I am trying to enlarge images from about 4000 pixel to 7000 pixels which I should know is hard to do and still retian the detail. I use to own Alienskin's Blow Up when it first came out and used another program which I forget now it might have been Genuine Fractals which OnOne now owns I believe. Is their a good way to d it in PS or just get a Plugin to do it? I am making poster size image about 24" x 36" from a 16mp camera
Genuine Fractals was the most popular specialized program, but I think since the CS versions of Photoshop came out most people just do it there — I *believe* the recommendation for upsizing is to use the "Bicubic Smoother" option in the Image Size dialog (and Bicubic Sharper for downsampling).
If you have PS just try it and look at it at 100% and see if it's "good enough" ... also remember you really only "need" 150dpi to get a good quality print from photo printers, so you may not need to upsample aa much (or at all) as you think.
ill give that a try and will remember Bicubic Smoother for upsizing and Bicubic Sharpener for downsizing. Everything seems to be good at the ones I have tried with PS CS 6 just didn't know if there was a better way to do it.
... I have tried with PS CS 6 just didn't know if there was a better way to do it.
Probably nothing "worth it" especially for just one or a few pictures, unless it's a comissioned work for which you'd be paid enough to buy the additional software.
I know I have seen some independent tests done and there was really not a significant difference between the built-in resizing algorithms in Ps and the third-party options. Makes sense; if the detail is not there, we can't create it from nothing.
I print big a lot, and this is what I've been doing for years with good results. Assuming that your original is good quality, you start with an unsharpened original, double it in size using bicubic smoother, add some noise back in (bicubic smoother can make it a bit plasticky), then do careful sharpening. It's very doable with PS, you don't really need any 3rd party tools.
