Change (Bugs?) to improve Topaz Photo AI compatibility.

[G. Barrington]

As a tool for modifying jpg and other bit mapped file formats from the Edit tab, ACDSee Ultimate works great with Topaz products. But with the release of Topaz Photo AI and DXO's PureRaw, there is one thing that ACDSee could do to increase it's ability to add value to the users of these and similar products. With the increased popularity of such products, this stumbling block to adoption will weaken ACDSee's ability to attract new users, I think.

That is, in the Manage tab, allow "Manage" to send a raw file out to an external editor such as Topaz Photo AI, and receive back a converted dng file. Photo AI tries to send back a dng file, but when ACDSee sees it, it claims that the file is corrupted. However, when I rename that file outside of ACDSee (I can't do it from within ACDSee) to a unique file name, ACDSee sees it as a valid dng file.I would think that a dng file format (*.dng) would make it unique, but for some reason, it does not

When used as a standalone, Topaz Photo AI Generates a unique name that ACDSee is happy to use the unique dng file.

Secondly, there is an odd and aggravating quirk that is less important than the one above, but it looks bad from an aesthetic POV. These converted DNG files that ACDSee recognizes, are blurry beyond belief. And this blurriness doesn't clear up until the image is sent to the Develop tab where actual image is properly seen. I can see that those with less ability to try and figure out what is going on would assume that ACDSee doesn't have the ability to view and manage a standard DNG file.

I think this weakens ACDSee's ability to keep up with other, newer, competitors that should be no competition at all. These "pre-Processing" tools are only going to grow in popularity.

[brajaq]

I think that default pictures in manage mode (before development) are the jpg extracted from dng (or raw) files. This can be changed in options.

[Greyfox]

..That is, in the Manage tab, allow "Manage" to send a raw file out to an external editor such as Topaz Photo AI, and receive back a converted dng file. Photo AI tries to send back a dng file, but when ACDSee sees it, it claims that the file is corrupted.

In terms of "Corrupted"l, I don't experience that, and I frequently use Topaz Photo AI (Current version 1.3.5) called as an external editor from ACDSee Ultimate 2023 to process both Sony .ARW Raw Files,and Canon EOS-R5 .CR3 files and the DNG images saved back to ACDSee are accepted by ACDSee without any issues.

Perhaps you could provide more details about the RAW files that you are having issues with.

[Greyfox]

..These converted DNG files that ACDSee recognizes, are blurry beyond belief. And this blurriness doesn't clear up until the image is sent to the Develop tab where actual image is properly seen."

In the case of say Sony RAW images from a SLT-A57 camera, which full size are 4912px by 3264px, the reduced size preview images embedded in the RAW file are 1616px by 1080px.

In comparison the embedded preview in the DNG files produced by Topaz Photo AI are a tiny 256px by 170px, and yes if you have ACDSee's View mode set to show "Embedded preview" rather than "RAW Decode" and to show sized to"Fit" they do not show well. And they equally don't show well in FastStoneViewer which shows the reduced size preview image at 256 x 170 rather than the full size developed RAW.

If those same RAW images are converted to DNG in Adobe DNG converter, there is the option of creating either a medium size embedded preview image,or a full size one. With the medium option (which from memory is the default) the DNG files have two reduced size preview images, one shown in EXIF IFD0 as 256px by 170px, and one in SubIFD1 as 1024px by 683px.
When the Adobe DNG Converter DNG images are viewed in ACDSee View set to "Embedded Preview" the mid size 1024 x 683 preview is shown, not the 256 x 170 one as is also the case with Faststone Viewer.

So in my view, what is occurring is to be expected. The embedded previews are really only intended to provide a quick view.

[G. Barrington]

Thanks for the comments. These are 20 mb ORF files, which have never been much of a problem for ACDSee. It does a really nice job for Oly cameras, I think. I suspect this is a naming issue and I don't know if it is an issue for ACDSee or with Topaz. But since Topaz doesn't claim to support ACDSee, it is unlikely that Topaz will care very much.

And logically, this SHOULD work, Topaz returns the same file name but with a dng file format. This SHOULD be enough for ACDSee to recognize the returnee file as a different photo, but it doesn't. Using Topaz Photo AI as a stand-alone app isn't a problem because it appends what it did to the photo (i.e. Sharpen or DeNoise) to the file name dng which seems to forces ACDSee into recognizing the file as unique.

Using Photo AI as a plugin for the Edit tab works well too. But it doesn't try to rename the file, and it doesn't create a dng file anyway.

Tech guys - could this be because ACDSee sees the returning dng as a file being written to by ACDSee? And since ACDSee can't create DNG files; then, logically, it is by definition, corrupt? Remember, if I manually RENAME the file outside of ACDSee, the file is accepted as valid by ACDSee.

I haven't tried any older 16 mb ORF files so I don't know if this is a resources issue. I will try this later today. I should think with the growing popularity of pre-processing utilities like Photo AI and DXO Pure raw, that it would make some economic sense to make sure ACDSee could work with these tools however the user wants.

It is my hope that others will try invoking Photo AI through the Manage tab's external editor selection to see if they get the same results as I get. IT works FINE as a stand-alone app (i.e. launched OUTSIDE of ACDSee).

[Greyfox]

Thanks for the comments. These are 20 mb ORF files, which have never been much of a problem for ACDSee. It does a really nice job for Oly cameras, I think. I suspect this is a naming issue and I don't know if it is an issue for ACDSee or with Topaz. But since Topaz doesn't claim to support ACDSee, it is unlikely that Topaz will care very much

I suspect you may have a local issue.

I am able to process RAW .ORF images from a number of different Olympus cameras and also from the OM-1 using Topaz Photo AI as an external editor from ACDSee Ultimate 2023, and the DNG images returned to ACDSee all generate thumbnails and are quite OK in View mode when in RAW decode mode. As indicated in my earlier post, when the tiny embedded preview images are viewed in Embedded Preview mode they are poor quality, but that is to be expected.

20.2MP .ORF images from Olympus E-MM5MK3 return DNG's with 115.5MB file size
11.8MP .ORF images from Olympus XZ-2 return DNG's with 67.7MB file size
49.9MP .ORF images from OM-1 return DNG's with 285.9MB file size

So the returned DNG file size is nominally the same as the uncompressed size of the original ORF's.



Perhaps you could zip up one of your ORF images along with the DNG file returned from Topaz Photo AI,upload it to WeTransfer and post a link to the upload.

I should point out that Topaz Photo AI does not handle metadata all that well, but this has never been a strong point with Topaz software. And it is not just proprietary metadata affected but also some of the ex camera information.