My friend Gordon (merriwolf) mentioned that I might try the Topaz Products (DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI and Gigapixel AI) as methods to improve the quality for small sensor cameras (my Powershot SX70 and his Coolpix P1000). A few days ago I posted my first photos of airplanes with the SX70. Very disappointing. Noisy and blurred. Lightroom really couldn't fix that. So I bit the bullet and bought the Topaz suite.

I had a very hard time getting started. Every time I launched one it loaded then crashed. After hours of frustration trying to figure it out I blundered into an offhanded comment that if the AI Processor in the preferences is not set to CPU it will crash. Yup, that fixed the problem.

So my offering today is a redo of the above mentioned attempt to fix an airplane photo. I used DeNoise and Sharpen and got a much improved result (bottom). Of course it is not a very good photo because of GIGO (garbage in garbage out). I have a lot to learn with the SX70. That means taking lots of photos. Aw shucks, I knew there was a catch.