UKH

Hi.

Been years since I printed a photo.

Can digital services improve on the resolution of a phone image to allow larger printing? I mean, given 'AI' can now create convincing images from word prompts, surely a service could interpolate an image to allow larger sizes?

In reply to Flinticus:

Yep - this is quite effective https://www.topazlabs.com/topaz-photo-ai-upscale

In reply to Flinticus:

Depends on what you want.

AI can't extract information from your low-res image that isn't there. All it can do is try to 'invent' some detail that may or may not be appropriate/convincing/plausible/laughable. It's fiction, but that may be OK for your need. I don't expect any print service to offer this simply because the results tend to be quite unpredictable in terms of acceptability.

Interpolation just gives you a larger image without the obvious pixelation you'd get with naïve resizing. There's no new 'information' - just the original information spread over a larger area. Most digital printing service will do this anyway to match you image to their printer resolution.

In reply to Iamgregp:

I tried this a while back, but found the results pretty unconvincing most of the time. It seemed to try and invent detail in some areas, but then leave other areas blurry leaving weird patchy effects. Even as fiction it was a bit jarring at times. Their denoise app was the best of the bunch, but I didn't keep any of them past the trial.

In reply to Marek:

I've not used it on stills (don't really take photos), but we use it at my work to up res and denoise old archive footage and, despite my initial scepticism, I'm quite impressed with it.  Have heard it fairly well received in the photographic world?

Not sure if it's the same with stills, but I found that the results vary depending on the setting you use - overdo it and it can make everything look unconvincing and artificial but persevere and it can bring definite improvement.   Found it worked best on low bitrate digital origin video, really smooths out the blockiness.

Like all of the AI tools we use, it's far from perfect, but it's cheap, quick and easy.  Doubt anyone would go anywhere near them otherwise! 

In reply to Iamgregp:

I think it's a bit like HDR - starts of with "Oh wow!" and after the novelty's worn off it turns into "That's horrible!". As for "the photographic world", it's a very broad church and there's still plenty that think that in-you-face HDR tone-mapping is the best thing since roll film. Each to their own! I'm all for extracting the maximum information out of any image capture, but that's not what AI does: It creates fictitious information that it thinks might look impressive in the context of the given image.

In reply to Flinticus:

I’d try an experiment: simply do a quick edit on your phone, email it to yourself, save it, copy to a usb stick, take it to your local Tescos and print it for 50p or whatever and see what happens. Might be better than you think. You can do some basic editing in the computer thingy at Tescos. 

Edit: I bought Topaz Sharpen. I’ve basically stopped using it (I do very little by photo  editing). If you want, email me a photo and I will sharpen it and email it back to you. 

In reply to Marek:

Yeah, I do know these things work! 

Re HDR - in the television tv production world HDR is the standard way of shooting - at my company it’s a given that everything is shot HDR nowadays. It doesn’t necessarily result in zingy, oversaturated colours, it just means that looks like that are possible in the grade.

If you’ve got a good colourist doing the grade it just allows more contrast, and greater control. But of course, that can result in some rather odd looking footage if they get a little carried away!

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

You can connect the phone directly via WiFi to the Tesco kiosks (and presumably Boots, Max Spielmann etc)  

In reply to thread

Also, a good tip for seeing what a big print might look like is taking a very small crop of part of your photo and printing it 5x7, so you get a life size portion of your intended print. 

This is a good way to test upscaling, and also print quality/detail/colour/sharpening before paying for a big print.

I sometimes do 3 or 4 with different sharpenings or brightness. 

In reply to Blue Straggler:

Also a lot of these kiosks/booths will only read from a USB stick if the stick contains ONLY .jpg files, something to be aware of