Cleaning up street pics

[Robert Watcher]

Topaz Sharpen AI and Denoise AI, have turned out to be two essential applications in my image processing workflow recently.

Quite a few of my street photographs end up having some motion blur. Especially is that the case because I dont wait around for pictures to happen - I am walking and firing shots as people pass by me or shooting from the hip as I pass by. The camera is always set to Auto Exposure and Auto Focus. The technique works quite well for me.

And I don’t really mind a bit of subject movement, and have even been satisfied with the two images I worked on today and posted them back in 2011 when I took the. Actually it’s pretty cool that I have so many of this style of pic that are usable, being I was shooting in the streets at that time with my little Olympus E-PL1 and it’s relatively slow auto focusing capabilities (by todays standards). In actuality even modern cameras could easily miss focus or suffer from motion blur in this type of moving scenario.

Just thought I’d demonstrate my subtle results today using Topaz’s applications on some older shots

 

[Robert Watcher]

This photo was a little bit more of a challenge because the subjects were so underexposed from auto exposure. That Olympus E-PL1 was not good with noise, and so bumping up the exposure 2 or 3 stops did some terrible things to the woman’s skin as well as fringing on bright edges.

My goal here was to see if I could sharpe the features of the woman passing me on the right. In Sharpen AI I set the level of sharpening and using the excellent masking abilities - only applied that sharpening to that woman as well as the boy carrying the container. The results were decent, but I was able to clean the woman’s blotchy skin up by running that sharpened pic through Denoise AI. For the final pic shown here, I did do a little cloning in Affinity Photo with her ear. But didnt really spend a lot of time.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Excellent and essentially a revelation of the utility of these Topaz tools and the value of revisiting forgotten photographs.

Ansel Adams would revisit a B&W negative in the darkroom and work for weeks once more and redevelop the interpretive print according to his updated accumulated skills and ideas perhaps 5-10-15 years later!

Asher

 

[Antonio Correia]

Impressive results Robert !
How is the learning curve of these apps ? Are they hard to master ?🤷‍♂️

 

[Robert Watcher]

Impressive results Robert !
How is the learning curve of these apps ? Are they hard to master ?🤷‍♂️

I very seldom use anything but the Auto recognition settings. Overriding those settings is effortless. Just a slider for the strength that works best.

I bought mine when there was a significant deal. They have free trial versions - https://www.topazlabs.com/



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[Robert Watcher]

Now here is something phenomenal, that I have never tried doing until just now….

….. I copied 5 street pics with varying degrees of motion blur, to my desktop. I then dragged all 5 onto the Sharpen AI app icon on my desktop. The application opened And I selected the checkboxes for all 5 files - click on the Auto button and let it run and process the set with settings the program determined were correct for each pic.

 

[Robert Watcher]

Can you image being able to batch process a whole pile of non-critical images and having sharpening and noise reduction being applied to all at one time. Crazy. This would probably be great for pics taken with small sensor cell phones.

As can be seen from this screenshot showing the processing taking place —- each file has been handled with a different algorithm automatically. Let’s see how smart the program was on its own with the before and after pics below.

 

[Robert Watcher]

 

[Asher Kelman]

This is phenomenal!

You are also a great teacher! 👍

I appreciate your labeling in red and fortunately your handwriting is neat and easy to read.

Asher

 

[Antonio Correia]

With software and AI all shots are sharp !
Indeed great tutorial !
Thanks for sharing !

 

[Jerome Marot]

Thank you. I had not realized software had become so efficient at removing blur.

There is a blond lady in two of the pictures. Somebody you know, I suppose?

 

[Robert Watcher]

Thank you. I had not realized software had become so efficient at removing blur.

There is a blond lady in two of the pictures. Somebody you know, I suppose?

No. She was a tourist I noticed in the market area.

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[Robert Watcher]

I still can’t get over how Sharpen AI can intelligently find details in bird feathers and other animal details.

I have very few pics of hummingbirds from when I was in Costa Rica. A great subject to see how I can benefit from both Sharpen AI and Denoise AI in tandem.

This was taken with a consumer 6MP Nikon D40 (1/125’th sec @ f5.6, 560 ISO with a 18-200 kit lens)

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This screenshot shows one of the viewing options in Sharpen AI, where four different sharpen algorithms are applied for comparison before selecting. I like the masking feature that auto selects the main subject - - - it can also be refined. I used a different non-usable pic to try this on.

And look at this one. Now the settings for Motion Blur are cranked right up and I would never use that setting, But look how it almost totally corrects the tail feathers with just a little wisp of blur on the side.

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[Robert Watcher]

A Canadian Street Pic

 

[Antonio Correia]

I wonder what it does to an already sharp photo... 🤷‍♂️
Anyway, I am jumping in

 

[Don Ferguson Jr.]

DXO DeepPrime is even better than Topaz and sends dng back to Lightroom.
Don

 

[Robert Watcher]

DXO DeepPrime is even better than Topaz and sends dng back to Lightroom.
Don

Yes DeepPrime is noise reduction - not ai sharpening tool. I’m sure it is good as well. Denoise AI does work with RAW and I presume returns those back to Lightroom. I don’t shoot in RAW and I don’t use Lightroom. But both Topaz programs work as Standalone and as Plugins.


Thanks

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[Asher Kelman]

All this justifies our long term storage of pictures we didn’t delete, hoping ultimately smarter software would rescue them.

We can celebrate but that means we need to learn to take advantage of batch mode!

Asher

 

[Antonio Correia]

Note on Topaz DeNoise AI
Downloaded Topaz DeNoise AI and applied just once within LR and another time within Photoshop
The adjustments are applied in this app (Photoshop) without the previous creation of a layer and that, I don't like.
So, we have to duplicate the layer and then apply Topaz so we can work with masks.
Perhaps the idea is to apply the preset from the RAW file which in turn is the start.

In this regard I like best the Nik Collection
Tomorrow I will start from scratch. Or even tonight...

 

[Asher Kelman]

Note on Topaz DeNoise AI
Downloaded Topaz DeNoise AI and applied just once within LR and another time within Photoshop
The adjustments are applied in this app (Photoshop) without the previous creation of a layer and that, I don't like.
So, we have to duplicate the layer and then apply Topaz so we can work with masks.
Perhaps the idea is to apply the preset from the RAW file which in turn is the start.

In this regard I like best the Nik Collection
Tomorrow I will start from scratch. Or even tonight...

Antonio,

I always work in a duplicate layer for changes to pixel arrangements, except for geometric corrections which I make in RAW!

Asher

 

[Antonio Correia]

Asher, you don't save RAWs, do you ?
Of course not ! RAW is raw, pure information.