Topaz Labs Studio — and its "pro adjustments" — a short review

© 2018 Peter Free

 

20 March 2018 (revised 22 March 2018)

 

 

A nice self-standing addition to Topaz Labs' previous Photoshop plugins

 

Topaz Studio is a free, self-standing photo processing platform. I assume that it aims to become a limited substitute for Adobe's Lightroom and Photoshop.

 

The Studio platform runs what Topaz calls "adjustments." Adjustments are the equivalent of what used to be Topaz Labs' Photoshop plugins.

 

Adjustments are bits of software that produce specific visual effects. In Topaz's plugin years, they were merely a sequence of Photoshop steps that saved users from having to string them together.

 

Some adjustments are included free with Studio, which itself is free.

 

Other adjustments, you buy. Examples of the latter are Impression in Studio, Radiance and AI Remix. (I have not provided links to these because Topaz does not equip those pages with directly accessed URLs.)

 

To see the full range of pro adjustments, go to Topaz Labs and click on "Adjustments" on that webpage's upper menu bar.

 

For a short, but representative video of how Radiance (and adjustments generally) work, see Jodi Robbins' demonstration, here.

 

I initially found Studio's masking and layering processes confusing compared to Photoshop. Topaz's Shannon Rose has an HSL Color Tuning adjustment "how to" video on the Topaz Labs website that is very helpful. The video shows you some of the Studio platform's admirable strengths.

 

 

Lack of full control, however, can be a problem with individual adjustments

 

Here, I'll use Impression in Studio and AI Remix as primary examples. Both are impossible to manipulate to the degree that I would consider necessary to producing reliably appealing output.

 

If you are accustomed to Photoshop, you will see how most of the Topaz Studio manipulations work. What is missing, insofar as I can tell, are ways to change the kind of abstraction and its geometric orientation, when it has one.

 

I do not provide examples of what I came up with because those would not be meaningful. Studio is a program that one has to work with for many hours, before one comes away with a fair-minded opinion regarding what it can and cannot do with specifically chosen photographs.

 

Some users will appreciate Studio's products as art. I am less sanguine (optimistic).

 

I found virtually all of Studio's presets (in whichever "adjustment" they appeared) to be pretty awful.

 

And modifying those "atrocities" usually (but not always) proved to be tediously disappointing. Without access to Photoshop for repair purposes, I would not have produced anything worthwhile.

 

 

In sum — Studio is a respect-worthy platform, but

 

Most of Studio's pro adjustments are too difficult to individualize away from their garishly imposed or "sameness" limits.

 

Once trapped in a particular adjustment's style, there is no way to significantly modify it away from looking "sorta" like it began. You will have to abandon your own artistic bent, unless you are able to use Photoshop to modify Studio's output.

 

The Photoshop correction process (for those with access to Photoshop) is time-consuming and only erratically successful.

 

Even more challenging is trying to guess how each of Studio's pro adjustment is going to alter the photograph. Ideally, we could compensate for undesirable Studio changes by modifying our photograph beforehand with Photoshop.

 

What struck me negatively most about pro adjustments was their insistence on introducing ugly side effects into virtually everything that they do. This annoying trait is perhaps most apparent in Impression and AI Remix. Both of those generate one preset after another that would send the majority of artists screaming into Van Gogh's most nightmarish of nights.

 

My cynical side hypothesizes that Topaz was guided more by what is easily altered with software, than by what looks good.

 

For example, it quickly became tedious trying to modify or replace the many colors that AI Remix and Impression too frequently (and seemingly randomly) splatter all over everything.

 

Potentially attractive presets frequently injected garishly out of place colors, without demonstrating any regard (at all) for the photograph's underlying color and tone gradations.

 

What do you do (for example) when a huge splotch of yellow decides to obliterate:

 

someone's face,

 

much of her jacket,

 

all of her hair

 

and much of the multi-colored wall in the background —

 

for no underlying hue or tonal reason?

 

Even though Studio provides a masking function, it doesn't work especially well in instances like these. How does one efficiently pre-mask against a boundary-ignoring effect?

 

Topaz claims that unwanted modifications can be diluted with Studio's opacity sliders.

 

That's true, but not especially helpful. All the sliders do is let the underlying photograph show through in variable strengths.

 

In consequence, you get either more or less of what you wanted to change (the photo), as against what you already think is overdone (the adjustment).

 

Opacity sliders, in this case, are not cures.

 

With all that said about irritatingly intrusive colors — it may be that gaining more experience with Topaz's HSL Color Tuning will help. My (so far) limited experience with HSL indicates that it may be Studio's most widely useful tool. I am very impressed with it.

 

Even so, it is somewhat of a pity that one would have to use one of Studio's adjustments (in this case HSL) to clean up the uncontrollable "errors" created by another.

 

 

A comment about Impression in Studio ($99)

 

After using Impression during its trial period, I concluded that Topaz has a poor grasp of impressionistic painting's quality and variety.

 

MediaChance's (Windows only) Dynamic Auto Painter is noticeably superior, even with its own uncontrollability flaws. See a review of an older version, here.

 

I suspect that the newest version of Auto Painter is better. Even if not, the version that I reviewed was arguably a nicer choice than Topaz's Impression is today.

 

 

The moral? — admirable Studio platform — but

 

Studio sometimes generates nice output. But too many of its adjustments are impossible to adequately control. Most of Studio's presets start and end ugly.

 

In Topaz Labs' shoes, I would spend more time concentrating on generating a handful of appealing results, rather than on producing one atrocious looking preset after another simply because I could.

 

What is software-easy appears to have taken precedence over what is hard to achieve, but artistically worthwhile.

 

That said, Studio is an excellent platform. It generates enough quality (in some instances) to merit at least a committed trial.