We Review Topaz Adjust: Powerful Detail and Exposure Enhancement

Topaz Adjust is a Photoshop plugin, offering photographers a simple yet powerful solution to giving images a wake up call. Topaz Labs, the company behind Adjust (and other plugins too) bills Adjust as the:

ultimate control over image exposure, detail, and color…

and for a plugin it does provide a great deal of control over the three parameters, though clearly what it excels at is delivering detail. For those familiar with working in HDR (high dynamic range), and Photomatix specifically, what Adjust does visually is to bring the tone mapping feature into Photoshop, and on any file. I realize that the aesthetics of HDR, in particular those overly done, is a point of contention, but when carefully done, HDR is a very effective way of bringing in more detail into an image. In my own workflow, I’ll frequently use HDR specifically for bringing in the tone mapped results into Photoshop—selectively, and I do this for the very fine detail possible in HDR, but difficult to achieve in Photoshop. Let’s not forget the added benefit of increased dynamic range that additionally can benefit your work. The problem is that circling around this way can be time consuming, and again, I’m typically only interested in localized effects, not in creating an HDR image.

Workflow

Enter Topaz Adjust. Compatible with Windows and Mac versions of Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements (and other applications supporting Photoshop plugins) and with 64 bit support, Adjust is accessed like most plugins via the filter menu. Once opened, Adjust offers a functional interface, with a number of built in presets on the left, a main viewing area top right, with the options presented bottom right. It’s rather basic and won’t win points in a beauty contest, but it does what it needs to, while being organized in a way that moves the work forward.

You can begin of course, by selecting one of Adjust’s presets, with an exposure correction preset sitting prominently at the top. But more likely you’ll want to perfect your own settings (most of the included presets were too overdone for my tastes). For that there’s a series of tabbed stages for the various options that Adjust can perform starting with “Exposure”. In this stage you have access to 6 sliders:

• Adaptive Exposure
• Regions
• Contrast
• Brightness
• Highlight
• Shadow

At this point you might be wondering, what the heck are “Adaptive Exposure” and “Regions”, I certainly was, but a quick trip into Adjust’s preferences allows one to enable pop-up help where I quickly learned that “Adaptive Exposure” evens out the exposure of sections of the images, with “Regions” referring to how many of those sections there are, the more regions, the more localized detail you’ll get. All of the options are implemented via sliders, but despite not being obvious, you can additionally fine tune the sliders using the keyboard (by either entering the numbers or using the arrow keys). What you’ll quickly learn about Adjust is that it is very powerful, and it’s easy to go overboard in a hurry. That said, just using Adaptive Exposure with Regions can impart a tremendous impact on your photograph, squeezing details out of the woodwork that seemingly weren’t there before. Even minus those changes, Adjust’s Highlight and Shadow sliders also do a nice job in their respective roles, even if simply used for corrective purposes.

It’s at this stage, that I suspect those more creative in their workflow (especially those with a keen interest in HDR) will likely be loving Adjust, and traditionalist will by shocked by the horror of it all (more on that later), but Adjust doesn’t end there, it really just begins with Exposure settings, but the real fire power comes from Adjust’s Detail settings, which include:

• Strength
• Boost
• Threshold
• Radius
• Sharpen

Strength refers to overall amount of detail enhancement, with boost applying to finer details in the image. Again, care needs to be taken with these adjustments, as above, it is effortless to to go from real to hyperreal to surreal in just moments. But with a cautionary hand, you can pull detail into areas that had little, and enhance existing detail to the utmost degree. We’re talking every blade of grass, every pore, every hair, with detail on top of that detail—it is quite close to the aforementioned “ultimate control”. Interestingly there are softening and loss of detail options as well, by simply pulling back on the sliders, though I suspect for most users this won’t be the norm.

With details adequately enhanced, Adjust moves on to Color where one will encounter:

• Adaptive Saturation
• Regions
• Saturation
• Saturation Boost
• Hue

You might now be able to gather that Adaptive Saturation evens out areas of saturation by sections in the image, with the amount of sections being controlled by Regions. Saturation works as assumed, but following the “ultimate control” route, “Saturation Boost” works by increasing saturation in unsaturated areas. Again all powerful stuff, and effective as well—but easy to over do.

Finally Adjust offers noise removal options, including a slider to remove JPEG artifacts. As most of us know, bringing further detail into an image frequently brings with it added noise, and Adjust thankfully gives you the ability to clean it up very effectively with their options. It works very well, though workflow perfectionists might prefer keeping noise removal on a separate layer.

While performing all these adjustments, users can easily zoom to 100% on their images to see the effects up close, or return to a reduced view for the entire image, and as is becoming the norm with plugins, you can save your settings as a preset. Even more cleverly, you can save a snapshot of where you’re currently at, and recall that snapshot later–a very useful feature for getting back or referring to a previous result.

All of this works quite well and essentially “as advertised” though for ultimate control what Adjust is clearly missing is an ability to mask inside the plugin (an area Nik really shines with control points). In Adjust, an adjustment is global, though honestly this isn’t a huge negative, afterall we’re in Photoshop, and so long as you remembered to duplicate your original layer, masking would be a simple affair once exiting Adjust.

Just A Quick Word

For the HDR fans, and more “creative” types in the digital darkroom, Adjust will likely be well recieved, but before the traditionalists walk away completely, let me just say Adjust could have a role for you as well. While it easy to get HDR-like looks from Adjust, it also excels at simply adding detail, improving local contrast, and yes even exposure corrections—so before judging the global effects, think about how Adjust could add local benefits.

Verdict

Topaz Adjust offers photographers an easy and powerful tool to enhance exposure, color, and most noticeably detail in their photographs, either correctively or creatively. At $49 it is a relative steal, able to create powerful images in its own right, or used as a tool to enhance photographs selectively. Either way beginners will love the punch it provides, “creative” types will like the unique effects opened up by it’s use, and traditionalist should be tempted by the localized corrections that Adjust could make in their workflow. With its powerful options, and great value, Topaz Adjust is easily: “Recommended”

Sample Workflow

We’ve provided a sample workflow to show you how Adjust works. I’d highly recommend you try it yourself, a 30 day free trial is available here. All image can enlarged by clicking.

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