpening handled in On1. My overall conclusions/observatons are nothing new:
- There is no one solution that fits all situations
- There are multiple ways to remove noise and sharpen which will yield essentially equal results
- The biggest difference in the various solutions is the amount of work, complexity, and time involved to yield desired results
In this post I'm going to compare results of four options for NR/sharpening: LR6 alone, LR+On1 Photo Raw, DxO PhotoLab2, and LR+Topaz AI Sharpen.
The image used for comparison below is posted at full resolution with no added output sharpening during jpeg conversion.
Top left: LR lighting, NR, and sharpening. Sharpen masking set to 92.
Top right: LR lighting, On1 NR and sharpening via USM.
Bottom left: DxO2 lighting, Prime NR set to auto, USM turned OFF
Bottome right: LR lighting, Topaz AI sharpen; sharpen module at default settings and grain OFF
D500, [email protected]
1/500s f5.6 ISO2500
Final comments based on all testing/experience to-date, not only relative to this particular image.
LR6 does and adequate job of NR/sharpening on images with lower levels of noise. It takes the most experience with the tools and may require a significant amount of masking/local adjustments. Sharpening tool is somewhat of a "black box" and just requires a lot of trial and error moving the sliders around. Hampered by lack of layers.
On1 Photo Raw is a pretty good supplemental layer editor to LR or standalone RAW converter. The lighting/color adjustment tools are very robust with some very useful presets/filters(e.g. pseudo HDR). The NR filter has basic adjustment sliders for luminance and color. Sharpening is very robust with options for "dynamic contrast"(aka micro contrast), "progressive sharpening"(black box), high pass, and USM. There are several masking tools that can yield excellent results but are fairly time consuming. Auto masking is poor and takes a LOT of processing power/time. Combining NR and sharpening with judicious masking can be very effective.
DxO2 works like magic ON SOME IMAGES based on content and depending on whether there is a camera/lens profile in the DxO database. Based on my limited testing the profiles seem to be where the magic lives in this software. Of all of the software I've used/tested it yields the best results for NR without destroying detail. Also the "lens sharpening" eliminates the need for capture sharpening and if the original is truly sharp no additional sharpening may be needed at all. DxO is a very good RAW processor with very robust tools/controls and "best in class" NR built in.
Topaz AI Sharpen is like magic.... on some images. There is a black box with very little user input/control. The "AI" aspect of the software analyzes the image and decides what details to sharpen and what constitutes noise to be supressed. There is a single slider for NR and one for sharpening. When it works it produces superior simultaneous NR/sharpening, even better than DxO in most cases(based on very limited testing). There are a couple of caveats. It is REAL slow. Even generating the on-screen preview takes several minutes for typical images. Also the Focus module can produce significant artifacts in the BG which requires masking/blending in a layer editor to correct.
- There is no one solution that fits all situations
- There are multiple ways to remove noise and sharpen which will yield essentially equal results
- The biggest difference in the various solutions is the amount of work, complexity, and time involved to yield desired results
In this post I'm going to compare results of four options for NR/sharpening: LR6 alone, LR+On1 Photo Raw, DxO PhotoLab2, and LR+Topaz AI Sharpen.
The image used for comparison below is posted at full resolution with no added output sharpening during jpeg conversion.
Top left: LR lighting, NR, and sharpening. Sharpen masking set to 92.
Top right: LR lighting, On1 NR and sharpening via USM.
Bottom left: DxO2 lighting, Prime NR set to auto, USM turned OFF
Bottome right: LR lighting, Topaz AI sharpen; sharpen module at default settings and grain OFF
D500, [email protected]
1/500s f5.6 ISO2500
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Subscribe to see EXIF info for this image (if available)
Final comments based on all testing/experience to-date, not only relative to this particular image.
LR6 does and adequate job of NR/sharpening on images with lower levels of noise. It takes the most experience with the tools and may require a significant amount of masking/local adjustments. Sharpening tool is somewhat of a "black box" and just requires a lot of trial and error moving the sliders around. Hampered by lack of layers.
On1 Photo Raw is a pretty good supplemental layer editor to LR or standalone RAW converter. The lighting/color adjustment tools are very robust with some very useful presets/filters(e.g. pseudo HDR). The NR filter has basic adjustment sliders for luminance and color. Sharpening is very robust with options for "dynamic contrast"(aka micro contrast), "progressive sharpening"(black box), high pass, and USM. There are several masking tools that can yield excellent results but are fairly time consuming. Auto masking is poor and takes a LOT of processing power/time. Combining NR and sharpening with judicious masking can be very effective.
DxO2 works like magic ON SOME IMAGES based on content and depending on whether there is a camera/lens profile in the DxO database. Based on my limited testing the profiles seem to be where the magic lives in this software. Of all of the software I've used/tested it yields the best results for NR without destroying detail. Also the "lens sharpening" eliminates the need for capture sharpening and if the original is truly sharp no additional sharpening may be needed at all. DxO is a very good RAW processor with very robust tools/controls and "best in class" NR built in.
Topaz AI Sharpen is like magic.... on some images. There is a black box with very little user input/control. The "AI" aspect of the software analyzes the image and decides what details to sharpen and what constitutes noise to be supressed. There is a single slider for NR and one for sharpening. When it works it produces superior simultaneous NR/sharpening, even better than DxO in most cases(based on very limited testing). There are a couple of caveats. It is REAL slow. Even generating the on-screen preview takes several minutes for typical images. Also the Focus module can produce significant artifacts in the BG which requires masking/blending in a layer editor to correct.