In my last post I explained how I’d begun using Topaz DeNoise AI & been super impressed with the results. Well DeNoise AI has a couple of sister products, one of which is Sharpen AI, so I downloaded the trial version to give it a test. As anyone who's been to one of my lectures or workshops will know, I’m really happy with the sharpening tool in the TK Action panel. I use nothing else because it’s never let me down, so I was not expecting to see any great advantages from the Topaz software. I was right - for the general sharpening of images i.e. the last step of the processing workflow, it gives no advantages I could discern, so I’ll be sticking with the TK sharpener.
But… when I used it directly after using Topaz Denoise I did find it re-emphasised detail that DeNoise had removed. This was really noticeable on skin tones, particularly faces. Any noise reduction software works by smoothing out fine detail (after all that’s all noise in an image is - detail we don’t want) & this can give skin a plastic like appearance. Using Sharpen AI seems to undo that effect - but still remove the noise.
I’ve used it on the two players in the squash image below i.e. DeNoise AI first followed by Sharpen AI & I think I’ve got a better result than my previous techniques would have given. Looks like I’ll be buying the trial version!
This image was shot at 2500 iso & by using the two Topaz products the skin tones are not too bad. Not perfect of course, but acceptable I think.
