On our sister site, Digital Photo, we recently shared how a new Photoshop feature lets you enlarge a photo without losing image quality. Now here’s another way to go about resizing your images but in an extreme way.
In the below tutorial, landscape photographer and software expert Serge Ramelli shares a neat trick that allows you to transform a small image into a monster RAW file. In his demonstration in the video below, he takes an old 12 million pixel RAW photo and enlarges it into a 50 million pixel RAW file with improved image quality.
“It was shot with a Sony A7S III, which is a video camera, it’s not a photo camera,” Ramelli explains. “It’s a sensor that’s really made for video, so it does really small photos. Basically, 12 million pixels.”
You may be already familiar with his method for resizing in Lightroom. It’s a relatively new technology from Adobe called Super Resolution. To apply Super Resolution to Ramelli’s 12MP image, he right clicks on the shot in Lightroom, selects Enhance and picks the new Super Resolution option.
“What’s amazing about this is that it’s going to multiply the resolution by two,” he notes. “And now it’s an 8480 x 5664 resolution RAW file. It’s an almost 50-million-pixel photo. And it doesn’t stop there. Because it’s doing it on the RAW level, it’s taking all the hidden data in the RAW file. It’s the right way to boost your photos.”
Ramelli pushes the feature to the limit by using it on an image he shot with “the most incredible camera on the planet Earth for landscapes,” the 102MP Fujifilm GFX 100S medium format camera. “Look at this: it’s an 11,640 x 8736 resolution image. I’m going to right click, choose Enhance and I’m going to apply Super Resolution. Boom! Look at the resolution now: 23,296 x 17,472. This is a 400-million-pixel RAW file!”
So, who would want such a large image file? Anyone who prints their photos big and wants the maximum image quality.
“I’m actually going to make a huge print of this photo so I’m really happy,” he explains. “The more details, the better.”
What if I started back in the days before Photoshop made software for PCs? I use Corelle PhotoPaint and Corel Draw. It’s always been cheaper to upgrade once every 3 years then instead of having a subscription to pay, plus there’s no additional learning curve for me. Since you are a magazine / website dedicated to ALL photographers, what is your suggestion for me to blow up my pictures to those levels?
Doug Knoerr
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