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Topaz Photo AI 4.0 launched on May 8, 2025, adding a Dust & Scratch enhancement for damaged scans, new Hair and Neck controls for Recover Faces, improved side-face recovery, and a revised Autopilot workflow.
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There is an important current-status qualification: Photo AI is now a discontinued legacy application. Version 4.0.4, released September 10, 2025, was the final Photo AI release. Topaz’s current product is the subscription-based Topaz Photo, whose newer models and features should not be assumed to work exactly like Photo AI 4.0.
What Photo AI 4.0 added
According to Topaz’s release summary, version 4.0 introduced:
- Dust & Scratch, an automatic enhancement for dust, scratches, and other surface damage, paired with a Healing Brush.
- Hair and Neck controls in Recover Faces, allowing more control over how face recovery affects surrounding areas.
- Dynamic Recover Faces strength based on face size.
- Improved recovery for faces viewed from the side.
- A redesigned Autopilot workflow with an on/off toggle and landscape/portrait detection.
- Updated enhancement-stack ordering, including a changed position for generative models.
- Simplified Denoise and Sharpen controls.
- Google and Apple single-sign-on support.
- Face Recovery support for side faces and macOS 12 compatibility.
The most significant changes are aimed at two groups: people restoring scanned photographs and users trying to improve faces without creating an obvious boundary between the face and the surrounding hair or neck.
Dust & Scratch: what it does
Dust & Scratch is designed for scanned negatives, slides, prints, archival photographs, and images with repetitive surface defects. Topaz describes it as a model for removing dust, scratches, and surface damage. A Healing Brush is available for localized marks that remain afterward. See the official Dust & Scratch documentation for the legacy workflow and requirements.
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It is not a universal restoration button. The legacy model has no detailed strength controls, and it may misinterpret fine hair, film grain, text, borders, jewelry, or patterned textures as damage. Severe damage may also contain too little information for any system to reconstruct the original accurately. The result can be a plausible-looking repair rather than a historically faithful recovery.
How to use Dust & Scratch in Photo AI 4.x
- Preserve the original scan and, ideally, create a working copy.
- With Autopilot enabled, choose Choose Something Else, then select Dust & Scratch.
- With Autopilot disabled, choose Add enhancement and locate Dust & Scratch.
- Let the model process the image. The first use may take longer while the model loads.
- Inspect the result at 100%, paying particular attention to faces, text, hair, borders, and repeating patterns.
- Use Healing Brush for isolated remaining spots or scratches.
- Apply denoise, sharpening, face recovery, color correction, or upscaling afterward as needed.
- Compare the result with the untouched scan both at 100% and at the intended output size.
For modern photographs with intentional grain or texture, or for defects caused by compression, motion blur, lens flare, or missing content, Dust & Scratch may be the wrong tool. If the whole-image result damages important details, remove or undo the enhancement, try a smaller crop to isolate the problem, and handle the defect manually in an editor with localized healing or masking.
The legacy Dust & Scratch implementation also does not support batch processing. That matters for archive projects containing hundreds or thousands of scans: Photo AI 4.0 can help with individual files, but it is not a fully automated batch-restoration workflow.
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Recover Faces adds Hair and Neck controls
Photo AI 4.0’s Recover Faces update addresses a common blending problem. Face recovery can make eyes and facial structure more recognizable while leaving nearby hair or neck areas looking softer or visually inconsistent. The new controls let users decide whether recovery should extend into those surrounding regions.
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1Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors2Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute3Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsIn the legacy application, the options are available through the Recover Faces selection menu. On Mac, Topaz documents the path as Edit > Preferences > Recover Faces > Parts to enhance. The Photo AI Recover Faces documentation describes the available controls.
Use Hair and Neck selectively rather than assuming that enabling everything produces the most natural result. If the face becomes sharper but the transition into the hairline or neck looks artificial, turn either option off independently and compare the result. Processing the surrounding image with compatible enhancement settings can also produce a more coherent blend.
Face detection limits
Recover Faces requires enough visible information for the model to detect a face. A face that is extremely small, heavily blurred, turned away, occluded, or badly damaged may not appear as a selectable face. In that situation, the legacy tool does not provide a way to force detection.
A detected face can also look sharper while becoming less faithful to the person in the source. Face recovery should therefore be treated as reconstruction or enhancement, not forensic evidence. Preserve the original, especially when working with family archives, historical portraits, identification records, or artwork documentation.
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The yellow rectangle around a detected face indicates the face selection. It does not necessarily show the complete area affected by the enhancement.
Autopilot and workflow changes
Version 4.0 was partly a workflow update rather than only a new-model release. Autopilot gained an on/off toggle and improved landscape-versus-portrait detection. Topaz also changed the enhancement-stack order, repositioned generative models, and simplified Denoise and Sharpen controls.
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Autopilot is a convenience layer, not a requirement. For restoration work, manual selection is usually preferable because every automatic decision can affect original grain, lettering, edges, and small facial details. A practical approach is to use Autopilot for an initial suggestion, then disable it or replace individual enhancements after inspecting the image.
Later Photo AI 4.x releases
“Photo AI 4.0” can refer to the initial release or the later final 4.x build. The maintenance timeline was:
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Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →| Version | Date | Key changes |
|---|---|---|
| 4.0 | May 8, 2025 | Dust & Scratch, Hair and Neck controls, Autopilot and workflow changes, side-face recovery, and other improvements. |
| 4.0.1 | June 12, 2025 | Personalization and cloud-processing toggles, Healing Brush processing animation, Recover Faces v2 leaving beta, and Super Focus selection changes. |
| 4.0.2 | June 14, 2025 | NVIDIA RTX 50-series compatibility work. |
| 4.0.3 | June 14, 2025 | Fixes involving batch processing, the Capture One plug-in, login, and Denoise stability. |
| 4.0.4 | September 10, 2025 | Support for the transition or update to Topaz Photo; this became the final legacy Photo AI version. |
Hardware requirements
For general legacy Photo AI requirements, Topaz lists Windows 10 or 11, a post-2016 Intel or AMD processor with AVX instructions, 16 GB of RAM, and a dedicated NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel Arc GPU with 6 GB of VRAM. Topaz recommends 8 GB for memory-intensive generative models. Windows installation and program data may require approximately 37 GB of disk space. Full details are available on the Photo AI system-requirements page.
On Mac, legacy requirements include macOS 12 Monterey or later and 16 GB of RAM. Intel Macs require compatible graphics memory in the listed minimum configuration. Apple Silicon Macs are supported, and Topaz recommends macOS 14 or 15 for access to all enhancements.
Dust & Scratch-specific requirements
- Windows: 8 GB of VRAM is required for local processing.
- Apple Silicon Mac: macOS 14 Sonoma or later and at least 16 GB of RAM are required for local processing.
- Intel Macs with AMD graphics: not supported for local Dust & Scratch processing.
Integrated graphics may run some Photo AI functions but cannot run memory-intensive generative models such as Dust & Scratch locally. Linux, virtual machines, NAS configurations, eGPUs, and other unsupported hardware setups are not covered by the legacy requirements.
Cloud rendering may be available when local hardware is insufficient, depending on the account, license, model access, and any applicable cloud-credit terms. Cloud processing can bypass some local GPU-memory limits, but it requires internet access and may raise privacy or workflow concerns. It is not a guarantee that every feature will work or that processing will be fast.
Photo AI 4.0 versus current Topaz Photo
Topaz now identifies Photo AI as a legacy, discontinued perpetual-license application. Version 4.0.4 is the final release. A Photo AI license provides access to the applicable version; it does not automatically grant access to the current Topaz Photo product. Licensing details are explained in Topaz’s Photo AI versus Topaz Photo guide.
Topaz Photo is the current subscription-only application. It includes legacy Photo AI models alongside newer models and ongoing development. Model names can therefore be misleading: current Topaz Photo includes later generations such as Dust & Scratch v2 and Recover Faces v3, which should not be treated as identical to the Photo AI 4.0 implementations.
Pricing and plan terms can change. Topaz’s displayed options have included Topaz Photo at $39 per month, $25 per month with a 12-month annual commitment, or $199 billed annually. Check the current official buying page before making a decision.
Who should use or upgrade to Photo AI 4.0?
Photo AI 4.0.4 remains most relevant to existing perpetual-license owners who want the final legacy workflow and have compatible hardware. It is particularly useful for occasional restoration of scanned prints, slides, negatives, or damaged family photographs, and for portrait users who want more control over face-recovery spillover.
It is a weaker fit for:
- Users who want continuing model updates and new features.
- Users whose computers lack the required GPU memory for local Dust & Scratch.
- Archive operators who need dependable batch Dust & Scratch processing.
- Users seeking historically provable detail rather than plausible AI reconstruction.
- People who do not want subscriptions, cloud dependencies, or account-based activation.
New users should not assume that Photo AI 4.0 is a normal current purchase. Check whether you already own a qualifying license; otherwise, evaluate current Topaz Photo or a manual editor based on your workflow.
When another tool may be a better fit
Adobe Photoshop is better suited to users who need layers, masks, clone and healing tools, and detailed manual retouching. Lightroom is a stronger fit for catalog management and batch editing. DxO PhotoLab focuses on raw processing and lens corrections rather than being a direct replacement for Topaz’s face-recovery and restoration models. ON1 Photo RAW is an all-in-one organizer and editor with layered and AI-assisted tools.
Remini is another consumer-facing face-enhancement option, but sensitive archival images deserve particular scrutiny of upload, privacy, subscription, and identity-fidelity considerations. These are workflow comparisons, not claims of equivalent restoration results.
Bottom line
Photo AI 4.0 was a meaningful restoration-focused release when it arrived on May 8, 2025. Dust & Scratch gave scanned photographs an automatic first pass at surface damage, while Hair and Neck controls made Recover Faces more flexible. But Photo AI is no longer Topaz’s active product: v4.0.4 is the final legacy build, and current development has moved to Topaz Photo.
Choose the legacy version if you already own it and its local, non-subscription workflow fits your needs. Choose Topaz Photo if ongoing updates and newer model generations matter more. Whichever route you take, keep the original scan and intermediate files; AI restoration should remain an editable interpretation, not the only surviving version of the image.
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