jpeg to RAW

[Peru]

This looks interesting:
https://topazlabs.com/jpeg-to-raw-ai?ut ... bb260cca5c

[RJ Johnston]

I tried that out earlier today. Compared to AI Gigapixel or AI Clear, processing takes a really long time. After I compared the results of Jpeg to RAW to AI Clear, it was clear to me I didn't need Jpeg to RAW.

How was your experience?


Update: I reinstalled and tried lower resolution images (640x480, 1280x960) from an older digital camera. Now we are talking. And then taking the results from Jpeg to RAW into AI Gigapixel, then increasing 600%, the results are really amazing. If you start with high resolution images that are really good to begin with, you may not be as impressed, like me earlier.

[Bob]

Update: I reinstalled and tried lower resolution images (640x480, 1280x960) from an older digital camera. Now we are talking. And then taking the results from Jpeg to RAW into AI Gigapixel, then increasing 600%, the results are really amazing. If you start with high resolution images that are really good to begin with, you may not be as impressed, like me earlier.

Exactly my feelings too. Over a decade ago, I purchased Topaz DeJPEG specifically to work with those type of lower resolution images. As digital cameras improved and resolution increased, I had less and less reason to use it. I now shoot RAW exclusively with my DSLR and my current smart phone, but I still get JPEG photos from friends and family. The quality of those is good enough that I haven't felt the need to use DeJPEG for years. DeJPEG hasn't been updated in years either -- I think the last update was sometime around 2010. Looking at the Topaz website, DeJPEG redirects to AI JPEG to RAW. It looks like Topaz decided to make it a direct replacement. That does make sense. DeJPEG had presets for different degrees of JPEG compression, but to get the best results you needed to manually tweak the settings. That took experience and was fiddly. Using AI to perform the artifact removal would make it much easier. If you regularly work with lower resolution JPEGs it may be the way to go. I don't so there is little interest for me.

I still have the final version of DeJPEG installed should I ever need it -- It can be invoked from within either Photoshop or Topaz Studio and supports 16 bit images.

I have AI Clear and AI Gigapixel and I'm very happy with them.

[Peru]

How was your experience?

I haven't tried it. I just thought it might be of use to somebody so I posted it here.
Oh, well.

[Bob]

Just an FYI. Topaz Labs is having an "Ask Me Anything" session over on Reddit today. I took a quick look a few minutes ago and saw a few things I thought I would pass on. First interesting tidbit is that Topaz is apparently working on an AI Gigapixel type application for video. I see a lot of use for that. Second interesting thing is that an AI style replacement for Topaz InFocus is also in the works. InFocus is an input sharpening plugin and it works reasonable well for that. But, it also uses deconvolution technology to mathematically reverse image blur and I think that was what attracted most buyers. Deconvolution can only go so far and it wasn't the magic bullet many thought it would be. It will be interesting to see what their AI neural network can do with the problem. It sounds like both of those products will be released soon. The final item is that apparently Topaz is looking into consolidating their sharpening and noise reduction adjustments into a single plugin/application. That's much further off and subject to change.