Although buying a Photoshop plugin that costs half again as much as Photoshop might seem a bit extravagant to most amateur photographers, this plugin could be big news for pros and for print shops. With this, print shops (for a price) could offer extreme scaling, to give lower-resolution photographs the opportunity to be printed at much larger sizes.
WOW the trial is fully functional and I must say at first glance this is amazing... Im no pro but this is pretty sweet from a quick look. Cant wait to get home and try out a print or two.
I only briefly tried GF but it seems faster to me. Although that is possibly an unfair comparison (at the time I tried GF I had 256MB Ram now I have 1gig) But this seems insanely fast and easy and barely noticeable loss in image quality. I cannot fully try it out seeing as im at work. But when I get home I will defiantly try some 8x10s that I tried to get the other day but looked a little pixilated. I was using Photoshop to enlarge the image so we will see.
They say on the site:
"Users can now scale images up to 1600% with no discernible loss in printed quality. "
I doubt we can scale 1600% with no discernible loss in printed quality.
There are a few tools out there that do interpolation of images. Personally, the 110% technique has worked wonder for me. This is the technique that you simply use the IMAGE SIZE tool in PS and upsample your image by 110% over and over until you reach the desired size. When done, you use Unsharp Mask to get rid of the blur created by the interpolation. Many professionals use this technique, saying that it's the best one (with ocmparison charts and all). I did some comparison tests myself, with Genuine Fractal for instance, and I must say the 110% technique worked extremely well.
I wouldn't know about xlssmartscale from extensis.
They say on the site:
"Users can now scale images up to 1600% with no discernible loss in printed quality. "
I doubt we can scale 1600% with no discernible loss in printed quality.
There are a few tools out there that do interpolation of images. Personally, the 110% technique has worked wonder for me. This is the technique that you simply use the IMAGE SIZE tool in PS and upsample your image by 110% over and over until you reach the desired size. When done, you use Unsharp Mask to get rid of the blur created by the interpolation. Many professionals use this technique, saying that it's the best one (with ocmparison charts and all). I did some comparison tests myself, with Genuine Fractal for instance, and I must say the 110% technique worked extremely well.
I wouldn't know about xlssmartscale from extensis.
Agreed. I don't know about making the image THAT much bigger, but to make it 500% larger, I've had good success with the 110% method.
There are lots of great images at photo contest sites and here at DPChallenge. Will this allow people to save a 640x480 72dpi image and create larger prints that they can sell? Are we now in danger of seeing our work being sold at art/craft shows or on Ebay. I know that was always a possibility, but there was some relief knowing the downloaded images would not print well. Now what?
I've been using the demo for a few days and have sized up a fair number of my prints, but nothing to the 1600% scale. I guess I'm a fearsome gal, and don't want my prints to be unruly in their pixelation. The results have been wonderful so far.
Dr. Jones: Have you tried the demo vs. a 100% scale up in PS? I would love to see your results if you have. If not, I might just post my results once I try it.
