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Adobe Photoshop's New Super Resolution Feature is 'Jaw-Dropping' (petapixel.com) 146

Adobe just dropped its latest software updates via the Creative Cloud and among those updates is a new feature in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) called "Super Resolution." You can mark this day down as a major shift in the photo industry, writes PetaPixel. From the report: I have seen a bit of reporting out there on this topic from the likes of PetaPixel and Fstoppers, but other than that the ramifications of this new feature in ACR have not been widely promoted from what I can see. The new Super Resolution feature in ACR essentially upsizes the image by a factor of four using machine learning, i.e. Artificial Intelligence (AI). The PetaPixel article on this new feature quoted Eric Chan from Adobe:

Super Resolution builds on a technology Adobe launched two years ago called Enhance Details, which uses machine learning to interpolate RAW files with a high degree of fidelity, which resulted in images with crisp details and fewer artifacts. The term 'Super Resolution' refers to the process of improving the quality of a photo by boosting its apparent resolution," Chan explains. "Enlarging a photo often produces blurry details, but Super Resolution has an ace up its sleeve: an advanced machine learning model trained on millions of photos. Backed by this vast training set, Super Resolution can intelligently enlarge photos while maintaining clean edges and preserving important details."


What does this mean practically? Well, I immediately tested this out and was pretty shocked by the results. Though it might be hard to make out in the screenshot below, I took the surfing image shown below, which was captured a decade ago with a Nikon D700 -- a 12MP camera -- and ran the Super Resolution tool on it and the end result is a 48.2MP image that looks to be every bit as sharp (if not sharper) than the original image file. This means that I can now print that old 12MP image at significantly larger sizes than I ever could before. What this also means is that anyone with a lower resolution camera, i.e. the current crop of 24MP cameras, can now output huge image files for prints or any other usage that requires a higher resolution image file. In the three or four images I have run through this new feature in Photoshop I have found the results to be astoundingly good.

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Adobe Photoshop's New Super Resolution Feature is 'Jaw-Dropping'

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  • Cool Advertising (Score:5, Interesting)

    by trdtaylor ( 2664195 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @11:23AM (#61160884)

    This has been part of the Topaz Labs ecosystem (a picture/video editor) for years. Adobe finally getting tech integration that's been common in the competition doesn't make for 'historic' days.

    • by wiggles ( 30088 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @11:26AM (#61160900)

      Who is Topaz Labs? The reason this is news is because nobody has ever heard of Adobe's competition.

      • Topaz isn't a competitor. It's a major suite of plugins for Adobe tools that are widely used in industry.

    • I haven't looked, but some reviews put it way ahead of Topaz - which is surprising for a first release even if it is from someone as big as Adobe.

    • This is better (Score:4, Informative)

      by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @12:23PM (#61161208)

      This has been part of the Topaz Labs ecosystem (a picture/video editor) for years.>

      It has, but the Photoshop version seems better (fewer artifacts) and runs much faster (3 seconds vs. 1 minute 23 seconds) [fstoppers.com].

      I also have Topaz Gigapixel, but the artifacts really put me off from using it much, and Photoshop seems to have done a much better job controlling it. Have not tried on my own images yet.

    • I know you couldn't be bothered to RTFA in your breathless rush to tell everyone how unimpressed you are, but it mentions Topaz:

      I have tried some of the Topaz AI software options, like Topaz Gigapixel AI, but I have not seen it work this well.

      Nobody is claiming Adobe invented AI image upscaling (and nobody used the word 'historic' except you). But Photoshop is THE industry standard, and them launching a best-in-class implementation of this feature WILL cause a major shift and mass adoption of this as stand

    • Very cool photo editing software. Never heard of Topaz Labs, but now i know. Amazing. Thank you.
    • by Shark ( 78448 )

      Yeah.
      Besides, I bet all those pictures are photoshopped anyway.

  • JAW DROPPING!!!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by samwichse ( 1056268 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @11:29AM (#61160918)

    But not jaw dropping enough for me to rent software.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I had a look for an open source version of this yesterday. There isn't really anything.

      There are some specialist ones for anime that look cool, but something I can drop an arbitrary photo onto and get back a 2x resolution version... Nothing as far as I can tell.

    • on this very topic [youtube.com]. He tried to switch off (it'd save him $10k a year) but ultimately couldn't.

      The big thing was how everything integrates. Adobe has a product for everything. You can find cheaper alternatives that you can own, but then you're constantly fussing about to get them all working together. It doesn't help that his employees are all used to Adobe.

      The lost time wasn't worth it. This isn't a surprise. Adobe's a huge company. They'd do studies to show how much money people make and save usin
    • If you want to actually buy software that does this better than photoshop does then Topaz Labs is more than happy to sell you their image resizer which has done this for many years already.

  • 1. "Enhance" grainy security footage with generated pixels
    2. Match generated pixels against facial recognition data base to produce generated perp
    3. Kill perp in the course of serving a SWAT style no-knock warrant
    4. CASE CLOSED (profit?)

    • by taustin ( 171655 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @12:28PM (#61161236) Homepage Journal

      I have always wanted to see a scene in a cop show involving grainy, low res security video:

      Detective: "Can you enhance that so we can run facial rec on it?"

      Tech: "Sure thing, boss. Who do you want it to look like?"

    • by dwywit ( 1109409 )

      Enhance 224 to 176.
      Enhance, stop.
      Move in, stop.
      Pull out, track right, stop.
      Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop.
      Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36.
      Pan right and pull back. Stop.
      Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop.
      Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop.
      Enhance 15 to 23.
      Give me a hard copy right there.

  • by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @11:42AM (#61160998) Journal
    Super Resolution builds on a technology Adobe launched two years ago called Enhance Details

    Did Adobe take a cue from Red Dwarf [youtube.com]?
  • Finally crimes can be solved by zooming in on a reflection on someoneâ(TM)s eyeball.

  • I think a better link to see how well the new super-resolution works, is this Fstoppers [fstoppers.com] story comparing the Photoshop update to an existing solution, Topaz Gigapixel - the Photoshop results were faster, with significantly fewer artifacts.

  • by nuckfuts ( 690967 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @12:14PM (#61161152)

    the end result is a 48.2MP image that looks to be every bit as sharp (if not sharper) than the original image file. This means that I can now print that old 12MP image at significantly larger sizes than I ever could before.

    But did you actually print the image at a significantly larger size and compare the results?

    • Why? Do you think somehow a higher resolution picture that looks better on a screen will somehow have the opposite effect on the print?

      If I have two hot plates on the oven and one is glowing red and the other is black and hasn't been turned on, does I really need to touch both of them and measure the severity of the burn to know which one of them is hotter?

      • Why? Do you think somehow a higher resolution picture that looks better on a screen will somehow have the opposite effect on the print?

        I question whether a 48 megapixel image is going to appear noticeably better than a 12 megapixel image if they're being viewed on a computer monitor. Even a 4K UHD screen can only display around 8 megapixels. You either need to downscale the image to fit on your screen, or scroll around looking at small portions of the image. In which case, what is the point?

        • by Pieroxy ( 222434 )

          Why? Do you think somehow a higher resolution picture that looks better on a screen will somehow have the opposite effect on the print?

          I question whether a 48 megapixel image is going to appear noticeably better than a 12 megapixel image if they're being viewed on a computer monitor. Even a 4K UHD screen can only display around 8 megapixels. You either need to downscale the image to fit on your screen, or scroll around looking at small portions of the image. In which case, what is the point?

          Cropping is the point. You can adjust your image composition to a much higher degree.
          Also, printouts at a big size also need lotsa pixels.

  • For what? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh@@@gmail...com> on Monday March 15, 2021 @12:17PM (#61161178) Journal

    Professional photographers generally have a camera sensor with a resolution that's already excessive for whatever they're doing. The only exceptions I can think of, where higher resolutions would be useful, would be scientific or historical archiving purposes...for which you definitely don't want AI taking educated guesses at what's supposed to be there.

    • by pruss ( 246395 )

      How about non-professional photographers? :-)

    • Even if you have a 50MP camera, there are times when it's useful to have a good super scaler - if you end up wanting to heavily crop something for example.

      For stock photographers, this could bring new life to older images.

    • by ljw1004 ( 764174 )

      Professional photographers generally have a camera sensor with a resolution that's already excessive for whatever they're doing.

      I have several 32"x48" fine-art photography prints hung up in my house, printed on acrylic dibond. They look fine from a distance of a few feet, but they're the sort of pictures that invite close viewing, where I start to see artifacts. I'd be delighted for crisper edges through machine learning.

      I don't know how to explain it. I believe the source cameras are either 36 megapixels (7k*4k which should have yielded 125 pixels per inch at that size) or 50 megapixels (9k*6k which should have yielded 200 pixels p

    • The only exceptions I can think of, where higher resolutions would be useful, would be scientific or historical archiving purposes...for which you definitely don't want AI taking educated guesses at what's supposed to be there.

      What are you talking about? There is nothing wrong with an educated guess in science provided that you can quantify the uncertainty on the process used to reach that educated guess.

      We do this all the time in science because what we measure is reality as distorted by our detectors and instruments. We then use a variety of statistical methods - increasingly including machine learning algorithms - to make an estimate (i.e. educated guess) of what the real distribution was before our detectors mangled it. T

      • Yes, the analysis part is the difference, you wouldn't want Adobe's black box doing who-knows-what with your source data.

    • would be scientific or historical archiving purposes

      Oh I feel sorry for you. Your family discovered digital cameras only after fancy high res sensors came out. That must suck

      In the meantime there are people all over the world who aren't scientists or museum curators who have low resolution images on their PCs which they would like to blow up without nasty pixelation as a result.

    • So, you are saying... 640 MP should be enough for everyone.
  • advanced machine learning model trained on millions of photos

    AI is trained to interpolate based on what is normally there. We ought to remember to not trust such technique(s) in unusual images, such as those of other planets.

    They should also be scrupulously analyzed, if the results are used in court-proceedings as evidence...

    • This applies equally true to any digital capture even straight out of the hardware. There's a huge amount of interpretation of lighting and range-finding data that goes into recording the eventual .jpg file. And the old analog cameras? Same problem, but it was more the human being behind the shutter doing the biasing with the F-stop and shutter speed. The raw film out of the camera is already the result of tons of intervention by the observer. So for court cases, be careful. The problem of the OJ Simpson ma [wikipedia.org]

      • by mi ( 197448 )

        But those are fairly straightforward techniques, aren't they, not "artificial intelligence", the workings of which aren't always understood even by the very programmers creating it.

  • by nagora ( 177841 ) on Monday March 15, 2021 @01:15PM (#61161462)

    I've seen some of these things in action and they blow you away for a while. Once the novelty wears off you realise that the "machine learning" isn't perfect and is, indeed, making it up. Eventually, the draw of fidelity proves stronger.

    Also, PetaPixel are the same sort of retards who used to write for Hi-Fi magazines. Their opinions have no value to the reader, only to whoever paid for them.

  • Ever wonder how Apple can claim its iPhones take such great photos with a sensor that is 20 times or less smaller than a full frame 35mm, never mind a medium format? Interpolation. That's all this shit is. Ansel Adams said (paraphrased) you can make a great print from a great negative and even a good negative, but you can't make a great print from a bad negative. Maybe with this you might, but it won't be what you shot. And when do we just give up and let computers create our art and show us everything. Who
  • Please someone scale up the original Duke Nukem face. Then feed it back a bunch of times. Then add a link so I get to see it in full res :-)

  • Now that actually printed ads are as good as dead, they come with this feature.

  • I'm willing to bet that 99% of photographers will not produce a print larger than 4' (on an edge), seeing as how many large format printers do about 180PPI a 50MP camera will do well enough. For those of us who want make even bigger pictures, sure up-scaling could make things better. But for me it's not earth shattering and I could already upscale with topaz labs.

  • Now add this to browsers so that we only need to send lightweight 320x240 JPEGs and pass them through this algorithm recursively to get HiDPI images displayed on websites.

  • 12MP contains more pixels than necessary to print a 1200dpi poster size (24 inches by 36 inches) print.

    48MP is enough to print something the size of the side of a billboard.

    That's besides the fact that all these extra pixels are just machine interpreted pixel doubling, not actual data. That's like saying your pixel doubling 4K TV is providing more data when it's not.

  • I'd be very interested if anyone has an image of the actual T-shirt from the photo - it looks like the AI has possibly generated a more complex image than the original.
  • You take a 12 MP image, run it through the super resolution, and then, .... wait for it, run the output through the super resolution once again.

    Put it in a loop and before you know it you have 12 Gigapixel image. Image of what I don't know, but it will be 12 GP for sure...

  • by stikves ( 127823 ) on Tuesday March 16, 2021 @01:54AM (#61163672) Homepage

    I tried this on several really low resolution photos from early 2000s. (Crappy cameras, or scanned film based photos). And it only adds "noise" to the photo where there was more of a blur before. It just does not seem to work under those conditions.

    Yes, it might make your 12MP into a 48MP. However you can already print the 12MP in very large formats.

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