JPEG to RAW AI - Topaz Labs Review by Scott Wyden

JPEG TO RAW AI – TOPAZ LABS REVIEW (Scott Wyden)

Topaz Labs created JPEG to RAW AI to help solve a problem that they believe many people have. Let's say you were sent a JPG file, but it was highly compressed, and you want to edit it. Under normal circumstances, you couldn't edit the photo too much. But after running it through JPEG to RAW AI you have much more potential for editing.

JPEG to RAW AI - Topaz Labs Review by Scott Wyden

JPEG TO RAW AI – TOPAZ LABS REVIEW (Scott Wyden)

Topaz Labs created JPEG to RAW AI to help solve a problem that they believe many people have. Let's say you were sent a JPG file, but it was highly compressed, and you want to edit it. Under normal circumstances, you couldn't edit the photo too much. But after running it through JPEG to RAW AI you have much more potential for editing.

Interesting. I think I’ll try the JPEF to RAW AI software. I have a bunch of 3MP images I shot on a Sony point-and-shoot before I bought my first DSLR (2006). Maybe JPEFG to RAW AI can improve those JPEG images.

Photo of the Week

The only photographs I captured this past week are from dinner at Rocky Hill Inn to celebrate my nephews ninth birthday. The weather was cold and wet this week, through the weekend. It snowed on Thursday night, and Friday morning, a layer of snowfall and rain made the roads slick. The second layer of snow fell on the driveway very early on Saturday morning. I bundled up in layers of clothing to clear that layer before the hail on Saturday evening. Just as I was creating this post on Sunday evening, my iPhone weather app just alerted me with a winter storm warning. Heavy snow is expected.

This image is of the more formal dining area of the Rocky Hill Inn. It was made by running it through Nik's Dfine 2 to remove some noise. Then it was passed through Nik's Silver EFX Pro 2 to convert it to black and white. Then finally it was processed through Topaz Lab's Clean 3. I layered one image processing task after the other to create the final result.

Since it's the only image I have from my "camera roll", it will be submitted for both challenges.

Best Photo of the Week is personal photography project where I post the best image captured that week. The picture will be posted at the end of the week. That will be a Sunday. I can take one or 100 photos for the week, but I will post only one, the best one.

*Created by photographer Frank Jansen, the Tuesday Photo Challenge is a weekly theme-based challenge for photographers of all kinds to share both new and old photography.

My HDR Workflow

I like HDR photography a lot. I've been messing around with it for a few years. Most of my efforts have been hit or miss. Not all subjects lend themselves to HDR photography, and my technique and workflow are shoddy.

Recently I discovered an article by where he detailed his workflow for creating beautiful HDR. I put the piece away but only recently found the time to try out his workflow on a few of my images.

The image in the header of this post is the original image of a fire truck for the Rocky Hill Hook & Ladder. I took the photo about a month ago a few days after Hurricane Irene blew through New Jersey. The Rocky Hill Hook & Ladder were out helping residents with flooded basements, cutting fallen trees, and keep idiot motorist off the flooded road and bridges in the area.

I started with a single RAW image and used Topaz Noise to remove some noise from the high ISO image. I created four virtual copies in Adobe Lightroom and adjusted each +4/-4 and +2/-2 stop before combining them to create an HDR image in Photomatix Pro. I then tone-mapped the HDR image using Enhancer Painterly. That image is below.

29 August 2011 | Nikon D40 | AF-S DX Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8G

I then imported the resultant image into Topaz Adjust and applied one of the standards presets. I think it was crisp. The result is the following. What do you think?

Rocky Hill Fire Department | 29 August 2011 | Nikon D40 | AF-S DX Nikkor 50 mm f/1.8G