25 replies to this topic

[tjc]

Thanks for all this one2fwee. I don`t know much about any of this but will take a look.

I knew before I posted my original post that upscaling images was tricky to get done without artifacts etc and retaining high quality but thought it was worth posting just to see if there was any software out there that made a decent job of it.

It`s a pity I don`t have the original RAW files to work from but that lesson has now been well learned.

[jgf]

A major consideration when enlarging images is that beyond about 20% enlargement you will rarely be completely satisfied with the results (occasionally, depending on your skills and the image contents, you can go further, but in stages - enlarge, clean up the image, enlarge again).  But that is not endemic to digital work, photo enlarging is the same, you can only go so far before lack of detail is evident;  digital resizing has the advantage of, with variable results, interpolating between pixels what it thinks should be there.  That is why you never edit with jpg files, they have a loss of detail to start with, so any attempts to enlarge just exacerbate the problem.

[tjc]

jgf, on Oct 16 2020 - 10:53 AM, said:

A major consideration when enlarging images is that beyond about 20% enlargement you will rarely be completely satisfied with the results (occasionally, depending on your skills and the image contents, you can go further, but in stages - enlarge, clean up the image, enlarge again).  But that is not endemic to digital work, photo enlarging is the same, you can only go so far before lack of detail is evident;  digital resizing has the advantage of, with variable results, interpolating between pixels what it thinks should be there.  That is why you never edit with jpg files, they have a loss of detail to start with, so any attempts to enlarge just exacerbate the problem.

Yes, I appreciate all of the above. I may just try and enlarge/resize the images a little to see what they look like and put this down to experience. I now keep all the RAW files of all the images I want to keep so I can go back and re-edit/re-size the way I want to. It`s just unfortunate I didn`t do this with the few images I`m talking about but you live and learn I guess.

[jgf]

Ah,we've all been there.  I abandoned a project to convert a carset from one sim to another when the 2048 master images were lost in an HD crash;  had the choice of resizing the existing 512 images to 1024 and retouching them all or starting from scratch, neither proposition was appealing.

[Saiph]

I bought a 1TB Western Digital Passport USB 3.0 external drive several years ago, and found some software called "Syncback Free" by a company called "2BrightSparks", and these have handled all my backup needs very well. The drive is very convenient, it's powered solely by the USB port so it doesn't even need an external power supply. Given how storage prices have dropped steadily over time, a 1TB drive should be quite cheap now, or alternatively you might need one with bigger capacity. Backing up valuable original data files is always important.

Edited by Saiph, Oct 17 2020 - 01:10 PM.

[jgf]

Those drives are wonderful.  Bought three several years ago, alternated two for complete monthly backups of both 500g HDs in my desktop;  both still work as new ...desktop died.  Saw them on sale at Newegg a couple of months ago for $50 each.