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I have been to the photography show today and saw a demonstration from Topaz systems, I wondered what people's opinions were about this system in relation to Lightroom? Thanks
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Beginner Topaz system vs lightroom
- Thread starter Kernowgirl
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I haven't tried the Topaz studio but I do use the photoshop plugins, they work well enough. Personally I like Lightroom, but another to look at if your want something else is ACDSee pro, the newer versions are very lightroom like. and pretty good.
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This is true.
Essentially, if you think you can get better than LR for free/cheap you simply can't, there are some good alternatives to LR but the only ones really viable are also expensive (Capture One).
If, on the other hand, you want a free/cheap piece of software that will do the job then yes, there are some very worthwhile options.
One thing to think about though is that for many many photographers the software is critical in achieving output that they are happy with so it doesn't make sense to scrimp. People lust after new lenses/cameras which in reality will only make a little difference to what they already yet the same person can seem to begrudge paying for software which will have a much bigger effect on their output than a new lens.
If you have Mac (and maybe now Windows?) then Affinity Photo is a very very good cheap alternative to Photoshop but it doesn't replace LR (yet).
OP
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Thanks all for your comments. I currently use DPP and was looking to add Lightroom. But saw demo from Topaz and wondered whether worth the investment, they always make these things look great at shows!
Cheers
Cheers
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- Brian
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But the basic Topaz Studio is free, can be used as a raw developer, and comes with a several adjustment modules.
You then add other Topaz plug-ins as you feel you need them.
Although I have the full Topaz bundle, I rarely use some of the programs, and it's certainly not necessary to own all of them.
Personally, I use Topaz "Adjust", "Detail" and "Clarity" quite often, although not all at the same time, nor on every image.
They can quickly obtain a result that is difficult or impossible to acheive with other software.
Like most companies, you can download trial versions of all the Topaz programs and make your own decisions about them.
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This really depends on the context of the question, and what aspects you are interested in.
Lightroom is primarily a DAM (cataloguing tool), which can convert RAW files into finished Tiffs, Jpegs or prints(and can also edit existing Tiffs and Jpegs). There are some limitations in how far Lightroom can take that editing, but for some (possibly most people) this is not a practical limitation, while for others, this means moving the files from Lightroom into a more advanced editing program like Photoshop or Affinity Photo to finalise the editing.
As Lightroom is now only available a subscription (which includes Photoshop), a Lightroom + Photoshop combination provides an incredibly powerful "do anything" combination at a reasonable cost, albeit through subscription (which is a separate discussion). For "me", the only real competition for this combination comes from Capture One + Affinity Photo, which, now that Capture One seems to have fallen into annual upgrades, is going to cost about the same (annually) as the Adobe option, but with higher initial costs to buy the initial licenses. I primarily use a Capture One+Photoshop combination, so paying twice the amount I probably need to
Topaz, started out by making plugins for Photoshop that added dedicated tools like noise reduction, or sharpening capability that were easier (and maybe better) to use than the built in Photoshop capabilities.
Topaz "Studio" has integrated these plugins into a single stand alone program. So you no longer "need" a host program to use the topaz plugins, even though Studio can still be used as a Photoshop or Lightroom, or Affinity Photo Plugin. However, it seems that Topaz are now also promoting Studio as a Lightroom+Photoshop alternative, and it probably offers the majority of the tools than many photographers might need/want. This is also the case with programs like Luminar and OnOne: both of these originally ran from inside Photoshop as Plugins, but are now stand alone programs competing as LR/Photoshop alternatives, while still also working as Photoshop Plugins. Topaz seems to offer more "creative" options than Luminar and OnOne, allowing you to create images that bear very little relationship to the original photograph, while also offering the same or similar photo editing tools. Topaz, are not making any promises about adding a DAM in the future, but both Luminar and OnOne, either offer or are promising future DAM capability. As is Affinity Photo, so this could well be a LR replacement,
Topaz Studio has no DAM features, and therefore offers no cataloguing tools to manage your photograph collection (but, not everyone wants this), but even the free version has the capability to crop, lighten, and darken images modify colour and contrast etc , including doing this as adjustment layers. Which is something Lightroom cannot do, but Lightroom offers alternative approaches for selective adjustments.
You can then add low cost Studio plugins (roughly equivalent to the Topaz plugins available for Photoshop) into Topaz Studio to extend its capability e.g. more advanced sharpening or noise removal etc. Buying all the Plugins is an expensive business, but many (most) photographers probably have little interest in owning the full set of plugins.
If you ignore the DAM features in Lightroom, then this latest incarnation of topaz (as Topaz Studio), probably offers more capability than Lightroom, and really is more of a competitor for Photoshop or Affinity Photo. I doubt the Topaz Studio raw processing will be as good as Lightroom (or Capture One), but have no evidence to support this.
The main attraction of programs like Topaz, is ease of use and that they provide lots and lots of previews of how your image might look at different settings (presets), allowing you to just click on the preview you like best, and letting the program make all the adjustments for you. This then gives you a head start on any further tweaking you might want to make to the image. I'm never very impressed with the builtin presets, but they do give you some insight into the multiple different way your image might look, and can be a useful learning tool.
Given its free, and assuming you have a reasonably up to date computer, I would download it and give it a try (there are several training videos from Topaz, but most are about the more exotic uses for Topaz, e.g. simulating paintings etc). It's a cheap (free) way to start editing your images, but I wouldn't rush into spending lots of money on Topaz Studio until you have a clear idea on what you need from your photo editing tools.
Even if you still end up with Lightroom (or an alternative Raw processor or/and DAM), Topaz Studio with a few plugins could still be useful. Many people consider the Topaz Clarity, Detail, Focus and Denoise plugins to give superior results to the Lightroom/Photoshop (and the Luminar and OnOne) options for these tasks.
Fuji Dave
I'm in Clover
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It took me a while, but I managed to download Topaz Studio. I have some Topaz plugins that work well in PSE15 & LR6 plus Studio, I have Adjust-Clarity-Detail and Denoise and those are far better than LR6. If your not fussed about Dam then Topaz Studio is very good to use.
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That's the crux of it though, DAM (Digital Asset Management - i.e. helping you import, sort and catalogue your photos) is as important as the editing aspect for most people.
This is why LR still rules the roost, nothing else can touch it for DAM (even though LR is far form perfect).
OP
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- Kerry
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This really depends on the context of the question, and what aspects you are interested in.
Lightroom is primarily a DAM (cataloguing tool), which can convert RAW files into finished Tiffs, Jpegs or prints(and can also edit existing Tiffs and Jpegs). There are some limitations in how far Lightroom can take that editing, but for some (possibly most people) this is not a practical limitation, while for others, this means moving the files from Lightroom into a more advanced editing program like Photoshop or Affinity Photo to finalise the editing.
As Lightroom is now only available a subscription (which includes Photoshop), a Lightroom + Photoshop combination provides an incredibly powerful "do anything" combination at a reasonable cost, albeit through subscription (which is a separate discussion). For "me", the only real competition for this combination comes from Capture One + Affinity Photo, which, now that Capture One seems to have fallen into annual upgrades, is going to cost about the same (annually) as the Adobe option, but with higher initial costs to buy the initial licenses. I primarily use a Capture One+Photoshop combination, so paying twice the amount I probably need to
Topaz, started out by making plugins for Photoshop that added dedicated tools like noise reduction, or sharpening capability that were easier (and maybe better) to use than the built in Photoshop capabilities.
Topaz "Studio" has integrated these plugins into a single stand alone program. So you no longer "need" a host program to use the topaz plugins, even though Studio can still be used as a Photoshop or Lightroom, or Affinity Photo Plugin. However, it seems that Topaz are now also promoting Studio as a Lightroom+Photoshop alternative, and it probably offers the majority of the tools than many photographers might need/want. This is also the case with programs like Luminar and OnOne: both of these originally ran from inside Photoshop as Plugins, but are now stand alone programs competing as LR/Photoshop alternatives, while still also working as Photoshop Plugins. Topaz seems to offer more "creative" options than Luminar and OnOne, allowing you to create images that bear very little relationship to the original photograph, while also offering the same or similar photo editing tools. Topaz, are not making any promises about adding a DAM in the future, but both Luminar and OnOne, either offer or are promising future DAM capability. As is Affinity Photo, so this could well be a LR replacement,
Topaz Studio has no DAM features, and therefore offers no cataloguing tools to manage your photograph collection (but, not everyone wants this), but even the free version has the capability to crop, lighten, and darken images modify colour and contrast etc , including doing this as adjustment layers. Which is something Lightroom cannot do, but Lightroom offers alternative approaches for selective adjustments.
You can then add low cost Studio plugins (roughly equivalent to the Topaz plugins available for Photoshop) into Topaz Studio to extend its capability e.g. more advanced sharpening or noise removal etc. Buying all the Plugins is an expensive business, but many (most) photographers probably have little interest in owning the full set of plugins.
If you ignore the DAM features in Lightroom, then this latest incarnation of topaz (as Topaz Studio), probably offers more capability than Lightroom, and really is more of a competitor for Photoshop or Affinity Photo. I doubt the Topaz Studio raw processing will be as good as Lightroom (or Capture One), but have no evidence to support this.
The main attraction of programs like Topaz, is ease of use and that they provide lots and lots of previews of how your image might look at different settings (presets), allowing you to just click on the preview you like best, and letting the program make all the adjustments for you. This then gives you a head start on any further tweaking you might want to make to the image. I'm never very impressed with the builtin presets, but they do give you some insight into the multiple different way your image might look, and can be a useful learning tool.
Given its free, and assuming you have a reasonably up to date computer, I would download it and give it a try (there are several training videos from Topaz, but most are about the more exotic uses for Topaz, e.g. simulating paintings etc). It's a cheap (free) way to start editing your images, but I wouldn't rush into spending lots of money on Topaz Studio until you have a clear idea on what you need from your photo editing tools.
Even if you still end up with Lightroom (or an alternative Raw processor or/and DAM), Topaz Studio with a few plugins could still be useful. Many people consider the Topaz Clarity, Detail, Focus and Denoise plugins to give superior results to the Lightroom/Photoshop (and the Luminar and OnOne) options for these tasks.
Many thanks Graham, this was really helpful and I will look into downloading the free program. Most people I know have LR and are very pleased with its capability, but always like to compare value and capability before committing to buying. Cheers
OP
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Thanks Nawty - I hadn't considered the DAM aspect I was looking at other functionality but this would be a key consideration.
OP
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Thanks Dave.
OP
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It isn't cheap but then neither is LR with the upgrades, it was on offer at Photography show - but fools rush in and all that so thought I would use the expertise on the forum. Thanks
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Although I use Capture One, rather than Lightroom, Lightroom is still very good all round program.
Having read some of your other posts, DPP plus Topaz could well make a very usable combination, and not everyone uses/needs a DAM. In other discussions, elsewhere, many people use a folder structure and a browser program to manage their images. Several browsers allow editing XMP data so you can add colour tags, keywords etc, and allow you to search for them. Which combined with a good folder naming system can find most things. It depends on how you work. Graphics Converter by Lemkesoft is one such program which is also a really useful graphics toolkit (but it may be Mac only).
Although, I use a DAM, and that is my preferred approach, I also use a date+description approach to how I store images, with folder names like "2018-02-20 test shots of 24-120 in garden". or "2016-04-16 Portscatho birds and basking shark" so even without a DAM I can find images relatively easily. These sit in a top level folder by year, and I wish I had also split them by month, but I started this system 17 years ago, and I don't feel like changing it.
This system also makes it easy to switch DAMs as all the metadata is held in the XMP sidecar files, and the physical folder structure of how the files are stored, never changes.
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I believe you're wrong on a couple of points
Lightroom is a workflow tool, of which cataloguing is just part of it. The idea behind the product is to produce a tool that fulfils much of the photographers workflow needs in one product, not just cataloging and editing, but in the various final production to variuos media sources.
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/creative-cloud/help/download-install-single-app-Lightroom-6.html
Lightroom is a workflow tool, of which cataloguing is just part of it. The idea behind the product is to produce a tool that fulfils much of the photographers workflow needs in one product, not just cataloging and editing, but in the various final production to variuos media sources.
This is wrong also. Version 6 is still available as a standalone product
https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/creative-cloud/help/download-install-single-app-Lightroom-6.html
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Fair enough, I really meant built around a DAM, and you are correct about it being a workflow tool.
I didn't realise you could still buy Lightroom 6, I knew Adobe were no longer supporting it, and based on comments elsewhere was under the impression it was also no longer available for sale. Obviously I was wrong.
Thanks.
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To be fair - I think 6 is going to be the last standalone system
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I did think Adobe had clearly said that it would be the last. But the world changes, and what seems a good idea today, might not be such good idea tomorrow.
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The final version is issue 6.14
Adobe have said there will be no more upgrades after this, if you need something newer then it's CC.