Super image enhancement

[Wade Smart]

Chris Mohler wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 22, 2008 at 1:34 PM, Wade Smart <wadesmart at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 20081121 1331 GMT-5
>>
>> I am looking for a either software or a plugin for gimp for super image
>> enhancement.
>>
>> You know when you take a picture and there is either a face or some text
>> in the background that you want to zoom in on, but when you do the image
>> gets blurry - I'm looking for something that can clear up that
>> blurriness. I a really nice piece of software recently but it was
>> Windows based and was very expensive. I was hoping to find something
>> less sophisticated but that could do something similar with say gimp.
>>
>> Does anyone know of something like that.
> 
> Hi Wade,
> 
> There are some interesting upscaling formulae out there - I saw one a
> while back that used fractal math for upscaling, but I've *never* seen
> software that could upscale without losing quality.  Nor do I think
> such a thing is truly possible - you are essentially asking a computer
> to *guess* what information should be present.   Many of the test
> cases given for the (sometime expensive) scaling software do indeed
> look pretty good, but as soon as you try applying that software to
> "real world" images, they look just as bad (if not worse) than the
> default resampling in GIMP or Photoshop.
> 
> I would love to be wrong on this one, but after many years as a
> graphic designer I unfortunately think I'm right.  Producers of shows
> like CSI ought to be ashamed of themselves for spreading the myth that
> one can zoom in indefinitely with "the right software"!  Well, it is
> all make-believe so I guess it's OK ;)
> 
> If you can't get the detail from doing the upscaling in GIMP ( it
> sometimes helps to scale in increments) and using something like
> Unsharp Mask, then there is really no "magic bullet" - you need a
> higher-resolution original...
> 
> Chris
> 

20081121 1359 GMT-5

Okay then. That is what I needed to know.
If I could do CSI quality -- that would be amazing.
Im just needing to read some next on an image that I cant clear up.
Ill try unsharp mask.

Thanks.

Wade


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