Enlargement software

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  • #1942
    ravnostic
    Participant

    I’d read good things about Photo Perfect (I think it was, used to be called something else), but upon downloading the trial version, I found I didn’t have a compatable graphics card. So I downloaded a trial of PhotoZoom Classic 4, which does seem to do what it’s supposed to–allow me to enlarge files for bigger prints. It seems pretty nifty, though I’ll admit I haven’t played with it very much yet.

    But before I go taking any major plunges, anyone here have software they use to enbiggenate digital images that they just love to death and would highly recommend I try? Non-photoshop preferred, please (though now that the truck is paid off, I may soon take the plunge and buy me some photoshop goodness.)

    #31305
    CauseISaidSo
    Participant

    rav, what images are you trying to enlarge and how big of a print are you trying to get? If these are images from your Rebel, you shouldn’t need any special software. I’ve had a 4 megapixel image (from a Powershot G2) enlarged to 20″x30″ and it looked fine (although that’s about the upper limit for that small resolution).

    #31304
    ravnostic
    Participant

    rav, what images are you trying to enlarge and how big of a print are you trying to get? If these are images from your Rebel, you shouldn’t need any special software. I’ve had a 4 megapixel image (from a Powershot G2) enlarged to 20″x30″ and it looked fine (although that’s about the upper limit for that small resolution).

    Well, see, that’s only part of the point. My latest picture is frame 6929, so I’m closing in on 40K pictures with the camera. I’d say well over 1/2 have been taken since I joined farktography, but moreso early on; I’ve been getting by on fewer and fewer shots (as a ratio of overall attempts before getting it close to right, and knowing when that camera setting is telling me); I’ve learned metering and recently have taken on histograms.

    Of all these shots, IIRC, the only one I have printed is http://fossilspringsaz.com/pics/2011/may/11/weather1lg.jpg; I had one done at 20×30 and I have one at 16×24. They came out well, but I’d have liked a bit more clarity on the larger one. With what I’ve done thus-far in the program, it could be achieved.

    Surprisingly, I have 9 other framed photos ranging in size from 16×20 to 3×4, all from before I had my digital camera; they were shot on an old Minolta I had, ala film. Some of them I wish I could get a raw file so I could do curves and really make them pop. Oh, well.

    What else interests me is the idea of a full-frame shot lacking any specific honed interest, but in some wee-corner something interesting is occurring. The better resampling could lead to a better usable shot. Alas, this doesn’t seem to be the case, or that I’ve figured out how to do at least.

    The program I’m looking at is $30, so it’s not a huge deal, really. But I’m hoping someone here has experienced and tried some of this, and might offer some insight.

    #31303
    sleeping
    Participant

    Genuine Fractals (now perfect resize, apparently) used to be the industry standard for doing this:

    http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/suite/perfect-resize/

    but since PS added a dedicated algorithm for upsizing (Bicubic Smoother) a lot of people just use that one now. I think that’s included in Elements as well as the full version of PS, but I’m not 100% positive.

    It’s not magic, though, you’re not really going to get more resolution – basically all they are doing is suppressing artifacts like pixellation.

    #31302
    chupathingie
    Participant

    Also take a look at gimp, after 2.4 the scale function can be set to use a mode called Sinc (Lanczos 3), which has generated some debate over being better/worse than bicubic. I’ve been using that to upscale images, applying a slight unsharp mask then reducing back to original size with pleasing results.

    If I get off work today I’ll try to do a side-by-side just to satisfy my curiosity.

    #31301
    ravnostic
    Participant

    thanks for the advice this far; sleeping; Genuine Fractals is the one I was trying to name that wouldn’t work for my graphics card. The one I’m trying has a slew of ways to do it; including bicubic and Lanczos, as well as splines of 3 shorts and a few others.

    #31300
    Plamadude30k
    Participant

    Also take a look at gimp, after 2.4 the scale function can be set to use a mode called Sinc (Lanczos 3), which has generated some debate over being better/worse than bicubic. I’ve been using that to upscale images, applying a slight unsharp mask then reducing back to original size with pleasing results.

    If I get off work today I’ll try to do a side-by-side just to satisfy my curiosity.

    I’d like to see that. Sounds intriguing.

    #31299
    chupathingie
    Participant

    ok, they let me go (gee, thanks… almost midnight…). Just ran a 100% enlargement with cubic and Lanczos and stacked them in layers so I could cycle back and forth. The two look very close, and I had to zoom in to 200% to really see any difference. Bicubic has slightly sharper edges, but also appears to introduce more artifacts. Lanczos is not quite as sharp in my test, but the image is noticeably smoother. I’ll post a side-by-side if anyone wants a gander, but they’re difficult to tell apart unless stacked.

    I can’t compare with PS (on account of being a Cheap Bastard?) so I’m not sure how useful my comparison is. Holler if you want me to post, but it will be tomorrow evening so it might be easier for someone with more free time to do the same since lately I never know whether I’m going to be at work or home at any given minute…

    …and I’m beat and off to bed.

    #31298
    ravnostic
    Participant

    Okay, did a little testing before I went to work last night, 3 images compressed into one:

    The bottom picture is the original, cropped to 300w x 200h pixels, and zoomed in to 900 x 600, for reference. The right one is that same piece, but resized with Canon’s DPP software. The left, resized with the Photozoom program, using the S-spline XL filter (which looked best of the filter options for this particular shot.

    The shot was chosen because it’s a small object, not including the wings about 20 x 20 pixels. Since I shrank the lot of them (which were TIFF 16 bit images, btw), into a single jpeg, you lose some of the evident pixelation in the original, but it’s pretty evident that the Photozoom did a better job at the resizing insofar as keeping true to the original, which I think is the point (it actually seems a bit sharper than the original, to my eyes).

    Anywho, there you have it. Since I’m not hurting financially at the moment, I think I’ll go ahead and drop the 30 bucks on the program.

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