Bring Out Your Old Lamps...!

[ameerat42]

-- to use again. Unlike the old pedlar's cry, it's for new and improved software.

I have not tried it yet - 30 day trial listed. Some of the results look OK. The term "Gigapixel"
might sound hopeful, though AI is totally lamentable! I think I'll go for Topaz :nod:

Click here for link. (http://plugsandpixels.com/blog/new-topaz-ai-gigapixel-upsampling-app-w-unadvertised-discount/)

[ameerat42]

Update - what an inapt word!

You need to create an account with Topaz even for the trial. - OK, used spare email add.
I am trying to double the size of a 900x800 pixel image. - Either it's glacially slow or it just
doesn't work. "Processing" for several minutes now....

- A bit later...

Progress bar has moved a bit after 4 mins...

[farmmax]

Did you read the specifications needed to run it? :( I didn't even bother to trial it, even though my computer handles photoshop effortlessly.

[ameerat42]

I was missing 2 of 'em, but still didn't expect it to be that sl-oh!w.
(Now where's that Cray...?)

[arthurking83]

Did you read the specifications needed to run it? :( I didn't even bother to trial it, even though my computer handles photoshop effortlessly.

basically graphics card dependent.

R9 280 and GTX760 are fairly old hat tech(in todays terms).

While the current gen 'equivalent' cards are cheap by any means, they're not overly expensive either.

They would be(what you would get today)

GTX1050 ~ $150 - $170
AMD RX560 series .. more like $200-ish

If you wanted to build a PC today, these would be the two min spec GPU types I'd recommend, that is if you plan to keep said PC for a good 5-10 years.

[Glenda]

I downloaded it as a trial. Thought it might be useful for my bird photos, most of which I have to crop the beejeezus out of. It works but I doubt I'd have much use for it really. My bird photos are never that good I'd want to print one, ditto my mobile phone shots.

[ameerat42]

Was it as slow as a wet week, Glenda? I ditched it again later that day:(

[Glenda]

No - slower than other software but I upsized by 400% and it took approx 3 minutes.

[ameerat42]

No - slower than other software but I upsized by 400% and it took approx 3 minutes.

Whew! That's lightning fast compared to my estimated hour or so for about the same magnification
on a not-too-large file:eek:

[Tannin]

It uses the graphics card, AM. It is (games aside) very nearly the one and only excuse for a fancy graphics card. Trying to run it without the minimum required hardware is unlikely to succeed.

Admittedly, my laptop is a high-end model, but it's five years old and it runs Gigapixel just fine. (It does meet the minimum hardware requirements, though only just.)

It is not designed to provide instant or near-enough-to-instant results you can sit there and wait for, it is designed for batch processing - i.e., as a computational-cost-no-object start-it-up-and-go-away sort of program which runs in the background for however long it takes.

One thing that they could usefully add (and probably will) is a throttling mechanism. As it, it gobbles all available resources and makes the PC unpleasant to use while you are waiting. (You can do stuff, but it lacks responsiveness.) Now if you are planning to set it running and go away for an hour or two, that's fine, but it would be improved by a scale-back option to give you more foreground usability at the expense of greater run-time. I expect that they will add this before too long, it's a pretty obvious refinement.

[rexboggs5]

I didn't realise this thread was here so I started a new one. Here is my post on that thread.

I recently downloaded a 30 day trial of AI Gigapixel from topazlabs.com. This software allows you to resize your photos by up to 600%. I tried it out on a file that was 719 x 958 pixels, and produced an enlarged version that was 4314 x 5748 pixels. When I put the photos side by side on our photo club's website, I and the members felt that the enlarged version was better than the original! Check the 2 versions out at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/8p2j7ofqj...97z3Rcuoa?dl=0

I then decided to enlarge the 4314 x 5748 pixel version by 600% as well. It took about an hour for the software to do this (in the background). I was expecting a photo that was 34,488 pixels on the longest side but the final version was 'only' 32000 pixels. So that must be the maximum size possible. The quality was very impressive, with just a few artifacts in the blurry background. So now I have a photo that is 106" tall (or 2.7 m) at 300 dpi. And it is about 2 m wide, so printing and framing it might be a bit expensive.

Not bad from a photo that started out just a bit over 3" tall if printed at 300 dpi.

If you have a lot of small photos that need enlarging, it is worth checking out. You can try it for free for 30 days. The cost is US$100 but a friend found a 15% discount coupon.

Cheers, Rex

PS I just enlarged a 1152x1152 iPhone photo to 6912 x 6912 pixels. It took 5 minutes. There is no apparent loss of image quality.

[ameerat42]

That's OK. You can continue in either one. - I sort of gave up a bit here.

[Tannin]

I was going to start a thread on this topic after I first tried it out, a few weeks back. But I saw something shiny and forgot.

[rexboggs5]

I had started a new thread on AI Gigapixel, so I will comment from now on using that forum. Here is the link: http://www.ausphotography.net.au/forum/showthread.php?158625-AI-Gigapixel