{"id":2836,"date":"2021-05-27T23:13:26","date_gmt":"2021-05-28T06:13:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/?p=2836"},"modified":"2021-05-28T15:39:09","modified_gmt":"2021-05-28T22:39:09","slug":"old-photos-trash-to-cash-ongoing-topaz-sale-more","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/old-photos-trash-to-cash-ongoing-topaz-sale-more\/","title":{"rendered":"Old photos: Trash to cash, ongoing Topaz sale & more!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Before we start: As I write there is about a week left (until 6\/4) to take advantage of the Topaz DeNoise AI 3<\/a><\/strong> launch sale: Topaz is offering free upgrades for current DeNoise AI users, $20 off new purchases and an additional 15% off<\/em><\/strong> the sale price using coupon “plugsnpixels” here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A $50 discount and extra 15% off also applies to the entire Topaz Image Quality Bundle<\/a><\/strong> (DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI and Gigapixel AI) for an even better deal. See my last blog post<\/a> for more details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now, about making money with Topaz apps<\/strong>! Like me, you probably have many years’ worth of images stashed away on your hard drives, or even stored in boxes as prints or original negative or slide film just waiting to be scanned. It doesn’t matter that these photos were created with perhaps inferior camera technology on grainy film or at the dawn of the digital age, we can successfully address these shortcomings!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve personally amassed over 45 years’ worth of my own images, going back to when I was a young teen. I first crossed paths with digital photography in the early 1990s; a decade later I had pretty much switched over from film and still have these lo-res images on hand, ready to review and hopefully put to some contemporary use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, here is a sample selection of flowers\/scenics sitting in one of hundreds of my own stock photo folders on an external hard drive. These particular ones were taken between 2003 and 2006 with a non-DSLR camera:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The specific scenic below was shot in February 2003 in SoCal with a 4-megapixel digital camera. Not bad, but not great either; nevertheless I thought I’d see what I could do with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here’s what I was able to tease out of this image today:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Using a 2020 M1 MacBook Pro<\/strong> running the latest release of Big Sur with 8 gigs of RAM, I loaded up the latest versions of various Topaz AI<\/a><\/strong> apps from their website:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I knew I would need Gigapixel AI<\/a><\/strong> to add “beef” and other improvements to any of my older original images if I were to make any real commercial use of them. Here’s what a 6X Gigapixel enlargement of the flower scenic looks like:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nice! And the Apple M1 chip literally blazes though the enlargement process, which used to take literally an hour per image on an older 2017 MacBook Air. Now I click “Save Image”, look away briefly, and it’s already done!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The bland sky in the original scenic needed some help, so I quickly Gigapixeled another old digital cloud photo of mine from about the same time period, and comped the two together in Photoshop:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After flattening the layers and removing some distracting flower petals, I brought the result into Topaz Studio<\/a><\/strong> for final treatment. I had a lot of options to choose from, the first of which for me is always the AI Clear<\/strong> filter (which really “pops” and cleans up any image). In this case I also decided to add some “artsy”, so I accessed the Impression<\/strong> filter and added it to the effects stack:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Immediately I was getting a nice, usable result. Of course you can always push your luck and dive into the many presets (subjective territory!) just to see what else you can achieve, either with a single click or with further editing of each preset’s parameters:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After saving the first result, I uploaded the new, never-before-seen artsy composite to my fineartamerica<\/a><\/strong> and Redbubble<\/a><\/strong> accounts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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BTW, right now Redbubble<\/a><\/strong><\/strong> just started their Memorial Day sale, 20-60% off sitewide<\/strong> with code FINDYOURTHING<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note:<\/strong> There is about a week left to take advantage of the Topaz DeNoise AI 3<\/a><\/strong> launch sale. Topaz is offering free upgrades for current DeNoise AI users, $20 off new purchases and an additional 15% off<\/em><\/strong> the sale price using coupon “plugsnpixels” here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A $50 discount and extra 15% off also applies to the entire Topaz Image Quality Bundle<\/a><\/strong> (DeNoise AI, Sharpen AI and Gigapixel AI) for an even better deal. See my last blog post<\/a> for more details.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went on to do a second image treatment today, this time a scan of a small print from 35mm film of a classic black GTO car, Gibson Les Paul guitar and tweed amp<\/strong>, shot at a musician’s house in Nashville in 1997. Here’s the original:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The print was a bit soft, so I immediately fired up Topaz Sharpen AI<\/a><\/strong> to restore a bit of detail:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That helped, and a trip through AI Clear in Topaz Studio<\/a><\/strong> did even more good (before and after):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once again I explored various art effects using Topaz Studio<\/a><\/strong>‘s Impression filter (Simply Soft preset shown) before settling on a less dramatic effect:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Turns out I got ahead of myself while working to fix the softness of the image and forgot to Gigapixel<\/a><\/strong> it first like I usually do! So after the final art effects were applied, I enlarged the image 6x, with detail still nicely preserved as shown here (100% view; open in another tab or window to view at full size):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As a result of the enlargement, this image was suitable for any size product offered by fineartamerica<\/a><\/strong> and Redbubble<\/a><\/strong>, even clothing, duvets and shower curtains!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I hope this blog inspired you to dig out your own old photos (or even your latest!) to see what you can do to make them commercially usable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t miss the current Topaz<\/a><\/strong> and Redbubble<\/strong> sales; it’s that time of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before we start: As I write there is about a week left (until 6\/4) to take advantage of the Topaz DeNoise AI 3 launch sale: Topaz is offering free upgrades for current DeNoise AI users, $20 off new purchases and an additional 15% off the sale price using coupon “plugsnpixels” here. A $50 discount and extra 15% off Read more about Old photos: Trash to cash, ongoing Topaz sale & more!<\/span>[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2869,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,3,25,31,7,1],"tags":[281,894,888,890,406,168,269,881,886,385,889,885,893,887,880,8,693,10,499,892,295,568,884,283,883,153,173,891,139],"class_list":["post-2836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discounts","category-general","category-photography","category-post-processing","category-software","category-uncategorized","tag-ai","tag-americana","tag-amp","tag-cars","tag-classic","tag-discount","tag-fine-art","tag-fineartamerica","tag-gibson","tag-gigapixel","tag-gto","tag-guitar","tag-jazz","tag-les-paul","tag-memorial-day","tag-photoshop","tag-plugin","tag-plugins","tag-redbubble","tag-rock","tag-sale","tag-save-15","tag-sell-photos","tag-sharpen","tag-stock-photos","tag-topaz","tag-topaz-labs","tag-tweed","tag-vintage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2836"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2836\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2875,"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2836\/revisions\/2875"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plugsandpixels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}