Photo Zoom Pro screenshot
Eye Contact:
original, comparison examples at 500% zoom: Photo Zoom Pro*/Photoshop**,
two: Photo Zoom Pro/Photoshop, three: Photo Zoom Pro/Photoshop
Flowers:
original, example at 200% zoom: S-Spline soft mode/Photoshop
* - using Photo Zoom Pro 2 S-Spline Portrait mode, ** - using Photoshop Bicubic Smoother
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Details at a glance
Professional image enlarger
PC: Win 95+, XP+
Mac: OS 10.0.3+
to work with Photoshop, v6+
We clicked with
Quality, simple interface, ease of use
Shots in the dark
Do you really need it?, price, speed
Links
More BenVista information
www.benvista.com
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Want to make your pictures bigger? Easy go into image…image size and set your new image size. However, as many of our readers have found this doesn't always give great results especially when you want to make pictures really big. If you want to make wall size prints from your 3MP compact or submit your pictures to a stock library then you may just be interested in Photo Zoom Pro.
What is it?
Photo Zoom Pro is a dedicated application to increase the size of digital images. It could probably also be used to make them smaller but really that's it. This isn't an editor and it's certainly not a raw converter - give it a tiff or a jpeg and it will make it bigger by the amount you specify using the algorithm you specify.
I tested the Mac version of Photo Zoom Pro 2 but there's an identical version for the PC. There are rumours on the web of a non-Pro version but it looks like this is no longer available (if it ever was). The package used to be called S-Spline 2 (since it uses S-Spline technology).
You get two versions for your money - there's a stand alone package and an export plug in for Photoshop and other editors such as Paint Shop Pro X and Photo Paint. Note that this is an export plug in - you can't upsize the file within Photoshop and work on it some more - you upsize the file and export it as a jpeg or tiff. If you want to work on it more then you need to open it again. In reality this is not an issue - resizing a file is almost certainly the last thing you want to do to it before sharpening - and Photo Zoom Pro 2 handles sharpening too if you want. If it's an issue then either use the standalone or just reimport it to Photoshop. After a couple of quick trials of the plug in I spent the rest of my time testing the stand alone. The interfaces are very similar and the processing is identical.
Why do I need it?
It's possible you don't. Compact cameras are getting more and more megapixels on their sensors and some of the better ones can turn out great A3 prints without too much fuss. The problem comes when you want to go bigger or use an image from an older camera or a crop from a high res sensor. In addition, lots of our members submit pictures to stock libraries - one of the most popular libraries requires a minimum file size of 48MB. My D2X produces files that are a measly 36MB so most contributors are going to need to upsize their files.
The problem is that just using the image size adjustment box in your editor doesn't always give great results. Edges soften and curves become slightly jaggy. This is where a dedicated digital image enlarger can pay dividends - all Photo Zoom Pro 2 does is enlarge pictures so you'd expect it to be good at it.
How does it work?
Really, I have no idea. OK, I have some idea - it uses patented, self-adjusting S-spline interpolation technology. To me that translates as “spooky heavy duty maths”. I don't know and I don't care in the same way that I don't really know how the engine in my car works - I just trust that it does work and let it get on with the hard stuff.
What you do need to know is that there are many ways of upsizing images. Photo Zoom Pro 2 gives you a choice of 11 different algorithms. Photoshop CS2 gives you a choice of 5 - some of these are the same. Different algorithms will work with different degrees of effectiveness on different images. That's a long winded way of saying that you may need to play around and see what suits you best.
How was it tested?
OK time for the techie stuff. I picked a group of images shot on different cameras and chose to upsize them by varying amounts between 200% and 500%. All files were completely unedited and the majority of the testing was done on images shot as raw files and then converted to 8 bit tiffs in Adobe Camera Raw.
I worked in Photoshop to produce the best possible enlargement I could - in all the tests this turned out to be Bicubic Smoother. That corresponds to conventional thinking - most people recommend bicubic smoother if you are increasing the file size and bicubic sharper if you are decreasing it.
Then I took the original image and enlarged it in Photo Zoom Pro 2. In all cases I used either S-Spline XL or one of the dedicated S-Spline modes (such as portrait). All these modes add sharpening so I made sure that I also did all the tests with sharpening turned off. (Note: the samples are the sharpened versions but inspection of the unsharpened versions led me to the same conclusions).
The largest files were about 430MB with 15,640 pixels on the long side. At 200 dpi this would give a print nearly two metres across. I opened both enlarged version in Photoshop CS2 and examined critical areas at 100%. I have twin Dell 20” Ultrasharp widescreen monitors and put one copy on each screen. I know from experience that the right screen is very slightly brighter than the left so I swapped images from one monitor to another. I also layered the images one on top of another so I could see the difference by turning one layer on and off. All tests were done by visual inspection on calibrated monitors under controlled lighting.
10% enlargements
There's a popular method of enlarging files that involves “stepwise” increments. Instead of enlarging a file by 100% you enlarge it by 10% a number of times (somewhere between 9 and 10 - if you really want exactly 100% more then you need to fiddle the last enlargement). You can buy actions on the internet or write your own to automate this.
Based on the tests I ran today you don't need to do this if you use Photoshop CS2. The 10% method does give a little improvement versus a regular bicubic enlargement but the differences are imperceptible to in some cases worse when you compare it with bicubic smoother. Based on a whole day's testing with various images, I would only recommend 10% increments if you are using an editor that doesn't support bicubic smoother - such as Photoshop 7.
So, how did it do?
Photo Zoom Pro works. In every test I performed, I was able to produce a better enlargement by using either the S-Spline or S-Spline XL methods than by using Photoshop CS2.
There are some samples at the top of this page but at web resolution you might find it very hard to see the differences. You can either trust me - or download a trial version from the BenVista website. I would strongly recommend the latter ;).
There are a couple of caveats though. In a lot of cases the difference was marginal. Where I used white text on a black background the difference was extremely obvious - in real world pictures it was much less obvious. It was here when you looked for it but in a lot of cases it might pass unnoticed. I was also pretty impressed by how well Photoshop did at file enlargement - there is certainly room for improvement but even working in 8 bit mode, 2 metre wide pictures were looking pretty good. Even from some compact cameras, with a little care, I was able to produce files that should please a lot of people at A2.
You should be aware that I only used correctly exposed, sharp, noise free pictures for this test. If you start with a great file then you will get beautiful enlargements - if you start with a soft noisy image then you'll end up with a very big soft noisy image.
What's not to like
Three things really stop Photo Zoom Pro 2 being a no brainer buy for anyone wanting to make big enlargements.
- Cost. At $150 it's not massively expensive but if you are only making occasional enlargements then that's quite a chunk of money. If you are regularly enlarging files (for a stock library for example) then it's a much more attractive proposition. One image sale could easily pay for the application. Also if you are after ultimate quality then you may think the price is worth it.
- Speed. It's slower than Photoshop - a lot slower. To upsize a 34MB file by 500% in Photoshop takes several seconds on my Mac. On the same machine Photo Zoom Pro 2 can take up to 10 minutes (about half this if you turn sharpening off). That's on a dual processor PowerPC Mac - results may vary wildly on an Intel or a PC since I have no idea how it utilises processors or memory. However, there is a batch function - if you have a folder or collection of pictures to resize then you can batch them and just leave them running overnight if necessary. Since resizing and sharpening is probably the last thing you will do that probably isn't a huge deal for most pro users.
- Photoshop's pretty good. For a while I was submitting images to stock using a 6MP DSLR and Bicubic Smoother enlargement method in Photoshop CS2. No image ever got rejected by quality control. Photo Zoom Pro 2 is better but you need to work out if points 1 and 2 make the quality increase worth it for you.
