Free image enlarging software

[ffutures]

For the first time in a long while the "Giveaway of the Day" program looks genuinely useful

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/reshade/

Reshade is an image enlarging program for PCs - you select part of an image (or the whole of a small image) and select the magnification, it's then resampled and detail is interpolated to make it look more real. It appears to work, though I think that tweaking it for the best results for any given image will be an acquired skill. If anything it shows how stupid the CSI-style infallible image enhancement and all the recent "martian statue" things are - you add that much detail to an image, it could end up looking like anything depending on how the software is set.

Think it's available for another 20 hours, if you need something like this I think it's worth a try.

Later - here's what I got using this program to enlarge my icon then posterizing the result

Comments

[lawbag.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, this is the first time in many months where they have given away something that MIGHT be useful.

Im getting kinda sick of DVD cover designers, spam filters, filemanagers etc...

[aitkendrum.livejournal.com]

Very useful. Thanks for link.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Well, "CSI-style infallible image enhancement" is impossible. You can't enhance what's not there.

I had a look and it does a reasonable job of antialising and smoothing stuff but the whole thing looks like it's been painted over and smudged so not really useful.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I agree it can't create detail that isn't there, but occasionally what it can do could be useful for me, e.g. for game illos.

[karohemd.livejournal.com]

Hm, I could imagine that it could work better for line drawings.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm thinking of things like blowing up small photos to use as illos - with the right enlargement plus "artistic" effects they can look like portraits.

[dsample.livejournal.com]

In one of Rick Cook's Wizardry books, the US Air Force takes a perfectly good photo of a dragon, and "enhances" it into what they figure is some sort of experimental Soviet stealth fighter. At the end they're trying to read the tail number off it.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Remember it well.