Topaz Photo AI from Topaz Labs is an impressive integrated suite of eight photo enhancing tools: Denoise, Sharpen, Upscale, Recover Faces, Remove Objects, Preserve Text, Adjust Lighting, and Balance Color. It's closer to being a full photo editor than a batch of editing tools, but it doesn't remove the need for other photo editing software, namely, Lightroom and Photoshop. If you want to use the popular Topaz DeNoise tool, you now need to buy Topaz Photo AI, as DeNoise is no longer sold as a separate app. It may be worth it, though, because the noise reduction tool remains among the best on the market, equaled only by DxO PureRAW. Both are PCMag Editors' Choice winners.
How Much Does Topaz Photo AI Cost?
Topaz Photo AI costs a flat $199, with version renewal costing $99 (the product is now at version 3). There's no subscription to worry about, which is refreshing.
DxO PureRAW, the closest competition, costs $119 and automatically applies denoising and lens corrections to raw camera files. But PureRAW doesn't have the upscaling, color, and masking tools you get from Topaz Photo AI -- PureRAW is purely about correcting noise and lens distortions.
Topaz costs more than some full photo editing applications like CyberLink PhotoDirector ($99.99) and Adobe Premiere Elements ($99.99), though they lack Topaz's state-of-the-art image corrections. You can get Photoshop, Lightroom, and Lightroom Classic in Adobe's Photography plan, which costs $9.99 per month with an annual commitment.
The Topaz Photo AI Interface
Topaz Photo AI looks similar to DxO PureRAW. The startup interface is sparse, with the main space having a drag-and-drop target and a file picker button. A right-side panel shows optimization options and AI edit suggestions, and you can view your image in split, side-by-side, or full view. You can zoom with a slider or to presets like 100%, 200%, and so on. You can also pan around the image in the preview, but doing so initiates more processing.
The software supports raw images from every major digital camera model, including newer ones like the Canon ZV E1,the FujiFilm X-T5, and the Nikon Z 9. It also supports the raw formats from popular smartphones.
Using Topaz Photo AI
When you add images, Topaz downloads software to work with the images from the model of the camera and lens used for the shot. DxO PureRAW does that, too. Depending on your internet connection, it can take several minutes.
After you add a photo, the application immediately starts analyzing it and applying denoising and lens corrections. This part of the process did an excellent job of automatically correcting chromatic aberration in my test images.
You don't get quite as many options for denoising as you did in the previous incarnation of the app when it was called Topaz DeNoise AI. For example, in the older version, you could choose between Standard, Clear, Low Light, Severe Noise, and Raw. Now you just have Raw Normal and Raw Strong, and you get sliders to increase strength and Minor Deblur (that's intended to remove some smoothing applied by denoising). For JPGs, you also get an Original Detail slider.
How Good Is Topaz Noise Reduction?
Adobe Lightroom finally has automatic noise reduction, but Topaz Photo AI and other third-party apps (like DxO PureRAW and ON1) are better. In my previous comparison testing, Topaz was the one to beat, with DxO very close behind. The first photo in this article of a Rufous-backed Robin shows just how powerful Topaz's denoising technology is. Below is a comparison of the Topaz Photo AI with DxO PureRAW's. The leftmost section is the original noisy photo, and the right side of the split screen on the left is Topaz's denoising. The right-hand face is DxO's denoising. For both apps, I used the default recommended settings.
Both do an excellent job of eliminating the noise on the left and delivering a sharp image. You may think one result is better than the other since there's some subjectivity involved. You can change the settings to recover more or less detail in each. In the side-by-side image above, the DxO result has a bit more detail but is also more saturated.
For additional comparison, take a look below at Lightroom's auto-denoising on the same image. The noise is indeed gone, but you don't get the detail seen in the results from the third-party denoisers above. Note the softness in the eyebrows, for example.
I got remarkable results with Topaz's default denoising in a landscape test on a 108-megapixel HEIC shot from a Samsung Galaxy phone. In the test shot below, you can see the trees in the forest on the right where the image has been corrected. The red cliffs are also clearer.
Other Full-Image Editing Options in Topaz Photo AI
As mentioned, Topaz Photo AI is about more than just denoising. An Autopilot AI tool in the lower part of the right-side panel makes that abundantly clear, with its suggestions for things like sharpening, light enhancement, and balancing color. It also suggests local edits with subject and face detection, which I'll get to in a moment.
The Adjust Lighting option is unusual. Unlike nearly every other photo app, you don't increase or decrease exposure, but just apply what Topaz's AI analysis of the image thinks will correct it. You can't see any immediate changes as you move the slider because you have to wait for more processing (and another round of denoising) before you see the result. Regardless, the tool did improve the lighting in a photo of a juvenile Barn Swallow, shown below.
But I still see a need for reducing highlights and bumping up shadows, as you can in Lightroom and most other photo programs. Maybe someday AI tools will be able to make those decisions as well as or better than a human photographer, but that day hasn't yet arrived.
Upscaling
Upscaling is the last edit Topaz Photo AI can make, and it's useful for low-resolution JPGs. I tried Autopliot AI on a photo I shot using my phone, and the result is impressive. The right side below has much more detail than the unoptimized left side.
Topaz Photo AI (left below) did a better job upscaling than Lightroom's similar Super Resolution tool (right), as shown in this tight crop.
Local Edits
In the bird shot I mentioned earlier, Topaz Photo AI did a decent job determining the subject when I took its suggestion to Sharpen the subject. With this and the software's other local editing tools, you can fine-tune the selection by adjusting brush size and feathering (appropriate for my bird picture), and you can add to or remove from the selection. Perfectly selecting fine details like stray hairs or tiny feathers remains a challenge for all photo software I've tested, even that from Adobe. Capture One does one of the best jobs of this kind of selection in my experience.
The Sharpen tool is not only capable of sharpening, but it can add lens blur and motion blur as well.
The Balance Color tool is designed to correct images with a color cast. Oddly, the AI suggestions didn't propose this tool for a test scan of an old baby photo print with a strong pink color cast. Despite not suggesting the tool, it still did an excellent job on this shot.
The final two local enhancements are for improving faces that are too small in the background of a photo and for preserving text in a photo. The Face recovery tool is similar to Upscale, except it finds faces and implies the enhancement just to those. Indeed, it removed a good deal of the blotchy artifacts from the faces in this group shot:
Removing Objects With Topaz Photo AI
Like a lot of photo software, Topaz Photo AI has an AI-powered tool to remove objects from photos. You brush over the object you want to remove with a resizable brush, or you can use object selection, which worked well in my testing. You then tap the Remove Selection button and wait. And wait. And wait. The tool takes a lot longer than the corresponding tool in Photoshop and Lightroom, which works just as well, so if you're using either of those, you don't need to get Topaz for this feature.
Exporting From Topaz Photo AI
When you go to export your enhanced image in Topaz Photo AI, you'll still have to wait for more processing, so it's not an instant-save situation. The program can export enhanced images to DNG (Adobe's universal raw format), TIFF, JPG, and PNG. A Preserve Input Format option converts your images to DNG or TIFF. Note that lighting and color enhancements can't be saved as DNGs, and instead require TIFF. You can also choose to compress with ZIP or LZW at export and select between 8- and 16-bit output. You cannot export edited images directly to Lightroom, though you can install plug-ins for it in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, and Photoshop Elements. This is desirable since Topaz doesn't include everything you need for editing -- for example, there are no shadow or highlight adjustments or blemish removal, though it does include cropping.
Verdict: Worthwhile Image Improvements
For its top-notch noise reduction alone, Topaz Photo AI is worth purchasing. To that, it adds several tools along with AI-powered suggestions based on your image, telling you which of its tools you should use for each photo. You can certainly get a better image if you use Topaz Photo AI, but photographers will still need standard photo editing software, like our Editors' Choice applications Adobe Lightroom Classic and Adobe Photoshop. If you only want denoising, you pay less for fellow Editors' Choice denoising winner DxO PureRAW, and it's nearly as good.
