Decide Quickly

[MarkBarbieri]

Topaz labs introduced a new tool - InFocus. It takes an out-of-focus picture and kind of, sort of, in a way, makes it look more in focus. It doesn't work miracles, but it does do a better job of just increasing the sharpness. It's on sale today for $30 but will go to $70 after tonight.

I played with it for a bit and decided that, while it is definitely not a miracle worker, it is worth $30 to me. You'll definitely want to use it with a layering tool. I found that it worked best to use it in PS on a separate layer, mask that layer, and reveal just the areas I wanted "focused". The problem with it is that if you have some of your subject already in focus and some not, it will totally jack up the already in focus area.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

One other thing I forgot to mention. It hates my Wacom tablet. It works fine if I use my normal mouse, but if I use my tablet mouse, the doesn't work well at all. I've never seen that happen before.

 

[Gdad]

I downloaded the trial a week or so ago- I am admittedly a big Topaz but I could not really get much out of InFocus. $30 is pretty cheap- I dunno- maybe.

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I downloaded the trial a week or so ago- I am admittedly a big Topaz but I could not really get much out of InFocus. $30 is pretty cheap- I dunno- maybe.

I'm guessing that you mean that you are a big topaz fan, although you are certainly pretty and sparkly.

In general, I agree with you. For shots that were pretty far out of focus, I couldn't get them to look nice. It helped, but it just took it from bad to not quite as bad. For stuff where my DOF was too shallow but part was in focus, it made the OOF areas look better. My thought was that it would take too many fixes to be worth the $30. It will help with my wife's run-and-gun and don't pay too much attention to what focus point your on style of shooting.

 

[Gdad]

I'm guessing that you mean that you are a big topaz fan, although you are certainly pretty and sparkly.

Yeah- that too.

 

[Kphoto]

I never could get Topaz to work on my computer so I ended up buying Lucis Art instead. It was a lot more expensive but it's worth it - I use it all the time now.

Karen

 

[boBQuincy]

I bought it based on the strength of their Adjust software and was very disappointed. I could not get InFocus to give decent results and asked for a refund, which Topaz promptly provided!

Looking at their forum it seems very few have had any success with InFocus but I believe Topaz will get it right in a later release, they have some great ideas and some very good products.