Topaz Photo AI 4.0.4

Topaz Photo AI 4.0.4 is the final version of Topaz Labs' AI photo enhancer, which has been replaced by a subscription app called Topaz Photo.

Topaz stopped selling perpetual licences on 3 October 2025, so Photo AI is now a legacy product with no new AI models and only the odd compatibility patch.

If you bought a Photo AI licence, 4.0.4 is the version to install, and it keeps working for as long as your system supports it.

Anyone else can still install it and test the tools in trial mode, which has no time limit but will not save the finished images. A new purchase means Topaz Photo, currently at version 1.7.1.

What Topaz Photo AI Actually Does

You open a photo and Autopilot suggests the fixes it needs: noise to remove, blur to sharpen, faces to recover or a size to upscale to. You can accept its choices or adjust each one, then save the result.

• Denoise - cleans grain from high ISO and low-light shots while keeping fine detail.
• Sharpen - fixes motion blur and slightly missed focus, with separate models for different kinds of blur.
• Recover Faces - rebuilds small or soft faces in group shots and old scans.
• Upscale - enlarges photos for printing or heavy cropping while keeping edges and textures clean.
• Remove - erases distracting objects and fills in the gap.
• Dust and Scratch - new in version 4.0, it cleans specks and scratches from scanned prints and film.
• Super Focus - rescues badly out-of-focus shots. Like Dust and Scratch, it can run in Topaz's cloud instead of on your PC.

It works as a standalone app and as a plugin for Lightroom Classic, Photoshop, Capture One and Apple Photos. You send a photo across and get the enhanced version back without exporting by hand.

Topaz Photo AI or Topaz Photo?

Topaz Photo includes every Photo AI model plus newer ones such as Denoise Max, Wonder and High Fidelity v3. The two apps install separately, so you can try Topaz Photo without removing Photo AI first.

A Photo AI licence does not unlock Topaz Photo for free. Prices change often, so check Topaz Labs' pricing page before you subscribe.

If enlarging photos is all you need, Topaz Gigapixel is Topaz's dedicated upscaler, also sold by subscription.

Which File to Download

Topaz asks for 16GB of RAM and a graphics card with at least 6GB of video memory. On a Mac, Super Focus and Dust and Scratch need macOS 14 and 8GB of video memory, and they do not run on Intel Macs with AMD Radeon graphics.

Not sure which Mac you have? Check whether your Mac is Intel or Apple silicon first, because Topaz itself calls Intel Macs underpowered for this kind of work.

On Windows, most slow or failed exports come down to an old graphics driver. Update the GeForce driver or AMD Adrenalin before a big batch.

Free Alternatives Worth Trying

darktable and RawTherapee are free RAW editors with strong noise reduction and sharpening. You move the sliders yourself instead of letting AI decide.

RapidRAW is a lighter open-source RAW editor with AI masking that runs entirely on your own machine.

For upscaling on Windows, Realtime AI Image Viewer shows images enlarged with the free Real-ESRGAN and Real-CUGAN models as you browse them.

To erase an unwanted object, the free Photos app in Windows 11 can do it, as our guide to removing objects from photos shows.

For full manual retouching with layers and masks, GIMP is the long-standing free alternative to Photoshop.

Working on video rather than photos? Topaz Video applies the same kind of AI to old footage, and REAL Video Enhancer is its free, open-source counterpart.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

If you have never owned a Photo AI licence, this is the wrong download for a new purchase, because Topaz no longer sells it. Get Topaz Photo from Topaz's site, or use one of the free tools above.

Check your graphics card before installing: on Windows, open Task Manager, then Performance, GPU, and look at Dedicated GPU memory. Below 6GB you are under Topaz's minimum, and processing will be slow or fail.

Laptops with Snapdragon chips cannot run Photo AI at all, while Topaz Photo runs on them natively.

Quick Questions

Download Topaz Photo AI 4.0.4 if you own a licence or want to test it on your own photos, or tell us how it handled your pictures.