First click on the ‘auto’ settings button to get a starting point, then adjust the noise reduction amount slider if required (I rarely need to adjust it). I am only interested on how easy it is to get good noise reduction results for this article. As DxO is a fully featured RAW converter it is much more complex with a plethora of non-noise reduction settings available. Topaz DeNoise with Radeon 560x: 55 seconds Ease of useįor this section I am only looking at the noise reduction part of each software. PhotoLab 4 with Radeon 560x (No Noise Reduction or Sharpening): 8 seconds PhotoLab 4 with Vega 64 (No Noise Reduction or Sharpening): 5 seconds It does not include the time it took to work out what settings to use. The times below were taken from the moment the export button was pressed to the time when the processing was complete. I’ll also include timings for the built-in Radeon 560x graphics card. Graph showing the GPU use when exporting images with DeepPrime applied System Specsįor this test I used my trusty 2018 MacBook Pro with a 6-core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and a Vega 64 graphics cards in an eGPU setup. So how fast is the new DeepPrime algorithm?ĭeepPrime uses the GPU quite heavily, so stronger graphics cards will give better performance. PhotoLab 3’s PRIME DeNoise function was also no speed daemon. This certainly isn’t a criticism, it takes a serious amount of computational power to do what it does. Topaz is well known to push CPUs and/or GPUs to their limits and can take several minutes to process a high megapixel image. It is possible to create horrible, overly smooth results with both – but when using the programs sensibly (not pushing all the sliders to max) they both produce perfectly natural results. The difference is VERY slight though and wouldn’t be noticed in most cases.īoth DeNoise AI and PhotoLab 4 produce results that look natural to the eye. I do find that PhotoLab 4 has better sharpening algorithms though, which makes for more natural results. Both programs retain a great amount of detail and it is very hard (impossible to my eyes) to give one application an edge in this regard. These images are 100% crops and for a proper comparison should be viewed on a large screen device or zoomed in.ĭetail retention is also very close between the two applications. The second is the Topaz DeNoise AI result, and finally the PhotoLab 4 DeepPrime image. The first is the processed image with zero noise reduction applied. The Resultsīelow are the three comparison images. I repeated the test on over a dozen files with varying level of noise – the results were similar on all of the files I tried. It was taken on a Nikon D500 taken at ISO6400 in a fairly low-light setting (in the shade) typical of wildlife photography. I then sent the file to DeNoise AI as a TIFF file to perform the noise reduction and sharpening.īelow is one of the test photos I used. I then adjusted the exposure, colour, etc in Lightroom to produce a finished photo.įor the Topaz DeNoise test I opened the same RAW file in Lightroom and applied exactly the same exposure and colour corrections to the file (making sure noise and sharpening was set to zero). dng file with only the optical corrections and noise reduction applied. To test PhotoLab 4 I opened the image as a RAW file and set the best settings for Noise Reduction and Sharpening. To make sure each result is rendered to look the same I have used the following workflow: It is tricky to test the results from two different applications as slight differences in processing (colours, contrast, etc) can change how we perceive the noise in a photo. How much detail was lost in the noise reduction process?.How much noise is left after processing?.There are three considerations to take into account when looking at noise reduction results: How well does the noise reduction work with both programs on high ISO images? Make sure your camera is supported before you buy. PhotoLab 4 DeepPrime only works on raw images. Important: This article assumes you are working on RAW image files. If you want to check out Topaz DeNoise you can get a free trial from Use code SQUAREPIXEL to get 15% off any Topaz purchase. You can purchase PhotoLab 4 from DxO via this link Today (21st October, 2020), DxO has released PhotoLab 4 with a new ‘DeepPrime Noise Reduction’ that promises ‘a revolutionary demosaicing and DeNoise technology based on artificial intelligence and trained with deep learning.’ĭespite me cringing at the use of the ‘Artificial Intelligence’ mantra (hint: it isn’t Artificial Intelligence, it IS deep learning), I have put DeepPrime to the test with a Topaz DeNoise vs DxO PhotoLab DeepPrime shootout. This comes at noĪdditional cost to you and helps us keep this site going. Heads up: This article may contain affiliate links and Square Pixel Photography may earnĪ small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on these links.
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