You can try both software for free for 30 days (Affiliate Links): Dxo Pure Raw 3: tidd.ly/42l1Lwi Topaz Photo AI: www.topazlabs.com/topaz-photo-ai/ref/901/?campaign=en

A very fair and objective review, I have been using DXO Pure Raw Prime XD (Photolab 6 Elite) for a while now and really like the results I get with my Z9, all that I miss is the batch process option so I might just go ahead and purchase PureRaw 3 purely out of convenance, many thanks.

Thanks for the comparison, well done. I have both DXO pureraw 3 and AI v 1.2. I usually batch process the raw files in DXO first and then import to Lightroom. Then after crop and basic adjustments if needed I send the file to AI by the 'edit in' feature, I also notice it is easy to get over sharpening in AI. I am liking pureraw 3 better than 2 the output looks slightly better and 3 is more stable on my PC. I am waiting for a couple more versions to buy the upgrade for AI. I plan to continue to use both. Cheers

Thanks for the detailed comparison. Great video. I'm going to try Photo AI. The free trial is a huge help.

I'm trying the software and very impressed. At least it supports the S5 ii RAW files. Topaz not yet. Now I have to go back and redo all of my noisy photos! A hummingbird photo was improved significantly. Great informative video.

Your review matches my own experience quite well. Each tool has occasional advantages over the other, and in critical situations, I find it valuable to own both. Note that Photo AI is updated at least weekly, if not more, and usually with slight improvements. I don’t think either will remain “the best” in every situation.

Good video and very timely for me, I own DeNoise and just downloaded the trial of Pure raw 3. First impressions for me are similar to your conclusions, much less artefacts with Pure Raw 3. Im also going to buy the sub.

Nice review. Thanks!

Thanks so much for sharing another wonderful video like always, I really enjoy the birds photography show, keep up with the awesome content 🐦👌👍🤗

Jusst did a trial with OM-1 files. Wow. did a great job and setting the lens correction to standard did not seem to over sharpen but had great detail.

Thank You. Very instructive.

Thanks so much for sharing another wonderful video like always 👍👌

Not being able to see the output prior to final processing for me was a deal breaker. Topaz Photo AI has been a real gamechanger in my workflow, being able to see the changes applied in advance.

Finally an honest assessment. So many of the other content creators are on the Topaz band wagon. I have been a long time user of both The original Topaz suite and PhotoAI and DxO. I have always found DxO to produce much more consistent results overall. PAI has the benefit of Face recovery, but it can be problematic. I always found PAI lacking in its noise reduction performance where parts of the image were left unprocessed. Additionally PAI was prone to destroying fine detail thru overzealous NR and creating more sharpening artifacts or false detail. PAI was released into the wild as a “finished” product that is still in beta test at user expense. Thanks for an honest assessment.

Wonderful video. Thank you for that. My opinion is that both programs giving very close results but the ability to denoise or Sharpen or even maximize some photo resolution for printing (after cropping) is so much more from Photo Ai so I will go with Topaz Photo Ai. Again thank you for this video, love it.

Great video thanks! ON-1 works the same, but for the price it also includes the option for sharpening as well. You don't need to pay separately for sharpening. Just a different priced option. :)

For my use case, a lot of indoor sports on my M50 mkii with not the best lens for the job, have to shoot a ton at high iso. 12,800 is normal and sometimes even higher depending on the gym. I've found nothing helps with the noise as much as pureraw, both 2 and 3. But photo ai works really well for everything else. My work flow that's treated me well so far is kull down to the keepers. Run those through pureraw, import into Lightroom and edit, export tiffs and run through photo ai. Works a treat. Yes yes better lenses would negate much of this, but when you're doing it for free less than $300 in software, catch those holiday sales, is a lot more digestible than the price of a f2.8 or f4 zoom lens.

Nice comparison, Photo Ai will give more control and will be better with weekly updates , Dxo only works with Raw. whereas photo ai will work on everything .

A well thought through video.

Great review, thank you. I still find the results from DenoiseAI more pleasing than PhotoAI. I also use DXO2 when necesssary and need to try a demo of DXO3.

The current versions of DeepPrimeXD use the GPU on macos, which is a lot slower than the neural engine. DxO has said they are working on a fix, that would make it more than twice as fast. The bug is a purple colour cast over the whole picture.

I recently bought Topaz AI and noticed that in some images, especially on faces, artifacts are introduced a fair bit. I noticed on baby faces that Topaz has no idea how to treat fuzzy baby hair and you end up with some weird looks. I will try DXO now and see how it compares.

Hello Fabian. Great video thanks for this comparison. As a Nikon shooter I am curious about the Nikon Z9 high efficiency compression format. Does Dxo pureraw 3 support this file format now?? I couldn't find any information about this "long-awaited" compatibility on the internet. Greetings from Heidelberg, Germany 🙂

Thanks for the video. I use both software and I agree with you. Pure raw 3 is impressive. I’d love a in depth video of the use of the software. One question, I don’t know why but after processing with DXO my files always appear darker at least one step at Lightroom Classique. Any suggestions?

DxO works great but sometimes the sharpness is too much and you have no control to reduce it. I like Photo AI because you have control of everything and if you play with the settings you might and up with better results. Also DxO is not working with tiff files 😢.

Vielen Dank!

REALLY GOOD INVESTIGATION HERE... ;)

DXO PureRaw 4 BLOWS Topaz Away! I used to use Topaz, but when I tries DXO, I haven't used Topaz since!

Thanks for the video. Can you tell us, is DXO3 better then DXO2? I would like to know it before I upgrade.

Notice you also have Affinity. How does the noise reduction on a "normal" editor compare with DXO / Topaz.

Those “artifacts” in the background is called posterization, and is a real problem when we upload images to social media like FB and IG, as they apply a compression filter which makes it much worse. Question: I don’t use LR, I use the good ol’ PS CS6, and I’m able to use Topaz Denoise & Sharpen as plug-ins. Will DXO work in the same way?

In my personal experience, Topaz's Sharpen module requires user to try multiple configurations (Strength & Clarity) to fine tune the final result. It is not magic and you have to be patient. The result may not be that pleasant (e.g., some unwanted artifacts) during the try-and-error process, if you pushed Strength or Clarity value too high. I would start with (Strength=25, Clarity=20), and check the final image for artifacts. If no artifacts, then slowly increase the Strength/Clarity value from there, until I find the best setting for noise reduction, sharpness AND detail detention. If you are able to find that best setting, Topaz's Sharpen module could work wonders for certain images, especially if the subject is slightly blurry/out of focus. I recently did a similar comparison for Lightroom Denoise AI v.s. Topaz v.s. DXO PhotoLab 6, with a noisy bird image (ISO 10000, bird slightly out of focus). The Topaz's result is vastly superior of the three. Its capability to selectively sharpen the subject (bird in this case) while denoise the background is second to none.

Yes I'm on trial to test it, while the result is pretty good, I often get only a black photo instead as the picture process in just a few seconds instead of like a whole minute or so.. I wrote to the support but they just said update the drivers etc (they're all up to date) So yeah good potential but I'm not paying for a software I can't rely on (also it's really super slow honestly)

It's interesting to me that in your PhotoAI editing, like for your first image that was at 12,800 ISO, you had the noise removal strength at 28. I have found that on mine, I typically reduce the strength of noise reduction down to 1 and it gives me cleaner results than what yours is at 26, even with a photo with 52,000 ISO (R6). Not sure why that would be. And if your image is already fairly sharp (i.e, you nailed focus but it's high ISO), you can turn off the sharpening altogether and the result are usually better. I haven't tried DXO 3 yet, but I like being able to adjust settings before applying so I'll probably stick with PhotoAI.

Great but if you have DxO photolab 6 there's no reason to have pureraw 3?

I think the best way processing is to use Topaz sharpen and Topaz Denoise after and not Topaz Photo AI, you have so much more control in both programs.

Maybe someone already pointed it out, but you are comparing the first version of Topaz Ai vs the latest of Pure Raw. Your version of Topaz Denoise is 1.x something, if I saw it correctly, now we are at the 3.7, major upgrade were done. I would encourage you to at least download/try the latest Topaz Denoise and re-do the comparison at the point, otherwise it is not that fair. Anyway, thanks for the video.

DxO is great. Maybe they will give us more options in the future. So that we can choose between the one button for batches and more finetuning on individual images. That being said I can always import both original and denoised images into photoshop and blend them together if I find the denoise to extreme. I already found DxO v.2 to be magic so seeing several people say v.3 is even better makes me want to upgrade.

Well…thank you 🙏🏻 Now…..I have converted all my raw files in my life to adobe DNG - and therefore can´t use “dxo pure raw 3” on those files. Only original raw files going forward 😢 But still. An advantage if the dxo dng files are the same as adobe´s. Regards Lars , Denmark

How far are we until Ai noise reduction is imbedded into cameras???

Topaz have already used months to correct their own errors without any real improvement of the noise reduction. DxO PureRAW 2 and 3 are way ahead. One annoying detail with Topaz Photos AI is the constant updating necessary each time the preview of the output is moved - and of course, the larger DNG files. The only negative issue with DxO is the extremely slow support, which is a paradox considering the high technical level of DxO PureRAW 2 and 3. It would surprise me if Topaz Labs within the next two months managed to get rid of the high contrast artifacts, the bad rendering of digits and letters and the synthetic presentation of smooth surfaces, even of low level textured surfaces like textiles! Those are major problems and actually no improvement has been visible for the AI part of the software since it was released months ago.

In version 3 the downside is that you cant turn off the sharpening. for some nature/animal-photos it is perhaps ok, but for all other normal photos even the softest setting is too sharp especially with good sharp lenses, it looks sooo unnatural, not usable! And persons/faces look ugly with this high sharpening. What would be very very cool if you could just edit all photos in LR and at the very end (without the use of extra .dngs) exporting all photos in full batch using the Dxo PureRaw with seamless setting/ammount of sharpness AND noise reduction, or depending on the ISO-value, automatically low noise reduction for low ISO and high reduction for high ISO. So you can just optimise little bit a whole bunch of 1000 photos of a session/wedding with few clicks fully automatically. If someone knows of a software which can do this then let me know!

Pure raw applies too much sharpness. The Deep Prime XD from DXO Lab6 does not have this problem. So I recomand DXO Lab 6 instead of Pure Raw.

Pixel peeping on zoomed I images is for the OCD crowd. Subject, composition and creative interpretation is for photographers.

DXO Pure Raw 3 IS THE HOLY GRAIL ... no NEED MOORE , LrC ... and DoX LAP 7 ... ETC. ... ;) ONLY THE PRICE 89 TAX DOLLAR IS TO HEAVY 4 MEE... ;)

No thanks.I think upgrade price from Vs2 to Vs3 is to expensive ... may be unfair. 😞🤬

A little bit misleading. I have all this software and even though the very latest Topaz Photo Ai is better than it used to be it still does not compete with DXO deep Prime XD at higher ISO if used correctly and if I have a noisy image that is giving me a problem I will try them all but still believe I get the most detail from DXO deep prime XD in DXO Photolab 7 elite. In fact I prefer using Topaz denoise in preference to Topaz Photo AI in low noise images like the one shown as it is less aggressive. Topaz Photo AI is vastly improved from when it started but still has a little way to go.

TODAY TECH. .. I DON'T UNDERSTAND WHY WE CAN'T DO ::: 100 ISO IN / 1/2000 SHUTTERSPEED OF A SECOND, IS P**** ME OF ... WONDER AND WONDER ... WE CAN FLY TOO MARS BUT NO MANUAL IN HIGH SHUTTER SPEED - MY CHOOSE ... .... ????!!!

Photo was definitely not a keeper.