Scaling Images

[Matt]

Here's a drastic scenario...
Okay---- say you had an awesome photo you wanted to blow up and hang above your mantle. The problem... it's only 600x800 pixels! That will barely work for a 4x6.
Here's a photo at that size:

I want it to be 11x14 at 300 dpi! Yikes!

So I ran all the available Smart Scaler plugins on this image to see how well they do. This is a drastic case, but it does show how well they work.
I also included an example of how photoshop would do as well.

http://www.nyfalls.com/posts/scaling/scaling.zip

It's all in this tiff image. Load it up in photoshop or paintshop and you'll see the original image. Start turning on the layers to see what each plugin will do.
I looks like Alien Skin does the best job to my eyes.

I'll post crops later if I have time.

Please don't link this tiff image anywhere else as it would kill my bandwidth - thanks.

[Matt]

100% crops of the 3300 pixel wide enlargement.... that's 5.5 times larger.

Left to right: Photoship image size, Alien Skin Blow Up, Extensis Smartscale, Genuine Fractals Print Pro


Which one is better? Back away from your monitor and see.

[olmstead]

If you're aiming for noise/artifact reduction and redendering most like the original, I think Genuine Fractals Pro did the best job. I guess it depends on what your specific objectives are. The first two look like they are extrapolating too much from the original. Hope this helps.