Extreme up-rezzing

mercphoto

I'm going to have a need to do an extreme up-rez on a photo in the next week or two. Reproduction size will be 8' by 10' (yes, feet), color reproduction on vinyl, and the lab "wants" 300 dpi. Yeah, right (just over 1 billion pixels). I'm gonna give them 100dpi instead, which is still about 115 million pixels. I'll be starting with a 1D Mark II RAW file (6.56 million pixels when cropped).

I'm leaning heavily towards a Fred Miranda resize plug-in but I'd be interested in knowing thoughts on Genuine Fractals or other methods. I think something a bit more sophisticated than the stair-step method is going to be needed.

RatPhoto

I'm kind of surprised you are not getting more feedback on this. Personally, I like the results of stairstepping better than GF. There are a number of sites that you can google that compare the two.

Now I have to admit, I never used stairstepping to do anything as extreme as what you are trying. But really, it all comes down to appropriate viewing distance. If people are going to get close, it isn't going to look good regardless of what you do. If they are back at a reasonable distance for that size print, things will be ok.

gluwater

I don't know anything about upresing this high but I am surprised that the vendor is asking you to do this. Generally when printing that large the printer or RIP would do the resizing much more efficiently than you or I would do. But again I am not an expert on the subject.

Andy

mercphoto wrote:

I'm going to have a need to do an extreme up-rez on a photo in the next week or two. Reproduction size will be 8' by 10' (yes, feet), color reproduction on vinyl, and the lab "wants" 300 dpi. Yeah, right (just over 1 billion pixels). I'm gonna give them 100dpi instead, which is still about 115 million pixels. I'll be starting with a 1D Mark II RAW file (6.56 million pixels when cropped).

I'm leaning heavily towards a Fred Miranda resize plug-in but I'd be interested in knowing thoughts on Genuine Fractals or other methods. I think something a bit more sophisticated than the stair-step method is going to be needed.

I just let www.bigposters.com do this for me. They're great. I have to believe there's a similar outfit in your area that does this for a living?

ziggy53

Bill,

I had to deal with one of "them hi-priced Chicago outfits", who thought they knew everything. They always insisted on 300dpi for the "art" department, when the reality is that their RIP really did handle the up-res. I always converted everything to 300dpi just to appease them, but I never did any up-res/resample myself, and this was stuff for trade shows, etc., so it was used large and it always amazed me how good it looked.

The originals were from either an old Kodak 6MP dSLR (DCS460) or a Sony f828, 8MP, so nothing too special.

ziggy53

colourbox

The Photoshop engineers and some users swear that the third-party scaling apps and old stair-stepping tricks no longer have any significant advantage over using the updated resizing in Photoshop CS2 in one step. Though there is still a debate.

See this thread on "Substantial Enlargement" (snicker)
(Just click "Log In As a Guest" to blow past the registration plea if it asks you)

"The multiple-step enlargement is a thing of the past with the new math used by Chris Cox in Bicubic Smoother."

ziggy53

colourbox wrote:

The Photoshop engineers and some users swear that the third-party scaling apps and old stair-stepping tricks no longer have any significant advantage over using the updated resizing in Photoshop CS2 in one step. Though there is still a debate.

See this thread on "Substantial Enlargement" (snicker)
(Just click "Log In As a Guest" to blow past the registration plea if it asks you)

"The multiple-step enlargement is a thing of the past with the new math used by Chris Cox in Bicubic Smoother."

Hmmm, ... so PhotoShop engineers on a PhotoShop forum think PhotoShop is a winner. Am I surprised?

For a little more objective view:

http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/interpolation2/interpolation2.htm which actually tests recent versions of both products. Note that GF didn't win in every case, the image content mattered greatly.

Also interesting that Adobe still sells Genuine Fractals:

http://www.adobe.com/products/plugins/photoshop/genfrac.html

Just to confound the subject, another product called "Enlarger Pro" seems to test well, but it's hard to find an independant test using fairly hi-quality images.

ziggy53

Art Scott

I looked at all the comaprisons, on my large prints and still GF4.1 sold me and it was a 1 step up rez....the local Pro Printer used my up rez file as I needed a large 30 X 40 inches ( i know that is not as large as 8' X 10") that could and would be viewed upclose.....nose to frame if you will, so I could not rely on a 100dpi file and the viewing distance rule........so I chose GF4.1, used the trial version which lets you save your work.....and I did comaprison prints on the cheapest printer I could find....SAm's club.
the way I looked at it was if it looks really good as an 8 x 10 fromn Sams club the nit will be fantastic from the pro printer....

So after up resing, I made an 8X10 cut out took file to Sams and waited the hour to see if it was good and it passed the test for me and the Pro Printer....the results also made the head printer at sams move from S-Spline and FM's StairStep software to GF4.1.........

Basically all I did in PSCS was to resize the image to 300dpi and then move it into GF and let it do its work ... saved it as a #12 jpeg (per the printers instrucions) loded it on a cd for printer and then in a week or so delivered fantastic prints to clients.

me GF is the way to go when I need a pic that will looked at at the same distance as an 8X10......but if that pic is going to be looked at from a long distance (6 feet or more), then I would give the printer a 300dpi file and let the ripping software do its magic.

just my .00002 cents worth

mercphoto

Andy wrote:

I just let www.bigposters.com do this for me. They're great. I have to believe there's a similar outfit in your area that does this for a living?

I've tried emailing them before and I never get any responses. :shrug The final print is going to be on vinyl (needs to be wind and tear resistant). Can they do that or are they just photo prints?

mercphoto

ziggy53 wrote:

I had to deal with one of "them hi-priced Chicago outfits", who thought they knew everything. They always insisted on 300dpi for the "art" department, when the reality is that their RIP really did handle the up-res.

I would have thought the same as well but they did admit 100dpi would suffice. Minimum viewing distance of 10 feet, most of the time will be 20 feet or more. They also want a CYMK file instead of RGB. I'm in for a learning curve...

Kodachrome

...as big as?

mercphoto wrote:

I'm going to have a need to do an extreme up-rez on a photo in the next week or two. Reproduction size will be 8' by 10'

I just went through some thing very similar...the client came with a model F1 racing car at 1/18 scale and wanted a file for the 40' side of one of our city busses...if you live in Victoria BC you may have seen my work...the idea was that the front and rear wheels be the same wheel base as the buss.

First try I shot the model on my medium format nicely lighted and with some chrome and the lab scanned it with a 848 Imacon ...not sure what happened at the art house but a sample swatch of the picture at size was dreadful...they said they have had good luck scanning a large print...Hmmmmmmmm I had the lab make a 400dpi 11x14...it looked wonderful...they scanned that themslves on there flatbed and used that...from accross the street it looks seamless.

They were so pleased they came back two weeks ago for the same thing but this time with a Bush car...they replace the little adds on the car with local advertising...this time I shot a negative and made another 11x14 print and they went away very happy.

So weather or not making a large scanable print might get you home free...it was just a thought.

colourbox

ziggy53 wrote:

Hmmm, ... so PhotoShop engineers on a PhotoShop forum think PhotoShop is a winner. Am I surprised?
For a little more objective view...www.ronbigelow.com...actually tests recent versions of both products. Note that GF didn't win in every case, the image content mattered greatly.

I hadn't seen that site before but the conclusions on that site actually support what I was getting at. It may not have been clear, but the question I was asking wasn't "Which way is clearly the best?" but "Is there a way that's so much better than Photoshop that it would be worth spending what the plug-in costs?" From both the Photoshop thread and the ronbigelow.com conclusions, the answer seems to be inconclusive enough that I choose to hang on to my money, since Photoshop upgrades are expensive enough to maintain as it is.

Your decision may vary, if you make the kinds of images that GF or another uprezzer always upsizes better than any Photoshop algorithm, and if the plug-in cost is easily recouped for your types of images and output.

The separate but related issue was to pass along the idea that multi-step upsizing may no longer be worth the trouble if you have CS2.

Andy

mercphoto wrote:

I've tried emailing them before and I never get any responses. :shrug The final print is going to be on vinyl (needs to be wind and tear resistant). Can they do that or are they just photo prints?

Heh they're funny - call them during 9-5eastern time, and you can speak to a technician - never fails.