Reshade today announced a new version of its photo enlargement software for Windows. According to the company spokesperson the new Reshade Image Enlarger v1.5 offers several essential functional improvements.
One of the distinctive new features added is edge smoothing, or in layman’s terms image smearing. This is an important aspect of any image correction tool improving photo quality by removing defects such as scratches and dust. These kinds of defects become more of a problem especially when magnifying an image.
Additionally the algorithm has been improved. As one of the engineers stated “when there are a lot of parameters involved there’s always room for improvement”, so the new version features a re-tweaking and optimization delivering even better quality than the previous.
The application includes an advanced image up-scaling method that makes possible very large magnification factors (over 20x) without losing image clarity. The software allows for better quality high resolution images to be generated from low resolution originals. This makes the application very useful in fields of work where high resolution prints are a necessity. Reshade photo enlargement software is especially useful in particular for forensics where keeping every detail in the original photo is of utmost importance. Doing this across all magnification levels is an added bonus that the software provides.
As Vlad Hosu, CEO of Reshade states “The new version will bring an added bonus to the quality of the enlarged photos. The edge control interpolation mechanism has been improved delivering better results. Add this to the quality improvements resulting from the new smooth feature and you get a greatly enhanced application. Photographers will be mostly the ones benefiting from this upgrade.”
As you might know from our site, Reshade is a high quality photo enlargement utility. The desktop version of Reshade allows you to enlarge images, zoom and optimize the enlarged photos through adjustable controls. This is a basic tutorial where we will figure out how to enlarge a picture and play with this tool to get optimal results. Remember to click each image for a larger view. To resize an image online directly from reshade.com check out the online image resizer available here. It uses the same technology as the photo enlargement software application but has a few limits on size and number of features available.
The basics of Reshade interface are already discussed in the help manual. We will get right down to the fun part.
- First we need an interesting subject to start with; go to ‘File’ menu and select ‘Open’. Simply browse to the image you want to enlarge and select open. You can drag and drop the image to Reshade as well as press Ctrl + O to open a file. The photo you wish to enlarge will appear in its original size in the right panel on Reshade. A zoom of the selected area within the box on the right panel can be seen on the left.
And the image by Code Poet we are going to play with:
- Resizing the Image: The ‘Zoom’ option on the top left lets you alter the image size. Higher zoom value deteriorates the enlarged photos’ quality but we can take care of that through Reshade’s multiple features a little later. With this picture enlarger you can zoom up to 150 mega pixels, but we are just going to enlarge the image to 210% zoom. The end product will be just over double the size of the original. Another way of doing the same would be to enter the image size you want under the ‘new size’ option. Entering either width or height will auto adjust the other one so the proportions do not change.
- Focusing: The box you can see on the right panel is shown zoomed on the left panel. Simply click on a section of the image to select it. Or, for a smoother transition, hold the left mouse button down and drag it. In the image I have chosen, the beetle and the center of the flower are two important things I want to be able to look at while I work on sharpening the image. Scroll over so both are covered in the panel and we can start with the sharpening.
- Using Smooth: It is easy to note the blur that creeps in when you enlarge a picture, as can be noted in the overlaid image on the screenshot; we are going to get rid of that and much more. For best results, play with and get to know the tools involved here. The idea is to let Reshade Image Enlarger load the preview before you change more than one value. My first reaction is to get rid of the noise when I do the photo enlargement, the option to ‘Smooth’ works for that. Shift the value up gradually here and check the results. See how you can steadily remove the noise from the image. Once the noise is gone, higher values will blur out the details. We want to maintain the quality of the image even when it is doubled its original size so we will not go too far. At around 15 I think the image gets noise free while the beetle and the pollen do not lose their clarity. The petals have defined shapes even with the slight blur. We don’t want to lose that either.
- Using Texture: We will turn to the ‘texture’ now which does some image enhancement by creating contrast. A good way to find out how it affects the image is to take the value to max and let the preview load. I have cropped and overlaid how the beetle looks at max texture settings. Note how the spots have brighter halos. Obviously that is overdoing what is required here, so let us get back to subtleties. Move the bar back down to 15 on texture. You will see that the bright outer glow for the beetle will disappear. We are a step closer to the goal.
- Using Accuracy: Once you enlarge the pictures, image ‘accuracy’ helps smooth the edges. Here it’s hard to spot how it works with the image unless you alternately max and 0 out the accuracy bar alternatively. Wait for it to load and then check the aura of the beetle at every update. Note the overlaying image at 100 ‘accuracy’ I have cropped and placed alongside the beetle’s preview at 50 ‘accuracy’; at 100 the edge probably smooths out more than what was there in the original image, we will settle for 50.
- Using Threshold & Control: By now you can see we are doing pretty well. But check the overlaid image I have pasted in the screen-shot. The region between the petals appears hazy before we adjust up the ‘threshold’. It works to make edge transformations smoother.The ‘control’ settings work to sharpen the edges, giving them quite an interesting look at high values. Here if we change the control much more than the auto setting, the edges become too sharp. So, for now, let’s set threshold at 15; notice how that green area between petals smoothed itself out to match the original image?
- Saving the file in Reshade: Now that you have successfully managed to enlarge the image, it is time to save your effort for comparison, click ‘best edges’ under the ‘quality’ gauge and it would be a perfect match. Go to the ‘file’ menu and select ‘save as’. You can save the file to your chosen destination, Ctrl + S is the hotkey. For those trying the unregistered trial version of Reshade, there will be a prompt to inform you that the saved image will have Reshade watermark on it, but the image will still be saved. The licensed version will give you the clear picture. Once you have saved the image, it is time for some comparison to see how your picture enlarger did. You can open the original image you started with and compare it with the enhanced image to find the same detail present there as well. Have a good time resizing! Kudos!
And the final result:
Be sure to check out the photo enlargement software used in this tutorial. If you want to do everything online try the free online image resizer here at reshade.com
Changes since version 1.3:
- speed optimizations including support for SSE instruction set of modern desktop CPUs (Intel Pentium III / AMD Athlon XP or newer)
- speed improvements range from 30% to over 100% (depending on image size)
- Reshade can now also shrink images: zoom factors smaller than 1 are allowed
- sharpening (texture) and smoothing also work when down-scaling an image
- go to save folder check box (in save dialog): automatically open an explorer window to the folder you are saving an image to when resizing finishes
- pop-up full file path in status-bar
- more accurate prediction for completion time in the save progress dialog
- better placement for best colors, renamed to best edges (more suitable)
- fixed: save image while refreshing hasn’t finished yet
- fixed: watermark notice on very small images crashed the program sometimes
