Topaz has released 20 updates for its upscaling software, emphasizing realism. Key features include Bloom: Realism, a model that can process old generated images to remove plastic-like artifacts and add realistic details, with creative detailing in black-and-white images. Sharpen: Portrait & Wildlife enhances pixelated portraits and animal photos from the DiAlpha era, improving detail while maintaining the original appearance. Face Realism is an upscaler designed to refine facial features by removing pores, eyes, and hair artifacts.
Additional updates include Nyx High-Fidelity Denoise, a video denoiser that increases clarity, and Starlight Precise 2, an AI video upscaler that adds softness but may lose some details and textures. Other minor improvements involve Adjust Lighting 3 (Topaz Photo), which enhances handling of different lighting conditions, Dust & Scratch 2 (Topaz Photo) for removing dust and scratches while preserving details, Grain (Gigapixel) for removing plastic-like artifacts and adding grain, and Cinematic & Natural Grain (Topaz Video) for improved grain effects based on luminance and RGB levels. Scene Controls (Astra) offers fragment-based video scene enhancements, and Batch Render (Astra) allows processing multiple videos simultaneously.
The corporate segment via API has gained a dedicated face denoiser and new models such as Image Colorization, Image Object Matting, Transparent Image Upscale, Video Colorization, Starlight HQ, and Face Realism, likely accessible through API nodes. Existing products like the After Effects and Resolve plugins received updates. Topaz Gigapixel now supports Intel Macs, with an updated Wonder model and better GPU utilization. An open-source option is also available from various sources.
Links:
https://www.topazlabs.com/updates/realism
https://huggingface.co/freykun/frey_upscaler_collection/tree/main/upscale_models
https://www.topazlabs.com/
https://www.topazlabs.com/updates/realism