Topaz Labs

The rare AI tool that restores rather than generates, which makes it uncontroversial for archival and documentary coursework. Gigapixel genuinely recovers usable detail from low-resolution scans and old negatives, and the video denoiser rescues footage shot at high ISO on cheap cameras — which describes most student production.

Upscaling scanned 35mm negatives to exhibition print size for a photo class. Cleaning noise from footage shot in a poorly lit campus location before grading. Converting archival footage to smooth slow motion for an editing exercise.

Subscription-only since Topaz dropped perpetual licenses, and organizations above $1M annual revenue need Pro licensing at $499-699/year — a community college district clears that easily, so the advertised consumer rate probably does not apply to a lab install. Upscaling hallucinates detail that was never there: faces gain invented texture and text becomes plausible gibberish, which is an integrity problem for photojournalism and documentary work and should be taught explicitly.