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36 Comments on AI Gigapixel Review – worth the cost?

  1. Pingback: A.I. Gigipixel 1.1 released. - Andy Bell Photography

  2. Guillaume A

    I am on my last leg of my extended trial of this game changing piece of SW ! Quite a few reviews out there – I have a link for you below. I can say this – it impressed me so much – when judging the results on a 4K iMac, with my glasses on, that I know I’ll never opt for a high MP camera ever – I’ll just explore the wonderful lenses I have in my collection and up the res if I want to / need too – in Topaz Gigapixel !

    90%+ of images of 500 – 1200p on the short side, when upscaled in Topaz to ± 1800p make my heart sing – it’s nothing short of a wonder !

    This I believe now, is the solution to non-pro usage (to mention but a few!) :

    1. very old small photos,
    2. low MP cameras files from 2000s,
    3. old small scans OR scans done with a “cheep” scanner, not with the 1/2 slides a time Nikon scanner, which is out of reach – physically and financially,
    4. an amazing camera/lens, eg L1/7.5MP, which needs a res boost,
    5. film scanned in a OK scanner, and not in a Nikon pro slide / negative scanner, which you want to improve the detail of the scans

    My next batch is all my film form recent years, around 100 spools – the scans from my Canon 9000F !!

    So i say this – you do need it unless your first photography is with the DSLRs and few selected Panas, Olys, Sonys and Fujis from recent years, or unless quality of your old images is better forgotten about / unimportant

    Over

  3. Tami

    I made the mistake of purchasing AI Gigapixel without taking advantage of the free trial. I made several attempts to resize a couple of photos that I had cropped and wished to enlarge again. The results were disastrous. The people in the phot actually looked “deformed”. I even posted a comment on Topaz’s website hoping to get some sort of guidance. They just deleted my comment. Expensive lesson learned.

    • Andy

      Hi Tami

      I guess it depends on the photo and there is a limit to how much a cropped photo can be enlarged… What dimensions was your picture and how large were you trying to make it?

  4. Guillaume A

    This is strange .. i’ve pushed everything through Giga – small and large, film and digital, and very very rarely was i disappointed ! The detail recovery ability WITHOUT any hallos, artifacts and all – is truly amazing – haven’t seen such competence before and believe me, i’ve tried everything – on raw and on jpgs – this alone makes it a winner in my book. I’ve asked Topaz for 3 important features for me, which are missing presently, let’s see ..

    It’s not all roses though .. the thing is crashing on me like nothing before ! In all strange ways, like process a single image and crash, process few – crash .. Rebooting of my iMac helps little if at all .. The log file does not help much – i suspect very low level stuff between Gigapixel and MacOS libs and runtime video memory management.

    • Andy

      I experienced some crashes on certain photos due to an incompatible graphics card. I swapped it with a spare card that was compatible and haven’t had a crash since.

      The latest version has an option to use the main CPU if the GPU doesn’t work – have you tried that?

      • Guillaume A

        Hi Andy

        Thanks for input ! I am on Mac, and swapping cards is not an option really. I also suspected that mishandling of files is causing the crashes somehow. Tried the CPU instead of GPU – no change .. What actually reduced the incidence rate was when i ran Giga from an external boot SSD, processing the files on a different volume – the one inside the iMac – this seems to have worked for now. Both external and internal have the same MacOS version running

  5. Guillaume A

    Unfortunately i have to report back that AI Giga batch (the only way to use this thing) is not working at all anymore – crashing after 1 file .. I have a 2017 iMac with Radeon Pro 555 2G card, but even when i go to the 3GHz main cores – same thing happens .. It is very sad that they let it out untested / unhardened, because results are truly impressive – it recalls my first camera obsession – the Lumix LC1, which could produce beautiful results but one had to wait 6 secs after every shot for it to clear the buffer and shoot it only < iso200 .. eventually i forced myself to forget about it

  6. Guillaume A

    Rev 2.1 .. same issue – i nailed it down to certain images which crash Giga on opening them. No way to know which these images will be. Have a ticket with Topaz around that. It will be very sad if this is not resolved speedily. So far, it’s becoming a great disappointment – it cannot stay up and process.

  7. Peter Lavelle

    Thanks for the review Andy. You made the alternatives very clear. I use Affinity Photo but am currently forced to use Photoshop for a course I am doing. I will ditch that expensive, crash prone tool in favour of Affinity Photo as soon as I can. I won’t be buying Topaz Gigapixel either.

    • AndyBell

      Affinity is a superb tool. Unless there’s something you need that Photoshop does that Affinity can’t, its almost a no brainer to switch to Affinity.

      And some Photoshop plugins, such as DXO Nik, are getting around to supporting Affinity…

  8. Jim Arding

    I am trying AI Gigapixel, enlarging a roughly 200×500 300% does give me some seriously deformed faces, doing the same thing in affinity or photoshop gives me blurred out faces, there are just some limits to how much one can increase the size of low res old photos.

    • AndyBell

      At that resolution there just won’t be enough detail for a successful upsize, whatever tool you use. I don’t think Gigapixel is intended for such purposes.

      In reasonable resolution situations, such as a 6mp 16 bit image, gigapixel can perform very decent enlargements.

      But, in the end, it can’t create detail out of thin air. It needs a detailed image to start with…

      • Ilko

        This is so true, Andy .. It can perform close to wonders with a 500p on the short side provided it’s well taken / scanned image with sufficient detail .. BTW, im don’t know about Afinity, but PhotoZoom Pro is the closest thing to Gigapixel, and better in some areas, but not always – specifically where we talk about jagged edges at 100-200% – sometimes in Gigapixel enlargements, same – absent in PhotoZoom

        • AndyBell

          Affinity is virtually a total Photoshop replacement. And it’s resizing as every bit as good as Photoshop. I’ve not used PhotoZoom Pro…

  9. Pingback: Topaz AI Gigapixel - a further review - Andy Bell Photography

  10. Frank Kolver

    On how many devices can I load my Gigapixel purchase ? My wife and I both are photographers with our own PC’s and we would like to ‘share’ the purchase – is it possible?

  11. Pingback: Topaz Sharpen AI - Then end of soft images? - Andy Bell Photography

  12. Peter Swallow

    Hi Andy, I have just found out about Gigapixel AI, and when searching came across your reviews.
    I intend to download the trial version before I buy, but i see they also have Sharpen AI & Denoise AI.
    My query is, would I need those two if I have Gigapixel AI. On the promotio page for Gigapixel AI they mention increased sharpness and reduced noise as part of Gigapixel AI, but they are all included in the utility bundle that Topaz offer.

    • AndyBell

      Peter.

      Gigapixel provides a good degree of sharpening but the DeNoise and Sharpen products complete the process.

      Sharpening is a tricky thing – you need more for printing and less for viewing on screen and I tend to sharpen my pictures three times – once during raw development, once after editing and once before printing/displaying.

      I own the whole Topaz range and use them on almost all pictures. DeNoise includes AI Clear, which i find to be the best post editing sharpener. I use Sharpen AI for the final step…

      There’s no right or wrong in this – but Topaz’s tools give me the creative freedom to process each image until I’m really happy with it. Nothing else finishes an image as well as these three together.

      Hope this helps…

      Andy

  13. Ramin

    Here’s my experience so far after having the trial version for a week: On some photos, it does magic while on some other photos it does almost nothing or very little. Normally, if the picture is of high quality (sharp) with lots of details (such as texture, foliage, face), it does magic. If the picture is of poor quality, it doesn’t improve it much. Also, it doesn’t do anything on out of focus areas (blurry areas). I print at home up to 24″ wide. Printing files from my 42mp Sony A7r iii at 24″ x 36″ print size, the difference can be shocking. My roommate was a professional photo printer and when she saw the sample prints, she was amazed how the software adds details to the image as if the picture was taken with the sensor twice the resolution! One example is given here:
    Before: https://www.flickr.com/photos/raminolta/49187632203/in/photostream/
    After: https://www.flickr.com/photos/raminolta/49187632203/in/photostream/
    The difference remains equally visible on a 24″x36″ print.
    That said, the software screws the colors on raw files from my Sony camera and I am not sure how I can correct it. This happens regardless of whether I choose to keep the color profile or change it. If I first convert the raw file to say tiff in a raw developer and import the tiff file in Topaz G AI, the software can then handle the file correctly color-wise (not to distort it). I understand this software isn’t a raw developer so I don’t expect it to handle raw files properly.
    By the way, I could never stand gif animations. I wished site developers stopped throwing it into my face. What’s the point of a animated gif which keeps switching the photos before one has a chance to properly look at each. Obviously, we want to pause the fig to carefully examine and compare the results. Even when I click on the gif, a small static window pops up but the annoying animated gif keeps playing in the background.

    • AndyBell

      Thanks for the feedback. I’ve never throw a RAW file at Gigapixel – sizing is usually the second to last step in my workflow (with sharpening being the last step).

      I find Gigapixel works best on detailed, high resolution images. It can only work with what it’s given to process and the old adage if getting it right ‘in camera’ still holds true.

      Then again AI Detail can help with slightly out of focus pictures…

  14. Ramin

    For those who may be interested, there is now an extra% 25 discount on Topaz products which goes on top of the already discounted prices. This is valid for the holiday season. The Creator and Utility bundle become $300 total after all the discounts. Additionally, if you search online for Topaz coupons, you may find some working one. I found a working coupon and decided to go ahead and buy both bundles. It cost me $250 total! Not that I wanted them all but I thought at this price, it doesn’t hurt to have them all. Is my understanding correct that the Topaz licenses include all future updates to their software? I think I read something along this line somewhere.

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  16. N-D

    I found this page when looking for alternates and the like, one of the things that you did not mention is for 3D work. More specifically for older games, I had used the trial and was jaw dropped at the quality that it had given, as the game in question has 64×64 squares for the ‘ground’ textures, tiled all over, using Gigapixel both upscales, and adds detail that is quite impressive! There are alternate free versions, but they take A LOT longer than Gigapixel.

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  19. Techcloud

    Wow, very nice and detailed review of AI Gigapixel. I’m also working with e-commerce Image editing platform for the editing work. your review will help me to choose the right tool for my work. Thanks for sharing g such nice write up, please keep sharing more.

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  23. JL OUTSOURCING

    A very nice post about AI Gigapixel.Nowadays image editing is being done by adding AI Gigapixel in different fields.I learned a lot about AI Gigapixel going forward through your post.

  24. Pingback: Topaz Gigapixel AI - Time to Face the Music?

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