pxl SmartScale

[lkraan]

This week I needed to scale a small image up quite a bit and found this Photoshop plugin that does this much better than the stadard scale option. It's called pxl SmartScale and you cna download a trial on the products site.

http://www.extensis.com/en/products/product_family.jsp?locale=en_US&id=prod120009

[adam]

Cool. Downloading it now. Should mention that you have to sign up with the website to download the trial. I just put in some whack info *shrug*

Will try it out in about 10 minutes.

[r13]

i've used this... its not a bad tool to have hanging around if you need to up-rez textures with any frequency. the textures still needed work afterwards, but it does give a better place to start than without it.

[perna]

could someone post some examples of use, like before-after? I don't see much on the wepage

[lkraan]

Below an example. Not mine but from a site that reviewed the tool.
I have been playing with it a little bit because I need to scale a couple of images up by about 250%. The SmartScale results are sharper with kind of jagged edges instead of blurred ones that you get with standard PS scaling. If you clone the image and scale them individually with PS and SmartScale and then lay 1 on top of the other and "blend" them, then you get the sharpness from SmartScale image and the smoother curved edged from the PS image.

Logo increased 500%
Original size: 150x59
Resized: 750x295

SmartScale settings:

Sharpness: Smoother
Contrast: High
Detail: High
Extreme: On

Original image:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/reviews/ss/abt4.gif

Scaling results (standard PS vs. pxl SmartScale):
http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/reviews/ss/smartscale-compare.png