Scott Stoness
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Upload & Sell: On
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 Hero Reach and Motion Blur - LR, Topaz, ON1, DXO, ..... For 45mpx R5ii and R7 | |
Recently I got some good pictures of whales breaching in La Pax Mexico, and was struggling with processing. Some were motion blurred and some were heavily cropped. I also ran into this when a bobcat came out in florida on two separate occasions and I had some hero processing attempts.
I now have tried Luminar Neo, LR superscale, and ON1 upscale ( topaz gigapixel several years ago) and I think I have landed but I wanted your thoughts.
My main camera's are r5ii (wildlife at reasonable distance), r7 (wildlife at hero distance), and r8 (backpacking/travel, and r5 (landscape). My main lens are ef600f4v2, ef200-400/560f4/f5.6, Rf200-800, RF100-400 and TS17, TS24, EF24-105.
I have a base M1 laptop (travel), Mac Book Pro 2023 (very good for its time), and 5k Imac 2017 4 core 40gb with 4.2mhz SSD drive (my main engine at home). [I am debating replacing the 5kimac with Mac mini pro 24gb 512gb ssd, but am fussed by losing 5k monitor.]
The purpose of this post is to tell you what I learned and get your thoughts on Hero Reach processing and Motion blur.
My normal process is LR cropping, modest lighting adjustements, Denoise, and LR sharpening.
I like to print favourites at 48x32" landscape or portrait on canvas.
I explored:
1) LR/PS. LR has a super resolution. LR has Denoise/Raw details.
- You can adjust motion blur in photo shop in two ways. Smart Filter, measure the movement...
- you can upscale in super resolution
- you can denoise in LR
- or you can ask generative AI to fix it
My conclusions were - Not adequate. Photoshop deblur is difficult (measureing blur directoin / layers...) in settings. Superresolution was not as good as On1, Luminar Neo, Topaz.
2) Luminar Neo has a upscale feature. I have luminar neo.
- I bought the recent upscaling with AI. A $120 perpetual liscence.
My conclusions - Not Adequate. Was okay occasionally good but not great. Not much for controls.
3) ON1 has an upscale feature
- It is available on a perptual liscence.
- You can try it for 1 month with no obligation
- has AI upscale
- a highly cropped polar bear from 7d 15 years ago came out good enough for printing large on canvas but it did not solve motion blur well on my whale breaching.
- Better than LR super resolution, and Luminar Neo but not adequate. Was 15minute per image on my old computer. The process was difficult. LR for initial processing (lighting, cropping, lens adjust, denoise -- then ON1 upscale to 10,000 long (15minutes), then back to LR for final processing. Was a painful process - long, repetitve with 15 minute gaps. Maxed out my gpu at 100% (GPU limits on my 8gb GPU was making it slow). And did an okay job if the focus was pretty close and not much cropping.
4) Topaz Gigapixel
- $12m/month ongoing.
- I tried this previoulsy and liked the results but I tried to try it again, and it would not let me because of the retry
- I was not willing to committ to $12/month ongoing to try it.
- My previous try (2 years ago) yielded pretty good AI the rescued my big polar bear crop on 7d from years ago.
- Worried that the in LR, passing to topaz, and back will be difficult.
5) I also considered DXO PureRaw 6, but concluded it did not have upscale AI and LR was just about as good on noise issues. I don't need another tool that I don't use (eg Luminare Neo).
My tentative conclusion - for hero reach (crop/upsze) and hero motion blur fix- buy the Topaz Gigapixel $12/month forever, try it again, and cancel if it does not do a good job. I am worried that its really akward to use in my process, really slow but most worryingly, may not do as good a job as what I remember for $144/year.
Your thoughts on Topaz upscaling for hero crop reach, and motion blur would be appreciated. I have already spent $120 on Luminar Neo (upscaling) and did not like it. I would rather ON1 perpetual than Topaz Gigapixel $12/month forever unless its just as difficult as ON1 without better motion blur processing.
Thanks in Advance.
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