Upscaling images

johnCam said:

I have run across some photographers online who routinely upscale their images in post and then apply other edits. For any of you who do upscale images regularly or just occasionally, what software did you use to upscale your images? I did see that upscaling can be done in Topaz.

Click to expand...

I don't do upscaling myself, but somebody did it once to an image I posted here on the forum. The interesting part was the fake detail it added which wasn't faithful to the source.

I use either a Topaz Photo AI, or Topaz Gigapixel. Gigapixel is more robust, but Photo AI has other features that are convenient, like the AI Remove feature.

See my post here .

Done w/Topaz AI.

I don't routinely upscale however sometimes upscaling helps with smart removes so you can isolate what you want to be removed when the smart remove gets confused.

johnCam said:

I have run across some photographers online who routinely upscale their images in post and then apply other edits. For any of you who do upscale images regularly or just occasionally, what software did you use to upscale your images? I did see that upscaling can be done in Topaz.

Click to expand...

In the days when we had 3MP cameras then upscaling may make sense. Today with an average of something like at least 20MP then upscaling is a thing of the past, unless into severe cropping to simulate extra tele.

In my printing days I always left it to Qimage to automatically upscale or downscale as needed to suit the various printer internals. Epson works at 720 ppi and Canon at 600 ppi when doing photo quality, and at some other strange numbers when doing full bleed prints (borderless), Qimage takes care of all that.

If mucking about with upscaling then I find about 200% is really the practical limit, modern AI software may think otherwise but it is inventing detail and often seems to get it wrong.

All I use is FastStone Viewer and this works for me...


Always Lanczos Sharper or Lanczos Default for me.

Depending on what the image is used for then some more Unsharp Mask sharpening may be used after the upscale or downscale. With Unsharp Mask I always seem to use 0.3 pixel radius and be careful with the Amount setting....


Back off sharpening to avoid the gritty digital look or edge halos.

Always at 0.3 radius and the amount varies between maybe 20 and 100 depending on the image and also what it might be used for.

Interesting also is to read up on what Qimage Ultimate does for interpolation. https://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/tech-fus.htm

Always best thing is to find out what works for you and ignore most online experts (like me).

johnCam said:

I have run across some photographers online who routinely upscale their images in post and then apply other edits. For any of you who do upscale images regularly or just occasionally, what software did you use to upscale your images? I did see that upscaling can be done in Topaz.

Click to expand...

For personal use, I would use Topaz GigaPixel AI or the Ai Arty Image Enhancer (which is a competitor to Photo AI).

For commercial use; I typically use Reshade Pro, which is a PC software that upscales images using the traditional upscaling algorithm. Or if I know the final product needs to be around 36-50MP big, I would just use my Nikon Z8.

There is a reason for why I don't use AI to upscale images anymore and I personally got burned a few times from my clients needing to refund money back. And my sister's recent mistake or accident using her iPad to edit her photos and then enlarged, printed and framed and then forced to refund her work, when the client ripped her frame apart and got a dealer to assess the work as being "FAKE", because it was printed with AI. It's their word against my sister and big galleries usually wins!
For commercial fine art work, dealers and gallery owners are so against AI, because they want to sell original work that comes with original detail, because clients are paying good money for it and they want to buy it and use it as a storage of value. Same principle as people buying GOLD, because they also want to use it as a storage of value and of course they always want to know if they are buying real GOLD or fake gold (either plated or plastered with gold foils). You can't print GOLD as easily as you can with money and some fine art stuff can also be considered like GOLD.

The problem with AI is that, it replaces data at the pixel level with AI generated pixels. So your work is considered no longer original, even if it was taken originally by you or even hand painted by you. How could you tell if the AI generated image off your original work is really yours originally?

For commercial work; I do all the edits BEFORE upscaling using traditional method. At least that's what I considered safe. But that's just my experience and opinion only.

I just got a free upgrade to my version of Focus Magic to Version 6.23. Focus Magic is a greatly under-used processing software. It does a great job on sharpening and the new version includes a JPEG compression artifact fix., as well as a very effective upsampling function.

I have been using Focus Magic for many years -- it's one of my most used PS plug-ins.

You might want to give it a test drive. Here's their link:

https://www.focusmagic.com/


Blessings,
Greg

Thank you all. If I decide to buy and use Topaz, maybe for noise reduction or cropping, I will probably try upscaling to see what I think. Historically I have not been much of a post processor but that could change

johnCam said:

Thank you all. If I decide to buy and use Topaz, maybe for noise reduction or cropping, I will probably try upscaling to see what I think. Historically I have not been much of a post processor but that could change

Click to expand...

I'd give Topaz Photo AI a trial run. The noise removal and sharpening are really good, if used in small doses.

Guy Parsons said:

Interesting also is to read up on what Qimage Ultimate does for interpolation. https://www.ddisoftware.com/qimage-u/tech-fus.htm

Click to expand...

The QU-Fusion just looks like a standard bicubic followed by something to boost the contrast, possibly just an unsharp mask with a relatively large radius.

qimage

johnCam said:

I have run across some photographers online who routinely upscale their images in post and then apply other edits. For any of you who do upscale images regularly or just occasionally, what software did you use to upscale your images? I did see that upscaling can be done in Topaz.

Click to expand...

I find little need, but when I do On1 Resize works very well. Start with an original with good detail and don't overdo it. Here an example -- first the original 16mp -- then resized to 24mp.


16mp original


24mp On1 resized

I tried an early version of Gigapixel AI.

I had a small photo of a rare bird (nearly extinct). It was a 20MP file from FZ2500. I wanted to print bigger and used Gigapixel AI to enlarge it 2x.

The result was very bad. The colors of the feathers changed. The entire scene was something I could not recognize from the original.

The AI tools have come a long way in these 8 years, but I was never motivated to try any of them. I do have ON1 Photo Raw 2025 and haven't tried the upscaling feature.

All the best.

--
See my profile (About me) for gear and my posting policy.

Satyaa said:

I tried an early version of Gigapixel AI.

I had a small photo of a rare bird (nearly extinct). It was a 20MP file from FZ2500. I wanted to print bigger and used Gigapixel AI to enlarge it 2x.

The result was very bad. The colors of the feathers changed. The entire scene was something I could not recognize from the original.

The AI tools have come a long way in these 8 years, but I was never motivated to try any of them. I do have ON1 Photo Raw 2025 and haven't tried the upscaling feature.

All the best.

Click to expand...

Just for fun I did a lossless 50% crop of a random image, then a FastStone 2x resize back to the original 20MP size using Lanczos2 sharper and it looks OK to me. Of course the source is a "200mm" image from my Sony RX100M6 so has some DOF limitations. The result is fit for purpose for whatever use with no AI induced "hallucinations". I don't do birding so have no suitable shots to see what it would so to feathers. Must go stalk a bird in my backyard one day. The resident Kookaburra may oblige.

[ATTACH alt="James Cook's Endeavour replica in Sydney. Jpeg from raw file via Photolab, 50% crop, then resize 2x to get what might be considered as "400mm" shot."]3709501[/ATTACH]
James Cook's Endeavour replica in Sydney. Jpeg from raw file via Photolab, 50% crop, then resize 2x to get what might be considered as "400mm" shot.

The highest quality upscaling, by far, that doesn't add fake detail, is in PhotoZoom Pro 9 (and 8). "S-Spline Max". But the new "AI" variant is amazing and worth trying too. I usually get results much better than Topaz Gigapixel.

Mark Ransom said:

johnCam said:

I have run across some photographers online who routinely upscale their images in post and then apply other edits. For any of you who do upscale images regularly or just occasionally, what software did you use to upscale your images? I did see that upscaling can be done in Topaz.

Click to expand...

I don't do upscaling myself, but somebody did it once to an image I posted here on the forum. The interesting part was the fake detail it added which wasn't faithful to the source.

Click to expand...

I can’t see how pure upscaling can add artefacts, but if the upscaling product (and the user) also adds sharpening then I can see how things could get messy at the small scale.

jj

jjbinx said:

Mark Ransom said:

johnCam said:

I have run across some photographers online who routinely upscale their images in post and then apply other edits. For any of you who do upscale images regularly or just occasionally, what software did you use to upscale your images? I did see that upscaling can be done in Topaz.

Click to expand...

I don't do upscaling myself, but somebody did it once to an image I posted here on the forum. The interesting part was the fake detail it added which wasn't faithful to the source.

Click to expand...

I can’t see how pure upscaling can add artefacts, but if the upscaling product (and the user) also adds sharpening then I can see how things could get messy at the small scale.

jj

Click to expand...

It was AI powered, so it was generating detail that it thought was most likely based on the input. "Artefacts" is probably too tame a word for it, because it can be spectacularly wrong.