Topaz Studio 1st Play

Pete September 5, 2017September 5, 2017 0 Comments Black Darter, Christchurch Common, Dragonfly, Heather (Calluna vulgaris), Macro, Olympus 60mm F2.8 macro lens, OLYMPUS OM-D E-M5 Mark II, Review, St Catherine's Hill, Stacking, Sympetrum danae, Technique, Topaz Studio, Zuiko Olympus 90mm F2 Macro lens

I am a big fan of Topaz Labs products, and so I was keen to try out their latest edition Topaz Studio.

According to Topaz Labs Studio is “..a simple to use editing platform with Topaz Labs’ powerful acclaimed photo enhancement technology. It works as a standalone editor, a plugin within Lightroom and Photoshop, as well as a host application for your other Topaz plugins.”

Here is an explanation of some of its features as described on their website.

One Click Effects – Use Topaz Studio’s constantly growing library of one-click image effects to create dozens of different image styles, and artistic looks. Just click, customize, and save.

Open Multiple Images – Open multiple images within the same instance of Topaz Studio. Duplicate images, then apply or paste workflows between them to follow where ever your creativity leads.

The Power of Topaz -Topaz Studio features streamlined adjustments, small pieces of specific functionality tailored to creating unique and powerful image effects.

Over 20 Adjustments -24 powerful adjustments included, controlling everything from simple Film Grain to advanced contrast control with the Precision Contrast Adjustment. With even more coming in the future.

Targeted Tools -Topaz Studio includes a host of powerful tools including Automatic Lens Correction, Crop, Rotate, and versatile Masking features to quickly create precise adjustment level masks.”

I used a selection of the available adjustments and Topaz plug ins (Denoise & Detail) on the photos that you will see in this post. I did not delve into any of the many one click effects that are available. Also, to be clear this is not a tutorial on how to use Topaz Studio, more to hopefully give you an insight into it’s capabilities and of cource to showcase my photo’s.

First impressions is that Topaz Labs have produced another gem as it is very user friendly. It’s simplicity and ability to show effects onscreen immedialty helps you to work out what different features are able to do quickly, and there are several great tutorials on their website as well. My journey of understanding the powers of this tool have only just begun.

I played with the Basic, Precision Contrast, Dehaze, Image Layer and Radiance adjustments. Each adjustment has a range of sliders that allow you to alter an individual effect as little or as much as you like, plus an opacity slider to alter the overall effect of that adjustment. This is only the tip of the iceberg as there are many other features on offer with each adjustment.

Here is a brief description on the ones I worked with.

Basic allows you to adjust the exposure, clarity, shadows & highlights, and colour (saturation etc.).
Precision contrast has individual sliders to adjust contrast at the micro, low, medium & high levls, along with also adjusting lighting and colour.
The Dehaze is a great tool for lifting out details, whilst the image layer allows you to combine two images with another, and the Radiance is similar to Topaz Glow.

Now on to the photo’s of Black Darter dragonflies (Sympetrum danae) found amongst the flowering heather at Christchurch Common beside St Catherine’s Hill.

The 1st photo follows my standard post processing workflow, the 2nd using Topaz Studio. Some of the differences between the two are more subtle than others.

Example 1