Image enhancement.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

I've decided to re-hash one of my sailing shows which has images taken with a Fuji camera between 2001 / 2004. As we were living aboard at that time storage was at a premium including images. Consequently the pictures were taken at a low resolution 640x480. I've been asked to present the show at our local U3A group and wondered if anyone knew of any software which would re-size the images to 1024x768 without degrading them, I seem to remember reading somewhere this can be done & reading Lin's description of software to sharpen images set me on thinking if it could be done.

Sample image below.

Regards Yachtsman1

[Lin Evans]

Hi Erik,

Just about any resize tool will handle that job pretty well since it's not a "major" increase in size. Whatever you are using right now as an editing tool should suffice. There will always be a bit of softening so a resharpen in the process may be necessary, but if there are artifacts of compression, etc, sharpening will make them more visible.

Even though I have a number of good image editing programs (Photoshop, Picture Window Pro, etc.) I generally use IrfanView myself to do such a task because you can "easily" (it CAN be done with Photoshop, etc., but it's much "easier" with IrfanView or Fastone) batch resize and rename if you wish simultaneously.

You must remember that your images "may" have jpg artifacts so making them larger may reveal these. If image quality is paramount, you might want to look into one of the products which ameliorate jpg artifacts such as TopazDeJpeg

Both IrfanView and Fastone are freeware for non-commercial use. Here are links:

http://www.irfanview.com

http://faststone.org/

http://www.topazlabs.com/products.html

I don't know whether these support 64 bit or not, but they do work with Windows 7

Best regards,

Lin

[fh1805]

Eric,

For a sequence that I am currently working on, and which had to draw upon historic photos sourced off the Internet, I had some success upsizing by about the amount you mentioned using Photoshop Elements v7. In the Image...Resize...Image Size...dialogue window I chose Bicubic Smoother instead of the more usual Bicubic as the resampling algorithm.

regards,

Peter

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Lin & Peter

Lin I will have a look at your suggestion later.

Peter, tried your suggestion & have attached the results which show some degredation. The original was only 72 dpi which doesn't help. I'll have a look at the show with the original sized images through the projector & see how they look compared to the re-sized image. Unfortunately there are 600 plus images. Thanks both.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

Just tried to up-load the re-sized pic & got the "You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file" Back later

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Lin & Peter

Lin I will have a look at your suggestion later.

Peter, tried your suggestion & have attached the results which show some degredation. The original was only 72 dpi which doesn't help. I'll have a look at the show with the original sized images through the projector & see how they look compared to the re-sized image. Unfortunately there are 600 plus images. Thanks both.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

Just tried to up-load the re-sized pic & got the "You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file" Back later

Just had another fiddle & managed to save it in the correct format, looks OK but will try the projector test first. What a ball acher if I have to re-size Thanks Peter.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Lin

Downloaded a trial of Topaz and ran the image through it but it didn't produce any improvement on Peter's suggestion, maybe my technique isn't good enough. Also I would need to run every image through it, whereas I may be able to batch them using Peter's suggestion. Thanks for the suggestion.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1

[fh1805]

Eric,

An alternative approach would be to bring a typical image into PTE and then play with the zoom setting until you find the limit of acceptability. Then use Project Options...Screen...Additional Options to set this zoom size on all images.

regards,

Peter

[jfa]

Eric

I have just finished a similar project using very old scans from prints that no longer exist. The scans were done on a "El Chepo" scanner by a non photographic friend some years ago and were 72dpi 640x480 jpegs.

Resized then using several software tools and found IrfanView gave the best "quality v effort" result. I did need to work on them with Focus Magic, (a great sharpening tool), and then do some cleanup with TopazDeJpeg, also a wonderful tool for cleaning up jpegs after I resized then to 1024x768.

Good luck.

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Thanks John

However, as there are over 500 images and the show will be a one off, I've decided to leave them as they are. I've re-set PTE to 1024x768 & they don't look too bad, only the odd one with straight diagonal lines is a bit iffy so I'm going for that. If I live long enough I may try to improve them.

Regards Eric

Yachtsman1.

[Ken Cox]

Eric

Captain looks pretty sharp in this attempt

ken

[Guest Yachtsman1]

Hi Ken

If you look at the grab handle next to my midrif, the edge is blurred.

Regards Eric.

Yachtsman1

[Ken Cox]

e

well your finger nails are clipped and cleaned

k