...This is what we all strive for and I want to give you a helping hand to achieve this.
One of the other photo editing software I use is OnOne Software.
In particular the one below. Printing your image correctly is one of the most important parts of photography, without this ability you will never be able to achieve the ultimate wow's of the professional industry. And if your happy to print your images to just to show your family and friends? Good for you! If I was you, I wouldn't worry about the product mentioned below. But definitely worth a read if you wish to take your photography to the next level.
Perfect Resize 7 (formally known as Genuine Fractuls) -
This is what is known as a "photoshop plug-in". Plug-ins are thrid party applications that can be used inside Photoshop. This one in particular, has the ability to upsize your images up to 800% their native size and keep the clarity regardless (to an extent) of the megapixel size of you camera (see the graph below). It also allows you to upscale to 400dpi print resolution. This is helpfully when getting professional print labs to print your work. They would normally produce it in 200dpi, unless advised to produce to 400dpi. Don't worry they can upscale it for you, if you don't mind paying a little bit extra. Cheeky aren't they! Not really, it's a manual larbour thing. If they had to resize every single file that came through they would hardly get any work done.
Hang on a sec Josh! Can't Photoshop upscale to 400dpi too? You betcha! But does it do the same job? Photoshop has been the world leader in retouching for years. But many would consider it not perfect in all disciplines. There are some of these large stand alone companies that inject a lot of money into the development of specific products to work inside of photoshop. Typically they focus on these particular disciplines because photoshop may be weaker and they see it as an opportunity to capitalise on this segment of editing.
Below are some image examples of the difference between Photoshop's Bicubic Smoother (best for enlargement) image resize and OnOne Software Perfect Resize 7.
Hyponotised yet??
Below is a table that will give you an idea how big your image could go with Perfect Resize 7. There is an interactive version on their website that you can play around with by clicking
here and looking in "what's new in Perfect resize 7". But as an example I have done a 12 megapixel camera at 300dpi. As we can see, what would ordinarily have been only able to produce a 14" x 10" enlargement can now produce a 115" x 75" enlargement. Pretty cool! Firstly, I'm not sure how many people could hang a 115" x 75" image in their house nicely, but you get the picture (excuse the pun).
As per usually these days all the software companies have free trials of their products so there is nowhere to hide, when making claims, and On One Software is no different. You can try Perfect Resize 7 or any other of their products, (for that matter) FREE for 30 days with no restrictions. To with the trial they also they have some big savings to be had at the moment. Just click on the graphic below to see what on sale. I know it says "Summer Savings" all the southern hemispherian (is that a word) people - On One is based out of UK and US.
I'm not sure how long this sale is on for? One would imagine all of summer? Anyway you can get it for $99.95 at the moment (RRP $159.95). While you are there you may see more value in getting the full suite of On One Software tools, known as Perfect Photo Suite 5.5, for $299.95 instead of RRP $499.95. But before you buy it, check out the free training videos which will show you all the features for each.
i hope this helps you get on the way to producing some really cool stuff! If you have any questions let me know.
Happy shooting.
Josh :)
