[Leica] Up-resolution with PS Enhance and with Gigapixel

[Howard L Ritter Jr]

I have two reasons for wanting to post just now. One is my recent trip to Iceland, a maiden voyage for my new Q2. The other is the recent availability of PS Enhance and Topaz Gigapixel AI. The two themes fit together nicely because up-res’ing could be a key to making the single-FL, high-Mpx Q2 even more versatile, by increasing the effective FL that can be realized from cropping and enlarging. I speculated that state-of-the-art up-res’ing by a factor of 2 might allow for decent prints (or viewing on a monitor) in the 25”-wide range of down to 25% crops (equivalent to FL 112mm). This is well past the Q’s ‘digital zoom’ limit of 75mm, which of course isn’t anything but a built-in crop since it (properly) doesn’t involve any image manipulation.

I’ll be posting an album of images from Iceland soon, as well as my impressions of the Q2. Here’s a first one, with a 117mm-equiv. 24% crop presented natively, after PS Enhance, and after Gigapixel. (I was aiming for a 25% crop, but this is where I landed.)

I’d welcome comments on the results themselves as well as your takes on the comparison of the two methods of up-res’ing.


http://www.gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Up-res+test/?g2_fromNavId=x2d271756 <http://www.gallery.leica-users.org/v/hlritter/Up-res+test/?g2_fromNavId=x2d271756>


—howard