Introduction
Topaz Vivacity™ is a set of Photoshop plug-ins that employs the state-of-the-art image
processing technology. Its primary functions are to enhance images in the following areas:
1. Increase image resolution with better image quality than normal image resizing.
2. Suppress image noise caused by low lighting, high ISO settings, or film grain while
retaining image details and sharpness.
3. Eliminate unwanted artifacts caused by JPEG, JPEG2000 and other types of image
compression.
4. Improve image sharpness, details and edges without “edge rings” or noise amplification.
It can also equalize images of improper filtering.
In addition, Topaz Vivacity™ can produce some interesting special effects:
1. Make images “flat” to resemble a painting.
2. Make images “curly” to resemble fantasy art.
Topaz Vivacity™ uses sophisticated algorithms that achieve far better results then the built-in
resizing, sharpening or noise reduction filters in commercial image processing programs.
In the following sections we explain how to use Topaz Vivacity™ through examples. The Topaz
Vivacity™ context-sensitive help provides a more detailed and systematic description of each filter and
its parameters.
After understanding the basics of Topaz Vivacity™, you will find that it is quite intuitive and
straightforward to use. However, the best way to become proficient is to experiment. The purpose of this
guide is to go through a few enhancement cases to facilitate your own experimentation. Different
situations will call for different settings.
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Before You Start
Before start, a few things should be explained first.
The Topaz Vivacity™ Interface
All the filters in Topaz Vivacity™ use the same user interface layout, as shown in the following
screenshot.
All the GUI items, such as buttons and parameter settings have context-sensitive help, which is
disabled by default. To use context-sensitive help, check “Enable popup help on each item” box. Now
if you place a mouse
cursor on an item for one
second, a help balloon w
pop up and display help
text for that item. Click the
“Help” button to get an
overall description of the
filter.
ill
The Preview
window always displays
a portion of the filtered
image by default.
To pan the
preview image, click and
hold the left mouse button on the preview image and drag it around. When you let go of the mouse
button, the new portion of image will be processed according to the current settings and the result will be
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displayed. The checkbox “Pan faster” controls the speed of the pan action. Check it to pan around a
large image.
To compare the filtered and un-filtered images, click and hold the “View Original Image”
button to switch to the unfiltered image. Letting go of the button will switch back to the filtered image. In
this way, you can toggle the filtered and un-filtered image quickly to evaluate the effect of the current filter
setting.
You can zoom in or out of the preview image using the “+”, or “-” buttons below the preview
image. We find ourselves using the 200% setting most of the time. You will also find that the larger the
zoom factor you use, the faster the image gets processed. This could be useful for some filter settings for
which it takes a long time to update the preview image.
All the filter’s parameters are in the tabbed panel under the image preview. Most filters have
three tab pages. The “Main” page contains the most commonly used parameters. The “Advanced”
page has additional parameters. Drag the slides in these pages to change filter parameters. Whenever
you release the mouse button after dragging a slider, the preview image will be updated according to the
new setting. The “Reset” button will return all parameters, including the ones not shown, to their default
value.
For RGB image, some filters will have an addition tab pages which usually contains fine
parameter adjustment relative to RGB channel or YCbCr parameters. This tab will not appear when the
filter is used for gray or single channel images.
The “About” page contains the version information of the plug-in. It also has two buttons, one of
which lets you email us directly. We would like to help whenever you have a question. We also
appreciate any suggestions or comments and would really love to hear from you concerning how to
improve Topaz Vivacity™. Please don’t hesitate to email us. Your email address will be kept strictly
confidential and we will not send unsolicited messages except for product updates. The second button
will lead you to the Topaz Vivacity page of our website, which contains more updated information and
other resources.
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