"Don't use Topaz AI, Anime4k, RealESRGAN, RIFE, etc. Trust me, just don't."

Why? I only know Topaz and I always thought it had its narrow but legitimate uses cases for upscaling and equalizing quality?

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perching_aix 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Can't mind read the guy obviously, but the usual motivation that I'm aware of is that you pretty much fuck over everyone else that comes later. Upscalers improve over time, but in terms of distribution, recency bias is strong and visual treats are inviting. So when those much better upscalers eventually come around, what's more likely to still be available is the secondary source you distributed, which is already upscaled once with a then-inferior upscaler. This leads to a form of generational rot.

Other likely explanations are:

- them not liking how these upscalers look: you can imagine if they can nitpick minor differences between different encodes that most people don't notice, they'll hate the glaring artifacts these filters usually produce

- boycotting AI

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ErroneousBosh 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Topaz looks bloody awful. Instead of big blocky upscaled pixels you've got weird artifacty "oil painting effect" smeary blobs.

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echelon 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[flagged]

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cnntth 6 hours ago | parent [-]

OP makes zero comments about content generation, and the complaint is about upscaling introducing artifacts not in the original source. No different than hating a bad 4k remaster / sharpening.

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echelon 5 hours ago | parent [-]

That advice is not universal, and without context it's simply wrong.

You wouldn't upscale a classic film in this way, but there are plenty of low-resolution shots that benefit. Especially with VGA resolution renders and modern AI workflows.

Just looking at the Topaz marketing, you can see a lot of places where it indeed does work. And 20-year industry professionals are using it today for their day jobs.

If you want to say "don't upscale a classic film in Topaz", say that. Because context makes the advice correct. This blanket "do not use" statement is flat out wrong.

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unloader6118 4 hours ago | parent [-]

In any case, blindly apply upscaling is just wrong ..

You apply it to where it is needed. Not every scene need the same treatment.

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echelon 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The article simply says "Trust me, just don't."

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littlestymaar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

No it doesn't. It says “don't, Unless you're extremely surgical with it and know exactly what you're doing”.

Which is a sensible piece of advice.

	▲	embedding-shape an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> Don't use Topaz AI, Anime4k, RealESRGAN, RIFE, etc. Trust me, just don't. Is what the submission says about Topaz and similar. > Applying any kind of post-processing[4] Is what the footnote you quoted is linked to.