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Topaz Gigapixel AI Review: Image Upscaling & Portrait Enhancement Tested (2026)

Tested Hands-OnAI Image UpscalingPortrait EnhancementProfessional EditorialLast verified April 2026

Our take

Topaz Gigapixel AI is the industry-standard tool for professional editorial upscaling, referenced directly in photography workflows and publishing use cases. The Preserve face toggle and adjustable Sharpen/Denoise sliders give editors more control than any other tested tool. It requires more configuration than fully automatic tools, which adds steps under deadline pressure, but the output quality on portraits justifies it.

In-Depth Review

Our detailed analysis of Topaz Gigapixel AI — features, performance, and real-world testing.

Athulya Jaikish

AI Demos Team

Verified Review

Feature-by-Feature Breakdown

We tested each feature individually. Click any card to see inputs, outputs, and our observations.

Claims to deliver balanced enhancement of detail, sharpness, and denoising across all image types.

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Bottom Line

Standard V2 is the best default choice for clean portrait and product inputs. Consistent, natural output with no hallucination.

Use Case Track Record

Enhance and Upscale Images from Low-Resolution Inputs

Pricing & Access

TESTED

Free credits

$ 0

10 crefits available in free trial

Topaz Studio

$37 /month

All the apps, Unlimited local rendering, Unlimited cloud image rendering, 300 monthly video cloud credits, 2—image cloud concurrency, 32MP cloud export limit*, Limited commercial use*,

Topaz Studio Pro

$ 75 / month

All the apps (Pro licenses) Unlimited local rendering Unlimited cloud image rendering 600 monthly video cloud credits 4—Image cloud concurrency 100MP cloud export limit* Full commercial use Seat management

* Pricing as of April 2026. We re-check quarterly

Is This Right For You?

A side-by-side guide based on our hands-on testing.

✓ Use This If

●Portrait detail fidelity is a priority — you need natural skin, eye, and hair recovery

●You want fine-grained control over sharpening and denoising per image

●You work with a mix of portrait, archival, and product inputs

●You need scale factors up to 8x for large format print

●You are comfortable with a semi-manual configuration workflow

✕ Skip This If

●You need a fully automatic one-click workflow with no configuration

●You work primarily with archival or degraded historical images and need a dedicated restoration model

●You need DPI explicitly confirmed in the interface

●You need TIFF input confirmed as supported

●You are on a tight free tier credit budget

Frequently Asked Questions

No dedicated archival or Old photo model was available during testing. Standard V2 was used for the archival scan input and produced clean results, but it does not apply the conservative grain management of a purpose-built restoration model.

Preserve face applies face-specific processing to portrait regions during upscaling, preventing distortion of facial features. In our testing, it produced noticeably more natural skin texture and eye detail compared to upscaling without it.

Both default to 50 on a 0–100 scale. Both are fully adjustable. For archival inputs, lowering Sharpen and increasing Denoise produced cleaner grain management. For clean portraits, the defaults gave natural results.

4x is recommended for most editorial print use cases. 2x is sufficient for web publishing and large-format digital display. For very large print formats, 6x or 8x is available.

Topaz Labs offers desktop apps and plugins for Lightroom and Photoshop as part of the Topaz Photo AI suite. The web app tested here does not require software installation but the plugin offers tighter workflow integration for editors already in Lightroom or Photoshop.