S-Spline 2 enlargement software

[bubba]

Has anyone used S-Spline 2 software for enlarging pictures? I downloaded the demo and it seems to do a good job but you cannot print from the demo.

Thanks,

bubba

[Eric Polsinelli]

WOW it looks pretty interesting. I will try the demo tonight.

[Sanda]

Looks interesting, I'll download the demo.

[Eric Polsinelli]

Hmmm, maybe I don't know how to use this program, but there is a VERY SLIGHT difference (Between using PS and S-Spline) in all the photo's I have tried. Not worth the $67 in my opinion...

Has anyone else had better luck?

[bubba]

Eric - the place that I found a difference is going from a small picture to a poster sized one. I could not tell that much (if any - and sometimes PS was better) difference if the picture was of any size and quality to start with. But, the poster sized seemed to be enough better to warrant looking at it. Trouble is, you would have to be doing poster sized prints to need it!

Thanks for taking the time and effert to check it out.

bubba

[Eric Polsinelli]

POSTER SIZE!

Maybe when I get my Epson Pro 10600 I'll need this program... hehe

Is there anything similar to this program that would be more useful to retouchers?

[Eric Polsinelli]

Wonderful post! Thanks a million Chuck

[bubba]

Chuck - thanks for the post - it was interesting reading.

bubba

[Stephen M]

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~binaryfx/PSTV_links.html#R

Links on Rotation, Resolution and Resampling.

Stephen Marsh.

[Eric Polsinelli]

Thanks Stephen!

It looks like Genuine Fractals is the way to go... I'll investigate it further.

[Stephen M]

GF is one option - but far from the final conclusion. <g>

There are many ways to resize, using Photoshop techniques, plugs or other software. GF is great for some, lousy for others.

There are many trade offs and decisions to make, trialing the software for your specific image needs seems a good idea considering the cost of some of these options.

Stephen Marsh.

[Eric Polsinelli]

Your right Stephen. Photoshop is such a powerful tool, I doubt that all of the plug-ins and actions people use are the only way to perform a specific task.

With some experimentation, I'm sure the same results as GF can be achieved by using PS on it's own.

[Stephen M]

I agree to some extent - for upsizing the incremental resample method of say 10% resize bicubic steps is popular, and USM can be introduced to in the mix too (bicubic uses it's own form of minor sharpening in the resize).

The powerful PictureWindow app for the PC has a sharpening slider in it's bicubic resample dialog box - which gives you control of the amount used!

Then there are other methods of resampling - but beware incremental/stair steps with some other methods as artifacts can be amplified which are not visible with a single resample step.

GF and other methods work best with noise free images, that are of a certain total amount of raw input pixels to generate a good file for resizing. They are often great for really big resizing situations, but may not be as good for smaller resizes.

When downsampling, incremental resampling by small steps is probably going to lead to a softer image with less detail and may not work as nice as when upsizing. There can be advantages to resizing down to 66% or 33% to get close to the required size, then perhaps a single resize to polish things off.

Sharpening is usally required for downsampled images.

Does anyone here have access to any version of COREL PHOTO PAINT??? I would like to see the results of it's 'adaptive sharpen' filter...

Things are better today than ten years ago - but there are still no magic answers.

Stephen Marsh.