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What’s new with DeNoise AI v3.1

Download DeNoise AI v3.1

MacOS [ Online | Full ]
Windows [ Online | Full ]

Release Notes

DeNoise AI v3.1 at a glance

  • New Severe Noise AI model – tackle photos suffering from excessive noise due to very high ISO settings and low light conditions
  • Improved Comparison View – Select which AI models are displayed to quickly choose the one that best suits your image
  • Apple M1 plugin support in Adobe Photoshop – Access the DeNoise AI plugin from within Photoshop running natively on Apple M1 silicon without needing to use Rosetta emulation
  • Snappier performance – Up to 3x CPU and 12x GPU improvements on Windows and 4x improvements with Macs using discrete GPUs when compared to DeNoise AI 2.4.2

You know the feeling you get when you set your camera to ISO 8000 (or higher) and in the back of your mind, you’re sure that the shot you’re about to take is going to be a “throw-away” because of the crazy amount of noise it’ll undoubtedly have? But, you take the photo anyway and can already anticipate the disappointment when you try to get rid of all that noise. Still, you’re really digging the photo despite the excessive noise and, at this point, you’ll gladly try anything to salvage it.

If you can relate, then we think you’ll be very happy about the latest update to DeNoise AI v3.1. We want to help you turn photos that you never thought would see the light of day into something you’ll be excited to share with your family and friends. Let’s take a closer look at what we cooked up.

Making sense of the noise

The Severe Noise AI model was built to recover images with excessive noise.
This photo was taken at ISO 16000 and suffers from excessive noise. With the new Severe Noise AI model, we’re able to isolate and remove that distracting noise while also preserving important edge detail that would otherwise have been lost in other noise reduction apps.

The last thing we want is for you to throw away a photo you really love because it is riddled with excessive noise. It has happened too many times already and we wanted to do something about it. So, we built the Severe Noise AI model for those times when you’re looking for that one Hail Mary to save the day (or just your super-noisy photo).

The first challenge is learning which photos work best with Severe Noise. Unlike Low Light, our other high ISO AI model, Severe Noise works best on images that suffer from an extremely large amount of noise. Typically, photos taken at ISO 6400 and higher will have an excessive amount of noise that can negatively affect the end result.

Next, we had to figure out how to remove both the luminance and color noise that typically affects super high ISO photos without obliterating the natural edge details of your subjects. So, we fed our AI models with thousands of super noisy photos, letting it learn to identify the signal from the noise.

Our hope is that with this new AI model, you’ll be able to recover all sorts of photos previously overlooked due to excessive noise.

A new way to compare AI models

 

 

Sometimes, it can be hard to see the effects that each of the four AI models in DeNoise AI have on your photos when switching between them. That’s where Comparison View comes in. We built it to quickly show you the results of multiple AI models in one convenient view. When you can see multiple AI models at once, it’s that much easier to decide which one works best with your photo.

Remarkable intelligent noise reduction

We’re constantly striving to make DeNoise AI smarter and more effective in removing noise based on the specific need of your photos. Since 2018, we’ve made more than 100 new or substantially improved AI models for image quality and they’re only going to get better. We’re really excited to see how you use DeNoise AI to make your photos look their best. Be sure to tag us on social media and use #DeNoiseAI so that we can see your amazing work! If you don’t yet own DeNoise AI, purchase a copy or download a free trial.

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How we engineer cutting-edge AI applications

Here at Topaz Labs, we train modern AI models to “auto-magically” enhance images and video, and deliver them to our customers in desktop applications that run on their own hardware.   This provides a lot of value to our customers, but raises new challenges to our engineers in ensuring reliable software delivery.

We recently released new versions of our Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI applications using a next-generation version of our AI Engine.  The AI Engine is the part of our software which takes in the AI model, and processes an image through it using a variety of hardware-optimized libraries.  This new version of the AI Engine has resulted in some incredible improvements in speed, but unfortunately the launch of the 3.0 versions of Sharpen AI and DeNoise AI was rougher than expected.

Problems

We ran into problems where after the initial release, certain combinations of operating systems, CPUs, GPUs, and drivers resulted in crashes or sub-optimal performance. Our customers posted several issues on our forums, and our support ticket volumes sky-rocketed.

Fortunately, our team rallied, and isolated a few of the major reproducible issues. And our engineers quickly diagnosed and patched numerous issues in rapid order. However, for many of our customers, the damage was already done: they had gone through an upgrade of our software, and gotten a new version that was worse than what they had had before.

The issues in our release products affected our customers across three dimensions:

The severity of the issue for a given user
The number of users affected
The length of time that a given user is affected

Each one of those dimensions has a multiplying effect on the negative impact of a given released bug, and unfortunately these releases suffered from larger than hoped-for effects across all three dimensions.

Solutions

Now that the dust is settling on those recent releases – the team met and we came up with some ways to improve the quality of our product releases in a way that also still enables us to innovate quickly on new enhancements to our products:

Better Testing

We recently had engaged a new Quality Assurance partner. But unfortunately we didn’t ask them to test across a diverse enough set of operating systems, CPUs, and GPUs. We also made large changes to our software, and the way that it is installed for our users, after the testing runs had already completed.

To address these issues, we’ve updated the testing plans to incorporate 5-times the number of tested types of machines, and instituted a stricter feature-freeze period between testing and release. This will ensure that we catch more issues earlier, and that we minimize the chances that new issues are introduced after testing.

Smaller Impact

We’ve also adjusted our release schedule, so that products with similar new functionality will go out at different times. This means that if issues with a new common piece of functionality, like this new AI Engine, are encountered, that they one affect one product at a time, and can be fixed for that one product.

Faster Fixes

One of the new features that we rolled out with the new product installers, is the ability to optimize software updates. This means that when you update a piece of Topaz software, that the installer only downloads the parts of the application which have changed since the last version.

We’ve also changed our release processes to enable more “hotfixes”, which represent a fix that the engineers feel is highly impactful for our customers, and has a low risk of introducing new problems. Close followers of past Topaz releases may have seen us do these before, we’re just further enabling the team to be able to get these fixes out faster to our customers.

Continuous Improvement through Transparency

At Topaz Labs, we feel that some of the best lessons are learned when things do not go well.  So we endeavour to foster open and honest communication internally towards learning those lessons as a team.  We also aim to keep our promise of high-quality software delivery to our customers, and be honest when we feel we have fallen short.

Hopefully others may find some of the lessons we’ve learned useful for their own projects.  We’ve certainly been encouraged that we can take steps towards even better releases in the future.

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How to make better holiday photos with AI-powered editing software

As we wrap-up the festive season and review the many family photos snapped throughout all of our holiday traditions, you may come across a few shots that are almost perfect.

Photographing holidays, like all live events, calls for a reportage style of photography: You’ll shoot quickly to catch the perfect moment, but sometimes the light will be a little low, or your shutter speed a bit slow, or the subject doesn’t quite fill the frame. Authentic moments unfold spontaneously, in real-time, and there are no “do-overs”. 

When you make that almost perfect shot — a great moment, with some technical flaws — all you need is a little help in post-production to make that image to shine. Topaz Labs offers a whole collection of AI-powered photo editing apps to help you rescue your photos.

Tackle low-light photos

Holiday lights look stunning in a dimly-lit room, but they are difficult to photograph. When you’re shooting in low light without a flash, you’ll struggle to shoot at a fast shutter speed unless you raise your ISO.

Higher ISOs increase the sensitivity of your camera’s sensor, so you can freeze motion even in low light. But this higher sensitivity comes at a price: noise. Noise is like a veil of static across an entire photo, muddling the details and depth of your image.

DeNoise AI uses machine learning tech to tackle heavy image noise, so your photos looks crisp and clean even at ISO 10,000 and above. It’s the perfect app to finish your nighttime holiday photos.

Sharpen blurry images

You’ve never seen a kid fly across a room faster than on Christmas morning! They’re all smiles as they tear into their gifts under the tree. These are the best moments filled with pure joy and lightning speed. But capturing those happy moments are difficult, because quick-moving subjects often leave us with a little motion blur in the final photo.

Correcting missed focus and motion blur is easy with Sharpen AI. You can choose from three AI Models Sharpen, Stabilize, or Focus to correct a soft image in one click. The results will give you more detail, for crystal-clear holiday memories. 

Make your photos perfect for printing

Sometimes you’ll shoot the perfect portrait if only your subject was filling the frame! If you need to crop-in to your photo to recompose the perfect shot, how many pixels are you losing? How much resolution do you sacrifice by cropping?

The solution is simple. Gigapixel AI makes it possible to upscale your image up to 600% with enhanced detail and sharpness. Achieve cleaner, crisper, bigger photos, ideal for print.

What's your biggest photo challenge?

Whether it’s capturing crisp photos or creating the perfect composition, we all have our own challenges with photography. What’s your biggest photo challenge? Let us know in the comments!