Adobe just bought Topaz Labs + Link

[AlanLichty]

Not quite sure where this one is going yet but apparently Adobe just bought Topaz Labs.

Topaz tried going to a subscription model but but I found their pricing far too high for the value I was getting out of their software. More recently over the past month or so they made several offers to me to get a lifetime discount on their subscriptions since I had been one of their customers for well over a decade. My guess was that they weren't making a lot of money with their subscription model and were trying to rope in some of their old customers but I wasn't interested in another subscription when most of my work was being done with Adobe's tools.

Maybe Adobe will include some of Topaz's tech into their existing LR/ACR/PS products but hopefully won't raise the prices we already pay to access these products.

Edit: Here is a link to Adobe's press release for this from yesterday

 

[BlackRockArt]

I am sitting on the fence: not sure if this is good or bad. Typically when a large corperation buys a smaller company, the price goes up.
Oliver

 

[AlanLichty]

Agreed - I do like the sharpening tools that Topaz developed over the years but that's almost the only part of their overall suite I still like. I used to own a whole lot of their software tools but Topaz had a long track record of abandoning tools or incorporating them into something new that was't quite as useful as the standalone tools. Sharpen AI was the last tool standing that I still occasionally use but that is now part of their PhotoAI software and only works when you use their AI servers which were miserably slow to work with. I am not a fan of a remote process that can take 20-30 minutes to finish with results I could have achieved much quicker using other tools.

 

[Jeffrey]

I've enjoyed the topaz products. I have used all the versions, since I was an early adopter in their first round of sales and have a good renewal deal locked in. Their RAW file analysis and noise reduction has really helped me with some lowlight high ISO files of birds, etc. Hoping that feature will show up in Adobe apps and work as well.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

I had bought their suite of software some years back (Sharpen AI, Remask, Denoise). I rarely use many of them since DXO and Adobe provide sufficient coverage for my needs. The masking in ACR is what I mostly use for masking nowadays.

 

[AlanLichty]

Early in the Denoise game Topaz had one of the best. I had Topaz Adjust, and Topaz Clarity as well. That was probably about 15 years ago or more. They morphed some of those into their Studio and Studio 2 plugins but abandoned Studio after version 2. ReStyle was another plugin I had that got left behind around the same time. Most of those plugins got rolled into PhotoAI. Topaz gave me upgrades for some of these product jumps since I owned Clarity, DeNoise, and Adjust but not once they went to SharpenAI, DenoiseAI, and PhotoAI. I pulled the plug when they wanted subscriptions and disabled my copy of PhotoAI.

I still like their SharpenAI tools although DxO has left them far behind for denoise operations. The only calling card for PhotoAI for me was that I could use it on RAW iPhone shots where DxO doesn't want to play.

It might be a while for any of Topaz's tech to leak down into the Adobe suites. I will be curious to see what Adobe does with what they just bought.