A Topaz Gigapixel alternative for Mac

Prices checked on the vendors' own pages on November 9, 2026. Local Upscale Studio is in development.

Topaz Gigapixel is the best-known photo upscaler, and it is now sold only as a subscription. The Personal plan is $149 a year, or $29 a month with no commitment. Pro is $499 a year. Topaz stopped selling perpetual licences in September 2025.

If you enlarge a few photos a month, old scans, a small image for a print, a picture from an old phone, paying every year may not make sense. This page lists the other ways to upscale photos on a Mac, what they cost today, and when Gigapixel is still the better choice.

What Gigapixel costs and needs

• Personal: $149 billed yearly, $19 a month on a yearly commitment, or $29 a month. Commercial use is limited to organisations under $1M in annual revenue.
• Pro: $499 billed yearly, or $54 a month on a yearly commitment. Adds full commercial use, more models and seat management.
• Included on every plan: unlimited local rendering and unlimited cloud image rendering, upscaling up to 16×, a range of models (including ones for faces, text and art), and plugins for Photoshop and Lightroom Classic.
• Mac requirements: macOS 13 or later (14 for the generative models), 16 GB of memory (24 GB for large upscales) and 43 GB of disk space. Apple silicon is the main target. Intel Macs from 2016 on are supported but slower, and send the generative models to the cloud.

The alternatives

Prices are what you pay today. Where a vendor shows a crossed-out "original" price, we list the price charged.

Prices are in US dollars, before tax. Vendors change prices often; check their pages before you buy. Studio's row describes what is being built.

Pixelmator Pro

A full photo editor that includes a machine-learning Super Resolution tool. You can buy it once on the Mac App Store for $49.99, or get it as part of Apple Creator Studio, Apple's subscription that also includes Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro. A good choice if you also want an editor, not only an upscaler.

Aiarty Image Enhancer

A dedicated photo enhancer with a lifetime licence for three Macs at $109. It runs offline, also denoises and deblurs, and on the Mac outputs images up to 16,000 pixels wide or high. There is a free trial.

Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop

If you already pay for Adobe, you have Super Resolution. It doubles the width and height of a photo (four times the pixels). It is a fixed 2× step, so it suits people who want a modest enlargement inside the editor they already use.

Upscayl

Free and open source, built on Real-ESRGAN. The download from GitHub costs nothing; the Mac App Store version is $12.99. For many people this is enough, and you should try it before paying for anything.

Preview

Preview can make an image bigger with Tools > Adjust Size, but it only stretches the pixels it has. Nothing is sharpened or reconstructed. Our guide to upscaling photos on a Mac covers when that is good enough.

Where Studio fits

• Pay once. $49 at launch, rising to $79 when version 1.0 ships.
• Two modes for photos. Fast mode uses Real-ESRGAN and runs on every Apple silicon Mac. Quality mode uses SeedVR2, a newer open model, for photos where detail matters more than time.
• Picks a model your Mac can run. A short test chooses the model for each mode. You can override it.
• Video too. The same app upscales video, which Gigapixel does not. See the comparison with Topaz Video.
• Nothing is uploaded. No account, no cloud.

Studio is built by the developer of Local Photo Upscaler and Local Video Upscaler, two pay-once apps on the App Store. The app isn't finished, but you can see early results from the models it uses, with speeds measured on our development Mac. Results from the finished app will name the Mac they came from.

When Gigapixel is the better choice

• You need very large enlargements. Gigapixel goes up to 16×.
• You work in Photoshop or Lightroom Classic and want a plugin.
• You want specialised models for text, illustrations and faces.
• You want cloud rendering, or you use an Intel Mac.
• You upscale photos for paid work every week. Then $149 a year may be a small cost.

Studio will have fewer models and features than Gigapixel at launch. We'd rather say that now than have you find out after you buy.

Questions

Can I still buy Gigapixel once? No. Topaz stopped selling perpetual licences in September 2025. Its CEO said existing perpetual licences keep working.

Is there a free Gigapixel alternative for Mac? Yes. Upscayl is free from GitHub and runs on macOS 12 or later. Preview is free too, but it only resizes, without AI.

Does an AI upscaler recover real detail? No. It predicts detail that fits the image. That often looks convincing, but on faces and text it can be wrong. Compare the result with the original before you print it or share it.

Will Studio run on my 8 GB or 16 GB Mac? Fast mode is meant to run on every Apple silicon Mac. We'll publish the minimum memory for each mode once we've tested the app on ordinary Macs, not only our development machine.

Sources

• Topaz Gigapixel plans and features: topazlabs.com/gigapixel; requirements: Gigapixel system requirements
• End of perpetual licences: "Topaz Studio: Message from the CEO", September 2025
• Pixelmator Pro: Mac App Store listing; Apple Creator Studio
• Aiarty Image Enhancer: aiarty.com/store.htm, product page, tech specs
• Adobe Super Resolution and Lightroom plans: adobe.com Super Resolution
• Upscayl: github.com/upscayl/upscayl, Mac App Store listing
• Preview: Apple Preview User Guide

Topaz Labs and Gigapixel are trademarks of Topaz Labs. Pixelmator Pro, Preview and Mac are trademarks of Apple Inc. Adobe, Lightroom and Photoshop are trademarks of Adobe. All other names are trademarks of their owners. Local Upscale Studio is not affiliated with any of them.