Lets face it sometimes no matter how well you hoped and planned you simply do not have a large enough or high enough resolution image to print it the size you want. This can happen for several reasons, which can but are not limited to...

 

• You had the camera set at a lower the full resolution setting. Since many digital cameras allow you to choose lower resolutions than just the highest. For example my Panasonic FZ30 allows me to go from 8MP to 5MP, 3MP, 2MP and 1MP. For the FZ30 going to a lower resolution will increase your optical zoom from the normal 12X to 19.1X at 3MP. And, since that extra zoom is so handy I use this feature a lot and so sometimes I forget to reset it to 8MP.
• It was out of your control. Some digital cameras today allow you to choose which aspect ratio you want to shoot your image in. My Panasonic for example allows for 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9. However, choosing something other than the 4:3 default automatically drops the resolution down. For example at 3:2 the resolution automatically drops to 7MP and at 16:9 it goes to 5.5MP. You have no control over this other than to go to a lower resolution.
• You don’t have a much optical zoom on your camera or you don’t have zoom at all. Many cameras today only have optical zooms to 3X. While some go as high as 12X, most are at 3X and if you have a lower priced camera you may not have anything but digital zoom which should never be used. This zoom limit can leave you no choice but to crop your image and cropping will cause MP loss.
• Your client needs a photo printed and all that they have is a low resolution image. You have no choice and they have no choice.

 

These are just some of the reasons you may have a need to artificially enlarge an image. By artificial I mean having a program like Adobe Photoshop resize the image up, this is artificial enlargement because Photoshop basically has to look at the image and guess at what it adds. This can be a problem if you have to enlarge the image by a large amount and can cause some major problems. Problems like a lack of sharpness, blockiness and other such image deformities and these are not good things.

Every image editor I have worked with has some way of enlarging or shrinking an image. Adobe Photoshop does, Adobe Photoshop Elements does, Corel Paint Shop Pro does, Corel Photo-Paint does, Corel Painter does, even the freeware The Gimp does.

 

The general rule with these programs for enlarging is that assuming that you have a good quality image, meaning it is only low resolution but good quality (good sharpness, etc.) is that you can double its size and be ok. You run in to problems when you need to do more than double its size. It is at these times that you may want to consider a specialized image enlargement program or plug-in. One such plug-in is Alien Skin’s Blow Up. This is a new plug-in that hasn’t been on the market long, but seems to be making quite a few waves.

 

For this review I am going to keep the comparisons simple. I am going to compare Alien Skin Blow Up to Adobe Photoshop’s Image Resize command. I am going to take a 1MP image straight from my Panasonic FZ30 digital camera and I am going to enlarge that to 5 times its original size. I have all of the settings in the camera set to factory defaults. These settings include such things as in camera sharpening, contrast, saturation, etc. I have included samples from this comparison in the Image Gallery section of this review.

Blow Up is an easy to use Photoshop Plug-in. Because it is an automate plug-in it does require Adobe Photoshop CS or higher or Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 or higher. It DOES NOT work with any other image editors including Corel Photo-Paint, Corel Paint Shop Pro, Corel Painter or The Gimp. Only Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. Blow Up is not your standard plug-in in this regard it is important to understand this.

 

Once you have Blow Up installed you simply load your image and then access the Blow Up plug-in from the File > Automate menu (this is another indication that this is not your standard Adobe Photoshop Plug-in). The Blow Up interface is clean, simple and straight forwards. You have controls for setting the Pixel dimensions, Document size including dpi, you can constrain proportions so you don’t distort the image, You can duplicate the image before resizing so you will still have the original image at its original size, You can sharpen the resized image and you can add grain to the resized image. Both the sharpening and grain sliders help improve the overall quality of the enlarged image. The addition of grain is helpful in that it helps to keep the image from looking too plastic and it can actually make the image look like it has more detail. Sharpening is almost always needed to help counter any softening of the image.

 

Don’t kid yourself however. Blow Up just like any other enlargement program, routine or plug-in works just like the image resize function in your image editor and that is it has to guess at the data it adds to the image to enlarge it. The difference is each of these programs, routines or plug-ins uses a different method to guess at this new data. Some do a much better job than others. But, it is still guessed data and none of them add more detail to the image, they can’t add what wasn’t there. None of these plug-ins knows a tree or leaf from a car or dog for that matter. They just aren’t that smart.

 

Blow Up works fairly quickly and I find the finished results provided you started with a good quality source image (meaning one that is soft or blurred or one that has lots of jpg compression artifacts, etc.) is quite good. In fact in printing the Blow Up resized image does look better than the Photoshop resized image. You may not see this on screen, something happens during the printing process and so what you see on screen is not always what you see when it is printed and I am not talking about color matching.

 

Alien Skin Blow Up is a very worthwhile option for anyone that finds themselves having to enlarge small low resolution images. It is easy to use and the grain slider is a real godsend. Is Blow Up right for you? I can’t tell you that, I can tell you I am impressed. However, I recommend that you download the demo and try it out for yourself. Only you know if it is what you want and need.

• Two large preview windows, one shows full size and the other shows a smaller size with a bounding box indicating the portion of the image being viewed in the full size preview box. There windows are live, meaning you can click and drag the image around in them so you can see different areas of the image.
• Easily set the new size of the image using either pixel width and height or by document size using width, height and dpi using several measurements including percent, inches, etc.
• Easily constrain your image enlargement with the “Constrain Proportions” check box. With this checked you cannot distort your images, unchecked you can distort all you like.
• Protect your source file by having Blow Up create a duplicate of your image. Simply check the “Duplicate Image Before Resizing” check box.
• Sharpen your resized image to help keep the edges sharp, you can set an amount from 0 to 100 in 00.01 increments.
• Add grain (not noise, but real grain. It uses very similar grain technology as Alien Skins Exposure plug-in which is derived from real film) to your resized image to make it look more real and to keep it from looking like plastic. Adding grain also helps give the illusion of more detail.
• Very easy to use interface, none of the controls need any kind of explanation as you would have already used them in Adobe Photoshop or other programs all ready. Makes the amount of time required from installation to useful output very short.