What is the Industry standard software for image enlargement?

Well, there are quite a few techniques utilizing Photoshop and plugins like Genuine Fractals. If you could be more specific I am sure you will get some expert opinions.

Gary

I would say the true industry standard is called rescanning (for more than 200% enlargement from the original sampling).

Thanks to you both and my apologies for the confusion as my query was actually about software programs.

I’ve come across what seem to be standard solutions to interpolation and resizing, such as Extensis’ PXL SmartScale, and LizardTech’s Genuine Fractals but I’m also intrigued by a product by Dutch company "Shortcut Software" called PhotoZoom (formerly known as S-Spline).

Therefore, just as Adobe is the "industry standard" for graphic design, I’m wondering whether there is currently a program for interpolation or reszing widely used in the profession in conjuction with Adobe? ie: An "insustry standard" tool for expanding Photoshop output to poster or billboard-sized end products?

Thanks again,
Adam.

In our tests, the Bicubic Smoother kernel gave better results than either Genuine Fractals or S-Spline.

Of course, your milage may vary.

Chris – is that the Bicubic selection option currently part of PS CS? You’ve got my attention.

Alpha – yes, it is part of CS. I improved quite a bit of the resampling code in CS.

Thanks Chris I’d wager that the interpolation-product reviews to date relate to PS7. I’ll run some experiments using PSCS first and look at rasterised text impact too.

I’m uncertain that with cost pressures on both sides of the client fence, whether digital imaging may soon eclipse technologies such as drum scanning, meaning that interpolation quality may be a major issue in the near term if not now?

It would be interestng to see, with PSCS being so new, whether the industry has thought about trying your new bicubic math vis-a-vis current workflows?

Can any large scale art professionals add further?

Thanks again,
Adam.

Hi all,

The review in the following link apparently does not use Photoshop CS, but it compares images enlarged using several digital image interpolation (resizing / resampling) methods including S-Spline, Genuine Fractals, Lanczos, Bicubic, Stair Interpolation, Kneson (standard), QImage (Vector), pxl SmartScale and S-Spline Pro. If you scroll down on the page you can see that they updated it with Kneson Standard, QImage (Vector), Genuine Fractals 3.0, pxl SmartScale, SAR Image Processor and S-Spline Pro:

Digital Photo Interpolation Review < http://www.americaswonderlands.com/digital_photo_interpolati on.htm#Kneson%20(S%20tandard)>

Don’t forget to click on the thumbnails to open the big images. You can’t do a good evaluation on the thumbnails alone.

Although I am using Genuine Fractals Print Pro 2.5, I like what I see in the Shortcut S-Spline images, and plant to buy it when budget allows. Since I don’t have Windows XP yet, I can’t evaluate Photoshop CS’s new upsampling.

— Burton — (not associated with any vendor mentioned)

Chris, this is a response I received from the makers of S-Spline Pro (now Shortcut PhotoZoom)in querying the superiority of interploation changes in PS CS:

I can assure you: no way! Not even by far. The family of Bicubic interpolation methods range from smoother (blurrier) to sharper (but with more artifacts) variations. Until Photoshop 7, Adobe included one general bicubic interpolator. All they did in Photoshop CS, is replacing this single bicubic variant by two others: one sharper version, one smoother version. It’s a small improvement, but it’s still plain & simple bicubic interpolation. These methods are also in S-Spline by the way: "Bicubic" and "Catmull-Rom" are pretty much the same as the sharp bicubic in Photoshop CS, and "B-Spline" is much like CS’s smooth bicubic variant. Anyway, the bottom message is that any bicubic or similar non-smart type of interpolation will never match up with the much more sophisticated algorithms…

Last night I trialled your suggestion with PS CS’s "bicubic smoother" on some art of mine with rasterised text and I must say enlarging from 25cm width to 100cm produced an excellent response. Enlarging from 5cm width to 100 cm also produced a very reasonable result – but text with satin effect developed grooves inside the lettering along the sheen lines. Bevelled metalic text in both examples seemed to produce a share of "jaggies" – yet where the bevelleing was more matted, the jaggies were minimal to nil (going with the 5x enlargement that is). I was very impressed with the result on pure raterized, non-FX text. I believe if I can find some way to create desired text effects via AI CS vectors or possibly post interpolation in PS, we could be on to something with the CS suite alone as a professional resizing tool. But I really need more assurance and again, I’d be surprised if the industry has even thought about trialling the new PS CS routines in lieu of Genuine Fractals et al.

The new PhotoZoom (nee S-Spline Pro) looks very impressive. Genuine Fractals on the other hand has just been bought-out by the makers of Extensis PXL Smart, so I’m uneasy of investing there until we see the fruits of that marriage and at roughly a third of the price higher for both over PhotoZoom, the later seems the better investment regardless.

Anyway, thanks for all responses here and I’d be appreciative of more hands-on feedback. It’s truly amazing what a 6mp digital camera is capable of producing now and if interpolation alogarithims such as PS CS’s can approximate the effects of a drum scan, the world has just become an easier place. I’ll support you Chris if so.

Adam.

SSpline and others do something very different from bicubic interpolation, but the quality hasn’t been that great to date. They frequently find "false" edges, or accentuate artifacts in the image. And the "kneson standard" sample in the link Burton gave appears to have a nasty math error causing a solarization effect near some edges.

I do wish some of these researchers would step back from the theory and spend time looking at actual image quality…..

I am also working on my own little startup company called

Digital Multi Media Design at www.dmmd.net.

And I too have deveopped an interpolation algorithm that’s quite good at some type of images, such as faces and flowers. If you want to try it please download Pictura from

www.dmmd.net

Because the software is in its pre-alpha stage the download is restricted, but if you write me email at
darian_at_dmmd_dot_net (take out the _ and replace the at=@, dot=.) I will gladly provide you with a user name and password. I would also appreciate any feedback you can provide on the AQua-2 interpolation algorithm and the other algorithms available in Pictura.

Sincerely yours,
Darian Muresan

wrote in message

Is there an industry standard solution in vogue at present for graphics

house/art department use?

Thanks,
Adam.