Regarding 3rd Party Sharpening Plugins

[Doc_Pit]

My work chiefly involves compositing.  One problem I encounter frequently is blurring based on depth of field.  I may want to extract an element from an image in my database to incorporate into a new image.  Sometimes, I'll have an element that works well except that it is slightly out of focus because of depth of field.  Often, I can overcome that using various tools available in Photoshop.  (I find the texture feature in Camera Raw to be particularly effective in enhancing the apparent sharpness of slightly blurred areas.)  I've been seeing quite a few advertisements for AI powered sharpening plugins (e.g., from Topaz).  I'm wondering if any of you has had experience with sharpening  (detail extraction) software that offers any significant capability beyond Photoshop's own native capability.

[Trevor.Dennis · Accepted solution]

Hi Doc.  You are still obsessed with Photoshop then. 😉

It's expensive at US$199 but Topaz Photo Ai would probably be ideal for a couple of reasons.

1) It has a reasonably effective Refocus tool, and

2) It has an extremely good upsize tool.  If you start with a crisp original, it will give you a 4X upsize that is almost as sharp as the original.  I've used this a lot with forum posts that upload images too small to work with effectively.  This is my favourite, and most used feature of Photo Ai.+

On top of that is an outstanding denoise tool, and it is also my sharpening tool of choice nowadays.  Superfocus does an amazing job in the example on the Topaz site, but I have not been able to match their results. I have not taken a deep dive into the instructions though, so I am almost certainly not doing it right.

One of the things that impresses me the most about it, is how it can rescue old photographs with people in them.  I've seen it do magic tricks in some cases, but I think the Ai is making arbitrary decisions on what to replace blurred features with.  You get a much sharper face, but is it the same person?  

Click to expand this and view full size.  Check out that hair the mouth and the glasses frame.  There are small areas that look like they have been set to Dissolve, but you'd be working with a copy, so could mask that out.

[Doc_Pit]

Hi, Trevor.  This post confirms my belief that an old dog (woof! woof!) can learn new tricks.  One of the best things in life is to find something you love and work to get better at it.  So, I'm trying.  Thanks for the tip.  I'm going to give it a shot.

[Doc_Pit]

Trevor, just to follow-up.  I tried and then purchased Topaz Photo AI v4.  The denoise is particularly good.  Moreover, I find I can process the RAW file in Topaz, export it as a dng, do some additional processing in ACR, then bring it into Photoshop.  So, there is some significant additional capability.  Also, I've been impressed with the Sharpen and SuperFocus modules.  I have not mastered all of the sharpening capabilities native to Photoshop; so, I can't say the Topaz product is superior to Photoshop.  But, for me, there is a very short learning curve to using the Topaz product effectively.  So, given my current level of competence, I can get results from the Topaz product beyond what I can get from Photoshop with respect to sharpening.  Again, thanks for the tip!

[Trevor.Dennis]

Glade you like it.  A feature I use a lot is up-sizing.  It can do a X4 upres with remarkabley clean and sharp diagonals.  Useful for some of the undersized images uploaded to this forum.  I meantioned that it can restore and clean up old and distressed photographs, but like I said back up this thread, the results are too good to be true, so it has to be using some form of Generative Fill to replace the missing, or badly blurred, facial features.

You need to click to expand to evaluate this example properly.  Better still, copy it to Photoshop and view 1:1.  All I did was denoise, recover face (Gen. 2) and sharpen — all in Photo Ai.  There is just no way that those pin sharp eyes, teeth, and other facial features were recovered from the original.  I think I am going to have to hunt for a simialr image of a family member, so I'll know if it still looks like that person.  Or perhaps deliberately distress a good photo.   If anyone has such an image they would like me to try it on, please upload it.