The Digital Photo Guy

Topaz Labs Mothers’ Day Sale

For those who are interested in Topaz Labs plug-ins, this weekend only (Mothers’ Day 2012,) TL is offering a 30% discount on ALL products. The discount code is “TopazMoms” (without quotes, does anyone really enter codes with quotes?)

Hope to see you on Team Topaz.

Topaz Labs introduces DeNoise 5

I hate to sound like a Topaz Labs fanboy but their newest iteration of DeNoise 5 is better than my old standby, Neat Image v6. The difference isn’t huge but TL is somewhat better in the areas of speed, ease of use and detail recovery. NI has a small edge on price. I use the NI Home+ version that includes both the Standalone and Photoshop/Photoshop Elements plug-in version for $49.90 while Topaz DeNoise is $49.99 until August 31. After that, the price jumps to $79.99. Topaz offers free upgrades for current licensees while NI offers free minor upgrades to licensees and a lesser Upgrade Fee for major upgrades.

As always, my readers can use the code “digitalphotoguy” to receive a 15% discount on all Topaz Labs purchases. I am not affiliated with nor do I have any financial interest in Topaz Labs.

Cheap Canon 24-105/4L IS Lens

Here’s your opportunity to bag a Canon 24-105/4L IS lens for an incredibly low price. Every Canon shooter needs this lens.

Old Videos

There’s a link at the top of every page on my site titled Videos. That link takes you to (hold on, are you ready for this) the Videos page. Everytime I repost an old video or article, someone asks, “Where’s the previous/next/other video/article?” I think the worst thing about the Internet has been to foster a mindset that it’s someone’s job to do your thinking/research. Notice how I didn’t link the word Videos to the Videos page because I want you to find it for yourselves.

New Questions

Long-time students know that a benefit of taking my classes is continued e-mail support. My motto is, “Failure is not an option, you will learn!” I regularly answer questions for students from 5 or more years ago.

Recently, new readers (not past students) have started sending me questions that take time and effort to research and/or craft an answer. While I don’t mind questions that have universal appeal and are of interest to many readers, I don’t have time to answer specific questions about one person’s gear, computer configuration or idle curiousity unless they are past students.

I hope everyone understands that I have to save my limited bandwidth for past and present students who have paid for my expertise.

One final point, in order to consolidate my time and efforts, I respond to Comments on this site before I answer e-mails.

Cool Canon Deals (The Real Deal)

If you have a broken, out-of-warranty Canon digital camera lying around that will cost more to fix than it’s worth, you can upgrade to a refurbished Canon for a great price. For example, I have an old Canon 10D. It’s in fine condition but, for the sake of this example, let’s assume it’s broken. Canon charges a flat fee depending on whether it’s a “Standard Repair” or a “Major Repair”  for most repairs. Let’s assume this camera will cost $250 to repair but it’s only worth $200.

Canon will trade the 10D plus $559 for a Canon 40D, a newer and better camera. Current used prices for Canon 40D is about $600-$700 so it’s a great deal when you consider it’s been serviced by Canon and comes with a 90 day warranty. They also have refurbished G11, 50D, 7D and 5DMkII available.

To get more detals, call Canon at 800-753-4200 and ask for Sales.

Another Video MMT

Good morning! This week is another VMMT (Video Monday Morning Tip). This time I review the noise reduction capability of Topaz Labs Adjust 3 and compare it against my old favorite, Neat Image. I’ve been using Neat Image for about 5 years and the company has been great about keeping the product updated. But, bottom line, I believe they’ve wrung out about all the performance that can be gotten from their wavelet-packet noise reduction algorithms. Topaz Labs claims their newer design is better than wavelet analysis.

(If you’re a “bottom line” sort and just want the results, the VMMT is in the Tips & News section)

Anyone who uses noise reduction (NR) software knows that a basic trade-off is loss of details. This is seen in portraits where skin looses texture and appears “plastic” when NR is applied with a heavy hand. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good test portrait but I used an otherwise very noisy photo.

After I produced today’s VMMT, I remembered these photos from the Barona Indian Powwow. These photos are good examples of bad examples and work well for NR testing. The first two are resized, compressed jpegs of the entire photo while the third is a portion of the image to better show NR details. Can you tell which is which? A major advantage of Topaz Adjust is that both NR and sharpening can be performed inside one plug-in.

Topaz Labs intrigued me because their proprietary algorithms are developed in-house which makes sense as the founder, Dr. Albert Yang, is a DSP (digital signal processor) expert. (continue reading…)