best image enlargement software?

I have been recently evaluating image enlargement using Photoshop CC
(detail preservation), Photozoom Pro 6, and Perfect Resize. This is all
on a 64 bit Win 7 system on a Dell Inspiron laptop. Had some initial
problems with Perfect Resize as my laptop's video drivers/ card wouldn't
support it, so I had to install on my desktop with supported card.

After using all 3 programs, and from what I could find googling these
seemed to be the best enlargers at present, I don't really find any
significant difference. In fact, so far, just barely above the age old
bicubic resampling the original Photoshop and other programs offered.

Photos I'm enlarging are generally 16 bit TIFF that do sometimes have
artifacts to start with, but I can sort of negate these artifacts with
any one of these three programs. Enlargements have generally ranged
from 200-500%.

Overall, I'm not all that pleased. Photozoom costs quite a lot, not
sure about CC and Perfect Resize. Perhaps I'm not using the correct
settings, although I have experimented and customized a LOT of them, or
perhaps there are better enlargement programs out there, which is why I
turned here.

Thanks, in advance, for your replies.

On 2015-04-24 12:43:43 +0000, ****big cheese**** said:

I have been recently evaluating image enlargement using Photoshop CC
(detail preservation), Photozoom Pro 6, and Perfect Resize. This is
all on a 64 bit Win 7 system on a Dell Inspiron laptop. Had some
initial problems with Perfect Resize as my laptop's video drivers/ card
wouldn't support it, so I had to install on my desktop with supported
card.

After using all 3 programs, and from what I could find googling these
seemed to be the best enlargers at present, I don't really find any
significant difference. In fact, so far, just barely above the age old
bicubic resampling the original Photoshop and other programs offered.

Photos I'm enlarging are generally 16 bit TIFF that do sometimes have
artifacts to start with, but I can sort of negate these artifacts with
any one of these three programs. Enlargements have generally ranged
from 200-500%.

Overall, I'm not all that pleased. Photozoom costs quite a lot, not
sure about CC and Perfect Resize. Perhaps I'm not using the correct
settings, although I have experimented and customized a LOT of them, or
perhaps there are better enlargement programs out there, which is why I
turned here.

Thanks, in advance, for your replies.

For enlargement after some cropping, the current releases of Photoshop
CS6 & CC both use rsizing which does a very good job of bringing even a
sev crop up to normal sizes and slightly.
For extreme enlargement of 200%-500% such as you have been talking
about, I have always got good results from Perfect Resize. However, I
will add the caveat that I was working with RAW image files, or TIFFS
of PSDs which where producd directly from the RAWs.
You talk of the TIFFs you are enlarging having artifacts to start with.
Why? Were they originally JPRGs converted to TIFF, or were they scans
to TIFF?

Then there is an application I haven't used, because Perfect Resize
meets my needs, Alien Skin's "Blow Up".
http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/


--
Regards,

Savageduck

On 04/24/2015 10:14 AM, Savageduck wrote:
On 2015-04-24 12:43:43 +0000, ****big cheese**** said:

I have been recently evaluating image enlargement using Photoshop CC
(detail preservation), Photozoom Pro 6, and Perfect Resize. This is
all on a 64 bit Win 7 system on a Dell Inspiron laptop. Had some
initial problems with Perfect Resize as my laptop's video drivers/
card wouldn't support it, so I had to install on my desktop with
supported card.

After using all 3 programs, and from what I could find googling these
seemed to be the best enlargers at present, I don't really find any
significant difference. In fact, so far, just barely above the age
old bicubic resampling the original Photoshop and other programs offered.

Photos I'm enlarging are generally 16 bit TIFF that do sometimes have
artifacts to start with, but I can sort of negate these artifacts with
any one of these three programs. Enlargements have generally ranged
from 200-500%.

Overall, I'm not all that pleased. Photozoom costs quite a lot, not
sure about CC and Perfect Resize. Perhaps I'm not using the correct
settings, although I have experimented and customized a LOT of them,
or perhaps there are better enlargement programs out there, which is
why I turned here.

Thanks, in advance, for your replies.

For enlargement after some cropping, the current releases of Photoshop
CS6 & CC both use rsizing which does a very good job of bringing even a
sev crop up to normal sizes and slightly.
For extreme enlargement of 200%-500% such as you have been talking
about, I have always got good results from Perfect Resize. However, I
will add the caveat that I was working with RAW image files, or TIFFS of
PSDs which where producd directly from the RAWs.
You talk of the TIFFs you are enlarging having artifacts to start with.
Why? Were they originally JPRGs converted to TIFF, or were they scans to
TIFF?

No, these TIFFS were presharpened, either by unsharp masking, wavelets,
or blind deconvolution, and ended up with artifacts. Perhaps I should
try enlarging first and then applying sharpening. I still have the
original unsharpened TIFFs/ RAWs still available.


Then there is an application I haven't used, because Perfect Resize
meets my needs, Alien Skin's "Blow Up".
http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/

Thanks for that and your response. I think I'll stick with the ones I'm
already trying for now. One other issue I'm running into is noise.
Even without sharpening, noise begins to be seen during enlargement. I
can offset some of it with Neat Image, but I have an older version. I
really need to have the capability of selecting several suitable areas
but the version I have only seems to allow a single area.

****big cheese**** wrote:
No, these TIFFS were presharpened, either by unsharp
masking, wavelets, or blind deconvolution, and ended up
with artifacts. Perhaps I should try enlarging first
and then applying sharpening. I still have the original
unsharpened TIFFs/ RAWs still available.

Always resample first and only second sharpen to taste
by inspection. If you downsample (e.g., for the web) it
is most likely that Unsharp Mask will be more effective
than Sharpen, though both will likely be useful.

If you upsample (as you are describing), you'll usually
find Sharpen has more effect than Unsharp Mask, but
again both might be useful.

Resampling uses filters that have different effects.
That is how "bicubic sharper" and "bicubic smoother"
differ. Generally a slight amount of "ringing", or
sharpening, is useful when downsizing, while not so much
when upsizing. But bicubic is not particularly good.

The best program that I know if is the ImageMagick tools
package. Generally you can resample like this:

convert inputfile.jpg -depth 16 -gamma 0.454545 \
-resize 6000x4000 -quality 89 -gamma 2.2 -depth 8 \
-density 360 -units PixelsPerInch outputfile.jpg

The default filter for upsizing is Mitchell and for
downsizing is Lanczos. The input and output files can
be JPEG, TIFF or other standard file formats. If TIFF
is the output format then an option "-compress ZIP" can
be used (or LZW compression can be specified).

Note that two very significant aspects of the above
command (beyond the much superior filtering, which can
also be selected from a couple dozen options), is that
files are first converted to 16 bit depth and to a
linear gamma, and then resized and converted back to
gamma 2.2 and 8-bit (that option can be removed for JPEG
or for a TIFF if 16-bit depth is the desired output).

If you want to see the various filters, "compress -list filter"
will show what is available. To learn some of the technical
details use Google to search for the two words "Robidoux filter"
which will turn up articles by Nicolas Robidoux on his research.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)