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Photoshop plug-ins


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gare

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I just discovered a new standalone/plug-in that relieves (but doesn't entirely eliminate) the perrenial, thorny problem of blowing up an image.

Okay, as we know, it's not that hard to decrease the pixel count of an image--you knock pixels out of an image when the you decrease the saved file size, and the host program reassigns the remaining pixels color values that are an average of the deleted and remaining pixels.

Various programs do this with varying amounts of finesse. Photoshop does this well because it employs Bicubic interpolation plus some subtle edge sharpening.

Fine. But it's next to impossible to enlarge an image, because you're telling the application to add pixels, the application is dumb and not an artist, and the calculations lead to some pretty ugly and pixellated work!

So along comes Real Fractals, and they use fractal algorythms to "fake" the additional detail. I have a personal case against Real Fractals, because their rep two years ago was very rude to me. But putting that aside, I don't think Real Fractals cuts it, because the resulting image is not really any better, aesthetically, than if you enlarge an image, and then use the Dry Brush PS filter on it, and blend the resulting layers.

PhotoZoom, IMO, is an improvement over Real Fractals. It's Mac and Win,

http://www.trulyphotomagic.com/shor...=ourproducts&section=product_serie_info&cat=3


...and a tad pricey at $129 MSRP. But here's a small example of what it can do...a photo enlarged to 300% of the original, in PS, and then using PhotoZoom on the same base image.

Anybody else have a new or old favorite plug-in?
Write about it on this thread!

My Best,

Gare
 
Well I'm sold! Thanks Gare. Most of my imaging isn't built of photographs so I was interested how well a serious size increase would work on a file which had was completely generated by computer. My test was a piece I'd done in Xara 3D 6 and saved as a BMP file. The original was 1024 X 768 with a 96dpi resolution. I blew it up by increasing the resolution to 600dpi. Here is a sample taken from the image blown up via PhotoZoom using the s-spline algorithm next to a crop from the same image uprezzed in PS using bicubic sharper.

I'm sold and I had given up Real Fractals in favor of Photoshop native algorithms after PS 7.
 
Welles---

Quick question, Welles--

You run System 10, right? Do you have a separate PC under which you run XARA 3D, or are you running it under PC emulation?

The reason I ask, is that I'm running PearPC, and Panther on my notebook (not to worry; I added lots of RAM and a large HD)--which is fine, but...

I'm doing this to be able to run PIXAR ShowPlace and RenderMan, which the folks at PIXAR gifted me with years ago, and ran fine on my PPC 8500, which is now defunct. Problem is, Showplace is looking for System 9 (Classic), and I've got System 9.2.1 on CD, but apparently, Pear PC won't run it.

Any suggestions? I've already subscribed to the PearPC and System9forever forums.

My Best,

Gare
 
Welles you should've included a sample from Genuine Fractals as well. I'd be interested in seeing all 3 app results side by each.

Can you do your test again but include GF as well?

This new software looks really good. And if it does indeed beat out GF then i'm sold also. Thanks for the heads-up Gare! :righton:
 
Gare,

I tried Virtual PC and XP Home to run Xara X and Xara3D (because I was enthralled by your Xara work). After using it for a while I decided emulation was marginal and I would be better off getting a modest PC so I got a refurb eMachine with a pretty fast AMD?processor, put a fair video card and a gig of RAM and had $500 in it. It's a great little machine and, by comparison, Virtual PC was a waste of time.

Well, enough of that. To your question.

I'm sure you know that OS X can run OS 9 applications under an emulation built into the operating system. It's called Classic and requires a valid OS 9 system folder to run. I've never run PearPC but I have a sneaking hunch that you may be in a classic Catch 22. In order to run a 9.2.1 install disk, OS X has to launch in Classic to run the installer which means you have to have an OS 9 system folder on your hard drive already.

I have one possible solution given your resources at hand. On your OS9.2.1 install disk will be a folder named System Folder. That is a very stripped down System Folder which is just enough to boot a Mac from the CD and then run the installer. If you drag/copied that System Folder to your hard drive, renamed it OS9 System Folder, and you placed it in your OS X installation (if you look at an OS X Finder window in Column view, you would place it in the second column with Applications, Library, System, Users...the root level) OS X might recognize it as a valid system folder. You could find out by going to the Apple Menu > System Preferences > Classic. When the Classic pref pane launched it would try to find a useful system folder. If it recognized the drag copy, potentially you could launch Classic using that system folder and then run the OS 9 installation application. Once done, you would have a complete OS 9 system installed on your system and your could trash the temporary System Folder. Does that make sense?

As I've never done such a thing, it could be a failure but, it's probably worth a try. The only other solution I can think of is to burn a disk image of an OS9 system folder which you could then drag to your hard drive without the installation process being a requirement. I could burn a disk image onto CD which had a pristine OS9 system folder on it, if that would help.

Good Luck! 8D
 
Hey Mark, I knew I should have tried Genuine Fractals too but I would have had to do some rummaging around in the deep dark recesses of old systems to bring it to light once more. I was being lazy. I haven't used it since PS6. I'll go see if I can do that...
 
Welles--

Thanks fore the speedy reply!

I might just cave and buy a MiniMac; they're around $400, I think, and your emulation scheme sounds like the logical one: if you wanna run Mac software, then buy a Mac [innocent]

But thanks for your thorough thoughts; I will indeed try the less cash-intensive method first.

BTW, if you haven't tried Showplace, here's a (poor, rushed) example...

My Best,

Gare
 
Gare,

Showplace looks neat. I'm going to take a look see but I'm still quite a ways from having a handle on Xara X due to lack of effort on my part.

The basic Mac Mini lists for pennies under $500 and adding extra RAM (a must in my book) ups the ante at least $75. Don't let Apple add it, they charge a fortune. You can buy it from somebody like Coast-to-Coast memory for cheap and install it yourself. The Mini is supposedly awkward to upgrade but the secret is you use a 1" bladed putty knife to pop off the case. (That's even the official Apple tool of choice!) There are good visual tutorials on Mini upgrades on the internet. Frankly the Mini is a great deal. I've thought about getting a couple of them for a cheapo render farm. :B

theKeeper,

Here's the same test with Genuine Fractals thrown in. There is a newer version of GF which theoretically should be better but... frankly I'm going to get PhotoZoom as my next software purchase.
 
Thanks for doing that Welles. :righton:

It would appear that PhotoZoom is worthing looking into huh? I'll give it a go now also. Try a few print tests.
 
Am I missing something here? Why are you guys saying that PhotoZoom is your plug-in choice for sharpening when, to me anyway, it looks like Genuine Fractals is the clear winner. The other two look out of focus compared to GF. What's up?
 
Hi Lee,

Here's another bit 'o visual info for you. I've added a little bit of the original .bmp image with the red box approximately around the area I used for my little study. Next to that is a zoomed in verson of the test area so it is approximately as big as the final test patches in the image above. So the zoomed version is the original pixel data prior to uprez.

I like the PhotoZoom much better because, by comparison to PS, the edges are sharp and clean, the highlights aren't pixilated but appear nice and consistent. To my eye, the Genuine Fractals uprez has added a lot of artifacts and random pixels, not present in the original, which look suspiciously like poor quality sharpening. While my images here don't show it, the red fibrous background in the larger original did poorly in the GF version. I prefer the PhotoZoom which has just been enlarged, no additional sharpening.

There's an additional issue with PhotoZoom that I haven't adequately studied. They have another six or eight algorithms for enlarging. Several of the names I'd never even heard before. I wonder what they will do. You know, with your Photographers eye, I'd love to have you try the demo of PZ and give us your assessment.
 
Thanks for the additional images, Welles. Even with the new information, however, I still like the GF better. I don't see the artifacts and random pixels that you see. That does not make either of us wrong or right, just a difference in how we each see things. I will try both those as you suggest and let you know. :)
 
Lee this isn't for sharpening, it's for photo/image enlarging.

As seen by Welles' example GF tries to resharpen the enlarged photo to the point of adding pixel artifacts and a general poor quality replication. Look at the high contrast of the object edges in the photo Lee. Plus... GF also add discolouration to -- generally a similar result to Jpg compression.

Yes, the PhotoZoom method looks smooth (less or no resharpening), but if you'll notice too... it DOES reclarify the edges of objects within the photo. PS does this also but to a lesser degree.

Actually it appears as though PS's rendition falls somewhere between the 2 plugins' results.

I think i need to try some print tests now to see the dif at hi-res.
 
Lee

I downloaded a trial version of GF 4, and it appears not to install in PS CS2. I wanted to do a straight comparison between PhotoZoom and GF, but alas...

GF does have some of the same features as both PS's native Bicubic Smoother and PhotoZoom; I suggest that a fair comparison would be to use s-splines with GF and PZ---and Photoshop doesn't offer this setting.

My Best,

Gare
 
Lee this isn't for sharpening, it's for photo/image enlarging.
Click to expand...

Thanks, Mark. I guess I need to read more carefully. I knew it was for enlarging but, without reading more closely, though it accomplished that by superior sharpening. Back to the drawing boards on sharpening. From everything I've read, the reviews say the new CS2 Smart Sharpen is much better then the old USM [he says on his knees with a short prayer]. :) Hopefully they're right.
 
Hey, guys, check this out!
1 pic I enlarged in CS2 400%, and the other I enlarged in CS2 and applied "noise reduction" and "smart sharpen".
 
OK I just did my final test of PhotoZoom, PS Bicubic Sharpen and GenuineFractals 4. My conclusion is PhotoZoom is the winner from a number of perspectives. GenuineFractals actually does a good job but it only has one option, that of using their proprietary wavelet algorithms as opposed to PhotoZoom which provided about 10.

Additionally PhotoZoom has at least one set of controls to adjust the amount of sharpening in each algorithm and the capacity to compare the potential results of the various options before committing to processing which can take a while. A 600% uprez starting with 1024 X 768 took nearly ten minutes to process on my machine. I had increased the sharpening considerably more than the original preset.

I did give these a print test by taking identical selections from each of the enlarged image files, I put three on a page and printed them at the highest resolution my printers would produce. On the letter size print the PS file was 600dpi and the print was excellent from all three enlarged files. I was partial to the PhotoZoom slightly more than the GenuineFractals 4 because of my ability to add sharpening. Both of those were slightly better than the Photoshop Bicubic-Sharpen result, but, honestly the average person wouldn't have seen any difference. There was a noticeable difference with a 10x magnifying glass.

Next I took the same data I had just printed on an Epson C86, dropped the resolution to 300dpi while keeping the pixel size the same and shot the file to my Epson 3000 where I printed again. At 300dpi, or 4 times as large a printed surface ares, my preference for the PhotoZoom increased over Genuine Fractals and both were significantly better than PS. Once more, though I should add that someone without a critical eye wouldn't really care about the difference. I did, though...

And then I saw what p?tr??k did a couple of posts above this one and determined to purchase a CS2 upgrade and try his technique before I buy PhotoZoom. My head is spinning. 8D
 
I saw your question this morning Welles, and wanted to go experament right away. But, we finnaly got a school break and I had to go work. [oops] My mind was left at home on my computer for the day untill I got home. So, anyways, heres a cruddy jpeg, then another with "reduce noise" filter. This abviously doesn't get rid of everything, but it does a great job getting rid of unwanted artifacts and noise.
Hope you like it, and I'm off to go see Star Wars [confused] ......hope it's better than the last 2.
 
Thanks, p?tr??k! I'd say that's a pretty extraordinary filter. It seems to have done a better job than most JPEG 'cleaners.' :righton:
 
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