[Leica] Leica 50mm Apo-Summicron-M & Topaz's AI Gigapixel

[Paul Roark]

I have not used Clear.  I'm not sure I see the need for it, probably
because I mostly shoot when there is plenty of light and the Sony a7rii
noise level if rather low.

When a do a 2x expansion, however, I do like to crank the noise suppression
up.  That generally does an excellent job of eliminating the noise that
would otherwise become annoying in the enlarged image.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 1:54 PM Ken Carney via LUG <lug at leica-users.org>
wrote:

> Yes, Gigapixel is great for people like me who sometimes don't see the
> image until it is cropped.  A 2x enlargement is plenty for me.  In
> talking with someone from Topaz, they advise using Gigapixel as the last
> step, as you note.  Have you used AI Clear? That seems to be working well.
>
> Ken
>
> On 5/17/2019 1:09 PM, Paul Roark via LUG wrote:
> > Yes, with Topaz AI Sharpen I am detecting non-random patterns in the red
> > channel in clear blue skies, at least when viewed on my monitor (which I
> > trust).
> >
> > My Sony a7rii images seem to be much cleaner than the Fuji compact's
> > images.  I'm guessing there are artifacts in their different OEM RAW file
> > formats' compression algorithms that are causing the artifacts.
> >
> > I have not done any printing with black and white images that utilized
> the
> > red channel that had been processed with the AI Sharpen software.  So, I
> > can't comment on the real world impact, but I have seen enough to never
> use
> > this software until just before printing, and then only on a copy file so
> > that my original is not damaged.
> >
> > I have a lot more trust in the Topaz AI Gigapixel 2 times enlarge, which
> > has nearly the same sharpening effect without the artifacts I'm seeing
> with
> > AI Sharpen.  But, again, I would not use this until just before printing
> > and then saved as a different named file.  (In fact, Topaz automatically
> > saves the processed files with a term in the name that identifies the
> > process used.)
> >
> > Paul
> > www.PaulRoark.com
> >
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