I made this photo of a woman sitting alone at an outdoor café on the streets of Venice, Italy, during a visit in July 2012. It was a quick single shot and I only knew I’d totally blown the focus later when downloading and viewing the images. I’d almost deleted the soft-focused image several times but by chance had not.
https://meanderingpassage.com//wp-content/uploads/images/2020/06/EBM-20120707143342-2.jpg
I recently did a post benchmarking the graphics processing times on my computer for Topaz Sharpen AI and Denoise AI. While I was doing these benchmarks I happened to think of this photo and wondered just how capable Sharpen AI was. Below you will see the original photo (Before) and the results after one pass through Topaz Sharpen AI (After) using the “auto” and “Stabilize” settings. I didn’t try to manually adjust the stabilize amount settings as I wanted to see what the application would calculate and suggest.
While the results weren’t perfect, if you look closely there are artifacts, random bits, and pixelation in certain areas, but the results were pretty amazing considering everything. I certainly wouldn’t want to print it but at certain sizes, for the web, it would be acceptable. For images that were less out of focus, the results would probably be even better.
I finished the processing by running the image through Topaz Denoise AI and then modified the Color LUT, contrast, and levels in Exposure X5 to create the image at the top of the post.
It does look much better after Topaz. Just wondering if its that I am looking at it on monitor and converted to jpeg but it looks like there is a good deal of added texture type or jpeg artifact. Is that the case or is it just related to conversion to 8 bit jpg?
As I posted there are definitely artifacts and pixelation in certain areas. Compared to what I see on my monitor, these images have also suffered some from the conversion to jpeg, resizing, and image compression for this blog post. This is certainly not perfect or print quality but then the original image was really bad. In the case where maybe there was just a slight out-of-focus area, one eye, I think it would be a great tool. Thanks.
As you say, still excellent results and has made an unusable photo come back to life! I have this software but haven’t really started using it. Going to have to give it a whirl.
Howard, yes, give the Topaz Sharpen AI package a go sometime and I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on it. Take care.
Thanks for posting this Earl. It reinforces my own experiences in how this software can help bring some new life into images that didn’t pass the technical hurdles at first. And the artifacts may just show up as a little bit of grain if printed, would be an interesting test. Digital has made us so self-conscious these days of noise/artifacting that we used to accept in the film days as just grain, which can actually enhance sharpness. Topaz can even add a little grain to compensate to make the artifacts more “natural.”
I didn’t try to manually adjust the settings in Sharpen AI to see if it was possible for even better results. For this quick and dirty test, I wanted to see what their “AI” and the auto setting would do. Now that I have had some time to think about it, I believe this photo’s soft-focus may have been a small amount of motion blur (the shakes), which may be why the “Stabilize” setting was most effective. Mark, I think you’re correct on how digital has changed our perspective concerning noise/artifacts vs. analog grain or old. Thanks.