photo res / pixel enhancer

VP
Posted By
Vedic_Press
Oct 30, 2007
Views
1500
Replies
4
Status
Closed
I have a large range of scanned photos of different quality and resolution. When enlarged on a Photoshop page 13" x 13" I badly lose resolution. This is for the production of a coffee table photo book. Are there any powerful pixel enhancement that fill in with new pixels or enrich the resolution when enlarged? I have heard of Imagener and FocusMagic. Thanks
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C
chrisjbirchall
Oct 30, 2007
You can upsize a little in Photoshop using the Bicubic algorithms, or use a plug-in such as Genuine Fractals. Anything more than about 50%, however, will start to degrade image quality. You simply cannot recreate pixels which didn’t exist in the first place.

The only solution really is to scan the photographs again at the same resolution as the page they are to be placed on. If you intend publishing them at a larger size than the originals, then you’ll need to increase the resolution proportionately at the scanning stage.
JJ
John_Joslin
Oct 30, 2007
Just to be completely clear, a snapshot from a family album or shoebox is never going to look good on a 13 inch page. Better to put more than one to a page.
BO
Burton_Ogden
Oct 30, 2007
Vedic,

I agree with Chris that you should re-scan at the highest optical resolution of your scanner. If that isn’t enough, then you should think about third party solutions. Your candidates would be onOne’s Genuine Fractals 5 <http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=2>, BenVista’s PhotoZoom Pro < http://www.benvista.com/main/content/content.php?page=ourpro ducts&section=photozoompro_1>, and DDI Software’s Qimage <http://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage/>. It’s possible that you might want to use more than one of those products. Each has its strong points. I have and use all three. The only difference between Genuine Fractals and Genuine Fractals PrintPro is that the latter can also handle CMYK files.

— Burton —
C
chrisjbirchall
Oct 30, 2007
As John says…

What you have to remember is that enlarging the image will also enlarge the surface texture of the original photograph. The worst offender is the "silk" finish usd for photographs in the 70s and 80s. Some of the more sophisticated scanners have "descreening" software which can help.

That said, we do restoration work at the studio and often get asked for old sepia postcards to be retouched and reprinted to A4 size. These can look okay. Generally though, we persuade the customer to keep it to no more than double the original size.

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