Topaz Gigapixel Question: I tried the program a few months back but returned it. I didn’t see any benefit from it. I wanted to know if it is useful for upgrading phone pics. I get pics...

Amadeus Loc: New York

I tried the program a few months back but returned it. I didn’t see any benefit from it. I wanted to know if it is useful for upgrading phone pics. I get pics from grandkids, usually low quality and wanted to know if it could make a difference for those. It’s on sale for one more day and I have sharpen and DeNoise so it would be inexpensive.

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

I would start at the source first... why are grandkids photos low quality? Assuming they are from a smart cell phone, with even the cheapest producing high/decent quality photos today, I would ask they send the actual photo by email vs processing someway, texting or thru FB Msg which often down grades pics to smaller size, etc. Then you can run thru any PP program you have to lighten, increase contrast & sharpness, saturate, etc.

jdubu Loc: San Jose, CA

I found that Gigapixel and jpeg to RAW are programs I use for other people's files rather than mine. The exceptions were digital photos from 20 years ago shot on cameras not capable of raw format.

Now, I use them for friends and clients wanting their old photos enhanced or printed beyond the resolution of the original file. Those 2 programs just produce an adjusted tiff or dng file that makes PP easier for me. Although not a part of my normal workflow, I find them useful in those instances. I have worked with phone photos and small low res point and shoot files.

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

As Stardust asked, why low quality? Most cell phones cameras are 12mp or higher. No need to use GigaPixel AI for images that large. If the original files are blurred, color off, red eyes, soft, flat, dark, bright, ... , then upsizing them will only upsize the flaws. I use Gigapixel AI and it works great for heavily cropped images like under 2k x 2k pixels (4mp) for 2x or even 4x enlargements, but flaws get fixed in PhotoShop.

Amadeus Loc: New York

Idk. The pics I get are in the kb range. I’m not sure why. I guess they’re compressed when texted to me or whatever. But if they are small will gigapixel improve them?

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

Amadeus wrote:

Idk. The pics I get are in the kb range. I’m not sure why. I guess they’re compressed when texted to me or whatever. But if they are small will gigapixel improve them?

If they are jpgs, and most smart phone photos are, then they are compressed. BTW, you can ask them to go into their settings and select high quality, which will reduce the amount of compression, but the files will be larger. Mac or PC? If PC, just double click the jpg and it should open. Depending on your version of photos somewhere there will be a menu item "file info". In my version of Photo, click the 3 dots at the top middle of the screen and a drop down menu with "file info" will appear. Click it and it will tell you the size in pixels.

ELNikkor

Many of my early digital photos were also in the kb range. I've used Gigapixel to bump them up to 5mb. What it does for me is make them more printable. It also helps if I want to sharpen or denoise after the up-sizing.

Arend Loc: Holland

If you get these photos via e.g. WhatsApp they are reduced to approx. 75 kb to 150kb. Also if they forward to you via email such as yahoo or gmail they can choose the level of reduction to save time and space.
Ask them to forward in the original 12 or 16 mp size attached to the email or use Wetransfer

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

Do a you tube search and you will find Tutorial/Reviews. All I watched were very positive with examples.
Search "You Tube Gigapixel" and take your pick of many.

ghbowser Loc: Shenandoah Valley, Virginia

I have found gigapixel really useful for restoring scanned pics or old files that are small sized. Not used much on pics with better cameras or high resolution scans unless I am highly cropping them. It is worth the money if you are working with small size files and want to print or display in larger format.

ronichas Loc: Long Island

I have discount codes for Topaz products. This can be combined with sales.
PM me if interested.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

Amadeus wrote:

I tried the program a few months back but returned it. I didn’t see any benefit from it. I wanted to know if it is useful for upgrading phone pics. I get pics from grandkids, usually low quality and wanted to know if it could make a difference for those. It’s on sale for one more day and I have sharpen and DeNoise so it would be inexpensive.

If you have an Adobe program you CAN use the default Bicubic smoother for enlarging in small increments (20%) ......no extra cost or fooling around...

goldenyears Loc: Lake Osewgo

Amadeus wrote:

I tried the program a few months back but returned it. I didn’t see any benefit from it. I wanted to know if it is useful for upgrading phone pics. I get pics from grandkids, usually low quality and wanted to know if it could make a difference for those. It’s on sale for one more day and I have sharpen and DeNoise so it would be inexpensive.

I have gotten some amazing results from Gigapixel. However, it doesn't always help. Also, I find that sometimes I have to use multiple editors to salvage photos. I have many post-processors. Most free. I haven't tried to analyze what each of them does best. I just experiment intuitively until I'm happy with the result.

Amadeus Loc: New York

I do use Affinity and it has a feature for increasing the megapixels. I just never see any real improvement. I have to try and just get better quality pics as some have suggested is possible.

bwana Loc: Bergen, Alberta, Canada

Stardust wrote:

I would start at the source first... why are grandkids photos low quality? Assuming they are from a smart cell phone, with even the cheapest producing high/decent quality photos today, I would ask they send the actual photo by email vs processing someway, texting or thru FB Msg which often down grades pics to smaller size, etc. Then you can run thru any PP program you have to lighten, increase contrast & sharpness, saturate, etc.

I have the same problem with my kids and grandkids, i.e.: they keep sending the smallest possible pictures and then expect me to make them look good on prints and in our annual calendar. The good quality pictures are available, just get them to you.

bwa