Mediachance is a little known software company located in Ottawa, Canada that nevertheless, at least according to its website, numbers a staggering array of big name tech giants among its customers, everyone from NASA to Adobe to Canon to Microsoft. It offers an interesting line of offbeat inexpensive apps, most of them to do with graphics, that are obviously aimed at niche markets.
A couple of years ago, while locked in during the height of the Covid pandemic, I purchased from Mediachance an app called Dynamic Auto Painter 6 that with only one click transforms photographs into simulations of fine art paintings in a number of styles inspired by famous artists, all for only $49. I'll discuss the app in greater detail in a future post; for now it's enough to say it works well and is fun to use.
Yesterday, I received an email from Mediachance announcing the release of a new product, AI Photo & Art Enhancer, with such a variety of functions that it's a veritable Swiss Army knife of digital tools. I won't bother listing them all here since Mediachance has already done that for me on its website. And again the introductory price is extremely low, only $28. For that price, I certainly had only limited expectations. For example, I did not, and still do not, expect those functions increasing photo resolution or reducing image noise to work anywhere nearly as well as on dedicated apps sold by Topaz Labs and On1 Software. I was much more interested in the function that promised to "elevate paintings made with Dynamic Auto Painter into a gallery-print level" by adding "micro details" that would enhance brush strokes and texture. The other function I found of interest was that which would simplify photos into vector-like graphics. I decided that if only those two features worked reasonably well, the app would be worth its $28 price.
The system requirements listed by Mediachance on its website are extremely vague ("Widows 8, 10 with a fairly recent video card") but the site goes on to caution: "The neural network AI processing is a computation heavy process that uses GPU, therefore you need a good video card such as NVIDIA GeForce or AMD Radeon." Accordingly, I downloaded the trial version of the software as recommended, ran the benchmark test included with it, and found the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (with 6GB of VRAM) on my Acer Concept D7 scored 87% which proved good enough to run the software without problem.
The only difference between the trial and paid version of the app is that the former leaves a watermark on processed images. Satisfied that the two features in which I was interested worked as advertised, I paid my $28 and received the serial number and unlock code that enabled me to process photos without the watermark.
I obviously haven't had time to work extensively with the software, but so far I'm satisfied with my purchase. Besides, for such a low price it's hard to go wrong.
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