As it happens, I was doing some comparison tests between DeNoise AI and Photo AI this afternoon. It was a bit dreary outside and I had been
taking wasting some time shooting (photographically
) sparrows and tits through the office window and the ISO was hitting between 10,000 and 20,000. I decided to compare the two programs - nothing scientific.
I opened 18 unedited raw images directly in both programs initially using their Auto settings. So, both treat noise pretty well the same in all but two images but DeNoise had the edge in retaining details in the birds feathers in the highest ISO images. Sharpening was a different matter though, with Photo being far more aggressive and consistently over-sharpening and requiring me to turn it back by about two-thirds of the auto setting. DeNoise, on the other hand tends to under-sharpen but never by enough to make it imperative to adjust the setting. One thing I do like in Photo AI is the automatic selection of the subject in your image and then only sharpening that, leaving the background nicely blurred. Thumbs up for that feature.
Aside from the above, Photo AI is, on my PC, really slow and makes the CPU fan spin really fast (and noisily). Okay, I know my graphics card is rather outdated and a better one would help the situation but that's something for a later date
I think it is clear that Topaz are working towards making Photo AI their primary application and maybe drop development of the free-standing programs in due course. All I can say is that they still have a way to go before that is a realistic proposition.