A year or two ago Topaz Labs instituted a new policy regarding upgrades. Rather than entitling customers to free lifetime upgrades on the apps they had purchased, those customers were now informed that they were only entitled to free upgrades for the twelve-month period immediately following purchase, after which they would have to pay to have their upgrade license renewed for another year. I didn't think this was a particularly good way of doing business, but I so far have not suffered from it. Eleven months after I had purchased Video AI 2.0 Topaz released version 3.0 that contained a number of new and improved features, and I was able to download it at no charge. More recently, only a few days before my license was due to expire on Photo AI, Topaz released version 2.0 and I was again able to download it at no charge.
It's lucky the upgrade was free because I certainly never would have paid for it. I don't think I was ever so disappointed in an app as I was in Photo AI. Unless I'm doing something very wrong - and I strongly doubt that - the app is too unwieldly to be truly useful and has never become part of my workflow. The biggest problem I've encountered is that the vaunted Autopilot simply doesn't work properly. It seems whatever image I put up, the Autopilot invariably detects that denoising is required even though almost all my images are shot on up-to-date cameras at relatively low ISO's. The Autopilot never flags sharpness or any other needed corrections on its own with the result that I am required to go in and make corrections manually.
When I have time I'll try exploring version 2.0 in greater depth, but I honestly don't have any great hopes for it. In the meantime, I still regularly use the same company's Studio 2, discontinued in 2020, particularly the AI Clear and Basic Correction filters. I would much have preferred if Topaz had released a Studio 3 version, but that doesn't look likely to happen.
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