Nowadays it seems that machine learning, or artificial intelligence is getting better and better fixing mistakes us mere humans make. Fixing problems in post production helps photographers while we wait until the moment arrives when machine learning will be included in our favourite camera making sure every image is technically perfect. You can already see this shift in the smartphone market and I think it’s a matter of time until these techniques will arrive in today’s digital camera’s.
But today we seem to still be stuck with using machine learning techniques in post.
One of the companies that jumped the machine learning, they call it Artificial Intelligence themselves, is Topaz. Their latest version of Topaz Sharpen ai takes care of blurry images because of subject movement, camera movement, misfoccus, etc.
When photoshop came up with the “shake reduction” function I thought it was really a magical function that could fix certain problem photographs, but trying different blurry images I realised that this function was working fine for very small camera movements and adding a lot of artefacts. Of course this function is based on “old fashioned” software algorithm trying to fix a problem instead of using big data and machine learning.
Topaz Sharpen ai using its artificial intelligence produces very good results and I think this should be a part of any (professional) photographer and retoucher tools bag.
Sometimes you just misfocus during a key moment and you wish you nailed that shot afterwards. With this software you can fix the problem and provide the results to your client.
Amateur photographers will probably find the cost of software like this a hard pill to swallow, but again, missing a photograph because it lacks sharpness means you either have to try to get the shot again, or just miss out on the shot you wanted. I think there is no shame in using software like this to help you fix problems and raising the amount of keeper shots.
If you are looking for your own copy of Topaz Sharpen ai, using the coupon code loyal15 you will get a 15% discount bringing the software in reach of even the amateur photographers and retouchers. If you are a pro I think this should already in your bag of tools 😉