The Big Picture (ACR Super Resolution)

[Benny Profane]

Just used this for the first time on a batch of images from a recent trip to Utah/Death Valley. Pretty damn happy, except for the artifacts creating a "lumpy" sky in a few images.

[Chris Kern]

The "Super Resolution" feature is now available in the latest rev of Lightroom (10.3), as well.  Seems to work the same as in Photoshop.

[Benny Profane]

Super! That just made life easier.

I have to get some new drives. This eats up space quicker than a big American family can wipe out a Golden Corral all you can eat special.

[Jonathan Cross]

Have finally had a real task that needed up res. I was asked to take a high res image of a complex painted map nearly 100 years old and about 6ft x 4 ft 6 inches. It is mounted in a room where one can only get about 8 or 9 ft away. I took a single image and 9 overlapping images in a 3x3 matrix. All were taken in raw with my 26MP Fuji X-T4. I put the single image through Photoshop Super Resolution and the 9 images through Ptgui pro.

My subjective opinion is that Ptgui gave a better result. I am not surprised given that Ptgui did not have to generate pixels.  Of course this was a situation that was static.

Jonathan

[plugsnpixels]

I'm late to the game here because I've been using Gigapixel for over three years and was just reminded of Super Resolution while reviewing back issues of Photoshop User.

Here's my experience with a couple of 20-year-old 1-megapixel images (I like to do "extreme" tests). To my eye, Super Resolution is smoothing out the rough pixelization but not otherwise doing much to these images vs. Gigapixel (?).

I understand they work differently, but I prefer the cleaner results.

[digitaldog]

I prefer to do as much work as possible from raw data.

[Rhossydd]

I prefer to do as much work as possible from raw data.

The theory's sound, but in practice I find outputting a full size TIF and then uprezing in PS gives better results than the super resolution option. It's a feature that just not refined enough yet.

Gigapixel offers a marginal improvement over the PS file, but it needs some gamma correction to get back to the correct tonality.

[digitaldog]

Gigapixel offers a marginal improvement over the PS file, but it needs some gamma correction to get back to the correct tonality.

Thanks. Another reason I'll save some money and pass.

[Chris Kern]

The theory's sound, but in practice I find outputting a full size TIF and then uprezing in PS gives better results than the super resolution option. It's a feature that just not refined enough yet.

I'm not certain why the ACR and Lightroom versions of "super resolution" would differ.  It was my impression they shared the same neural network implementation.

In any event, of your three examples, the one produced by Lightroom super resolution marginally looks the best to me.  I see some halos and also softness around the letters in the Gigapixel example.  It's as though the program is oversharpening—and then performing aggressive noise reduction that results in blurring the high-contrast boundaries. (Gigapixel Auto Settings option, perhaps?)

I haven't done a lot of head-to-head testing, but on the files I've enlarged with both the Adobe and Topaz products, I've rarely detected any significant difference in 2X enlargements with similar post-enlargement adjustments.  Of course, Gigapixel offers options for even greater increases in linear dimensions.

[digitaldog]

I'm not certain why the ACR and Lightroom versions of "super resolution" would differ. 

They do not. When on version parity, the two are indentical.

Even without Super Resoution, the ACR engine should provide a better resampling up than Photoshop for a number of reasons, both resampling is a hybrid Bicubic algorithm that interpolates between Bicubic and Bicubic Smoother for upsampling and Bicubic and Bicubic Sharper for downsampling. Lightroom and ACR uses a adaptive bicubic algorithm: the algorithm parameters are chosen automatically based on the relationship between the original image size and the final image size, from raw linear data. These parameters were determined empirically by doing lots of experiments with photos being resampled to common output sizes, such as web-sized images (800 to 1000pixels on the longer dimension), small prints, and big prints.

I can see slight improvement over the same resizing using various Photoshop algorithms. But what I see as visible improvements, others may not agree.
Having parametric edits that just get better as time goes on, and without dealing with large TIFFs (with burned in edits) is yet again why I prefer to do all of this at the raw stage. YMMV.

I agree about the halo's in that 3rd party upsizing product; not attractive to me.

[digitaldog]

It's a feature that just not refined enough yet.

You render a big TIFF, you've baked that cake.
You create a (new) linear DNG with the Super Resolution; your original raw is untouched of course and you're working on not true raw but more raw data but here's the cool thing: Adobe does refine it and other parts of the ACR engine. You still have the original raw, you can resample it using Super Resolution V2 (and V3 etc) and produce a new Linear raw, copy and paste ALL your parametric edits into this new Linear raw. We've seen 5 major process versions in LR/ACR, a 6th will be provided (anything further, I can't discuss).
This again is why I prefer to do as much work as possible from raw data.

[Chris Kern]

Having parametric edits that just get better as time goes on, and without dealing with large TIFFs (with burned in edits) is yet again why I prefer to do all of this at the raw stage.

I agree and that's why when I use "super resolution," I don't invoke it until I've adjusted the image to my satisfaction.*  I occasionally make some additional minor tweaks to the resulting Linear DNG—perhaps because the neural network has interpreted some of the tonal or color adjustments differently than they looked to me when I was making them on my monitor**—but I don't recall ever feeling the need for more than a couple of post-enlargement modifications.  So if at some time in the future I decide to make further changes, I can work from the original raw and spin off another super-resolution enlargement.

———
*I invoke the "fine details" option before I make any other adjustments, however, because it can affect what I do with the manual controls.

**My monitors have a color space roughly equivalent to Adobe RGB, but I presume the "super resolution" function is operating within Lightroom's larger color space.

[digitaldog]

Yes, the ACR engine uses ProPhoto RGB primaries and 1.0 TRC for all processing.

[Rhossydd]

You render a big TIFF, you've baked that cake.

Yes, but today I get the best result for today by the route I've outlined and I can then delete if if chose to.
I've still got the raw if the feature is improved at some future time or I can export and use another upsized TIF when I want to, if I deleted it.

[Rhossydd]

In any event, of your three examples, the one produced by Lightroom super resolution marginally looks the best to me.

Wow. I doubt many people would agree with you on that.

[digitaldog]

Yes, but today I get the best result for today by the route I've outlined and I can then delete if if chose to.

If you say so (better results). The examples don't speak for themselves as at least two of us have commented.
If you are happy with what you have, be happy that you're happy. 

Wow. I doubt many people would agree with you on that.

Wow. Two of us here did with respect to your examples.

[Rhossydd]

Two of us here did with respect to your examples.

Your comment wasn't exactly clear. But you think that middle example with all the false artifacts and noise is better ? really ?

[digitaldog]

Your comment wasn't exactly clear. But you think that middle example with all the false artifacts and noise is better ? really ?

Two of us agree to disagree with you.

[Rhossydd]

ROFL credibility drops another point.

[digitaldog]

ROFL credibility drops another point.

Probably what Chris and certainly I feel about your example. And “workflow”.
To each his own.