Topaz Adjust General Tutorial
Click the video to start playing, or watch it on YouTube. The original source file is here: boats.jpg (600 KB)
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Topaz Adjust
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redefining "creative exposure"
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Transcript of video
In this tutorial we'll explore some of what is possible to achieve using Topaz Adjust. We'll look at each tab in detail, including what some of the parameters do and what kind of images Topaz Adjust can produce.
First let's open up Photoshop and the image named boats.jpg. Go to Filter → Topaz Labs → and Topaz Adjust. Notice that you can resize the Topaz Adjust window for better viewing. Click the “enable popup help on each item” box if you'd like tips on each individual setting.
We recommend going from left to right, so let's start by going over some exposure effects. We're not going to use any presets in this tutorial, although you certainly may when using it for yourself. Click on the Exposure tab. The two main settings here are Adaptive Exposure and Regions. In short, the higher you set Adaptive Exposure the more severe the exposure effect will get. The higher you set the Regions parameter the more localized exposure and detail you'll get. The function of both becomes clear as soon as you try it out. For example, if we just wanted to improve the exposure of this image slightly, we'd drag Adaptive Exposure to somewhere around here and Regions to somewhere around here. As we can see it evens out the image's exposure and affects an overall improvement. If on the other hand we wanted to get a more extreme effect, we could drag Adaptive Exposure all the way over here and Regions to here. After getting rid of the noise in the Noise tab, we come out with quite an interesting image.
Okay, now lets do some detail effects. To increase the strength of the details we'll want to increase the Strength parameter. The Boost parameter controls the strength of the smaller details in the image. To tell Topaz Adjust what a detail should be considered, use the Threshold and Radius parameters. For example if we just wanted to enhance smaller details, we'd set Threshold and Radius small and jack up the Strength and Boost like this. If we wanted to accentuate the larger features we'd set the Strength, Threshold, and Radius higher. If we wanted to smoothe out smaller details we'd set the strength to a value under 1 and set the Threshold and Radius lower, like this. We can even use the Details tab in conjunction with the Exposure tab and get some more interesting effects.
Onto color. First let's go to Exposure and even out the picture a bit, like this. The color tab is very much like the Exposure tab and works in much the same way. You'll notice that if you drag these settings around there are a lot of different results you can get. Adaptive Saturation and Regions work much the same way as they do in the Exposure Tab. The Saturation setting controls the overall saturation of the image, and the Saturation Boost parameter controls only the saturation of the strongest colors. There's also a hue control included for convenience.
Finally, although we're not selling Topaz Adjust as a dedicated noise removal software, it is very effective at removing noise ever since v2.1. In fact, compare it with other 3rd party dedicated noise removal plug-ins and Topaz Adjust will perform very well. We do recommend applying noise reduction after every other setting because it does tend to be the slowest. As you can see in situations with a lot of noise, it does a very good job.
In any case, experimentation is the best way to really understand what Topaz Adjust can do. So download the 30-day free trial, try it out, and see how you like it. Let us know if you have any questions! Thanks.
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