Topaz Photo AI and DXO Photolab 6 (with DXO Viewpoint 4)

 Topaz Labs which makes the apps I use for denoising, sharpening and enlarging photos released a new product which, a nice surprise, was considered included with the apps I already had so I got to download it for free. It's basically a more automatic and less powerful version of the other apps rolled into one. 

I would say it's a great product, it's easy and does pretty much what you need for most photography issues that are not extreme in nature. You can quickly take away pixel noise, sharpen the image and enlarge it in one place instead of three apps. The other software isn 't useless, it's more powerful and when you have a very low light situation or and old photo that is too small to use or too blurry it can make them relevant again for print or other work. If you don't have the other products, this would be a good way to get the basic benefits of Topaz AI without spending a lot of money or taking up space on a laptop. 

DXO Photolab is my "Lightroom" replacement or to be honest, my Adobe Bridge replacement since I never used Lightroom. It's limited compared to the Adobe products in how many formats it can handle... basically just JPG, RAW and Tif and I think this new version has some ability to open video but I haven't looked into that yet. Version 6 sees an update the denoise function which was already maybe the best out there. I also added the DXO Viewpoint add-on which integrates itself  into the normal functions of Photolab and can be opened as a stand alone. The update price, in CAD, was 150$ and money not well spent. 

It's not the the software hasn't improved or that Viewpoint is't great to have integrated directly into the workflow. The problem is the updates are mostly minor and Viewpoint is pretty much identical to the NIK plugin that does the same thing, in the same way but only as a standalone app. I should have know better since the last couple of NIK updates were not worth the price either. 

If you don't have any of the DXO/NIK products I highly recommend them but the updates, while arriving often, are not anything to pay more for. The NIK plug-ins are just updated to the new interface, a fantastic interface, but you are paying for a full upgrade for only a couple of them and then again a year later for a couple more. That should have been done in one paid update to be worthwhile. 

IN USE all this stuff is great.The photo above was taken on my morning ride on my far from great iPod touch phone. I was able to improve it to the point it could have been taken with my DSLR, something ithtthat I do not always have with me on rides.