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Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

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Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#91

Post by TeMPOraL »

ISL wrote: post #6

As a metrologist (and photographer), the difficulty with these techniques is that they can over-represent the information contained within an image; they present an image of what was "probably" there, rather than representing what was. These aren't so different from our own brains, which remember what we thought we saw, rather than the light that reached our retinas. These methods are already in extensive use (most s…

What worries me is that COTS photo equipment increasingly comes with these algorithmic retouches that "over-represent" the data - or, put another way, bake its own interpretation into image, in a way that cannot be distinguished from source data.

It's nice for a casual Instagrammer, but then a lot of science and engineering also gets done using COTS equipment. I worry that at some point, a lot of money will be burned, a lot of time wasted, or even lives lost, because someone didn't notice they've based the conclusions of their scientific experiment/engineering analysis on such "computer best guesses". As a researcher, you'll see a weird pattern on some of the photos and will be left wondering, is that a real phenomenon, or is it just one of the black box, trade secret neural networks in the camera choking on input data it wasn't trained for?

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#92

Post by bscphil »

jrockway wrote: post #34
ISL wrote: post #6

As a metrologist (and photographer), the difficulty with these techniques is that they can over-represent the information contained within an image; they present an image of what was "probably" there, rather than representing what was. These aren't so different from our own brains, which remember what we thought we saw, rather than the light that reached our retinas. These methods are already in extensive use (most s…

I think this is probably good for what people use photos for; it lets them show a crop without the image looking pixelated. That means if they just want a photo to draw you in to their blog post, they don't have to take a perfect photograph with the right lens and right composition at the right time. And I think that's fine. No new information is created by ML upscaling, but it will look just good enough to fade into…

> Google downrez'd all my photos, so the negatives are all I have

Wow, Google ate your one digital copy? That's tragic.

What's the approximate resolution you could get out of a scan from these labs?

I was interested in getting into film cameras at one point, and I was disappointed with how low the scanning resolution is from most labs. For example mpix only advertises 18MB, which they say is good enough for a 12in by 18in print. North Coast Photo (what Ken Rockwell recommends) is even worse! What if you want something to put on the wall?

Granted, if the original film you shoot is perfect you can have a print done from the negatives, but that kind of defeats the point of having a high quality scan as a backup.

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#93

Post by bscphil »

signal11 wrote: post #90

For those wanting to try this out without paying for Creative Suite, Pixelmator Pro on the Mac ($40) has something similar[1]. The iPad version ($8) also has this feature now[2]. [1] https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2019/12/17/all-about-the-new... [2] https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2020/09/15/pixelmator-photo-...

If it's just a matter of "trying it out", Adobe's Creative Cloud has a free trial already, is only $10 a month normally (IIRC), and has the advantage of running on Windows.

Edit: the photography bundle, which includes Photoshop, is $10/month, not Creative Cloud as a whole. Thanks to mastazi.

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#94

Post by mastazi »

bscphil wrote: post #93
signal11 wrote: post #90

For those wanting to try this out without paying for Creative Suite, Pixelmator Pro on the Mac ($40) has something similar[1]. The iPad version ($8) also has this feature now[2]. [1] https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2019/12/17/all-about-the-new... [2] https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2020/09/15/pixelmator-photo-...

If it's just a matter of "trying it out", Adobe's Creative Cloud has a free trial already, is only $10 a month normally (IIRC), and has the advantage of running on Windows. Edit: the photography bundle, which includes Photoshop, is $10/month, not Creative Cloud as a whole. Thanks to mastazi.

Just to clarify, the one that costs US $9.99 per month is the Photography bundle (Lightroom and Photoshop). Just adding this as there are many different Creative Cloud subscriptions with monthly prices as high as US $52 https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#95

Post by jrockway »

bscphil wrote: post #92
jrockway wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is probably good for what people use photos for; it lets them show a crop without the image looking pixelated. That means if they just want a photo to draw you in to their blog post, they don't have to take a perfect photograph with the right lens and right composition at the right time. And I think that's fine. No new information is created by ML upscaling, but it will look just good enough to fade into…

> Google downrez'd all my photos, so the negatives are all I have Wow, Google ate your one digital copy? That's tragic. What's the approximate resolution you could get out of a scan from these labs? I was interested in getting into film cameras at one point, and I was disappointed with how low the scanning resolution is from most labs. For example mpix only advertises 18MB, which they say is good enough for a 12in by…

Yeah, paying people to scan your photos doesn't yield good results. I did that early on and found it expensive and low quality. Honestly, the process they use doesn't scale well, and I think they offer film scans to be nice, rather than because it's a viable business.

With my home setup, I can easily do 50-80 megapixels on a 4x5 negative. I use a flatbed photo scanner (the Epson V800) and wet-mount the film. It is Quite The Process involving a lot of parts (liquids, optical film to place on top of the mount, careful calibration of the focus point, etc.) but the results are excellent and relatively repeatable. But, all in, I'd estimate that it's probably a half hour of labor per photo, so you can see why labs charge so much. (Dry mounting doesn't save that much time, because of the amount of time you spend avoiding dust and optical artifacts intrinsic in using two extra sheets of glass.)

The real professionals use drum scanners. They are quite expensive, but offer incredibly high resolution and decent throughput for the operator. Looking around at prices, for $100 you can get a 320MP scan of a 4x5 negative yielding a 1.7GB file. http://www.drumscanning.com/rates.html For fine grained black and white films, you can certainly extract information that actually exists. As someone who mostly uses T-Max 400, though, that would be overkill. I can't imagine getting much more information out of my photos than I get with a flatbed.

In summary, you can see why even pixel peepers are content with their Sony A7R. Press button, get 50 megapixels. And no toxic chemicals being absorbed through your skin.

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#96

Post by Judgmentality »

Someone wrote: post #89

I suggest to read the Adobe blogpost at https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2021/03/10/from-the-acr-te... instead. It has sample images side-by-side with bicubic upsampling. Even better comparisons are in the blog post for a competing product: https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2019/12/17/all-about-the-new... (likely the same algorithm, but using a different training set, so results will be different from what Adobes prod…

> Even better comparisons are in the blog post for a competing product: https://www.pixelmator.com/blog/2019/12/17/all-about-the-new... (likely the same algorithm, but using a different training set, so results will be different from what Adobes product does).

Aren't those comparisons misleading though? The ML sample is 4x the resolution, comparing to something that is supposed to be used to also make something 4x the resolution. They aren't upsampling the comparison, so I don't know what they're actually doing with it. It's so misleading I just assume the company is scummy.

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#97

Post by bscphil »

mastazi wrote: post #94
bscphil wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's just a matter of "trying it out", Adobe's Creative Cloud has a free trial already, is only $10 a month normally (IIRC), and has the advantage of running on Windows. Edit: the photography bundle, which includes Photoshop, is $10/month, not Creative Cloud as a whole. Thanks to mastazi.

Just to clarify, the one that costs US $9.99 per month is the Photography bundle (Lightroom and Photoshop). Just adding this as there are many different Creative Cloud subscriptions with monthly prices as high as US $52 https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

That's right, thanks, I'd forgotten. That said, Photoshop is all you'd need to test the feature here.

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#98

Post by kamel3d »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #91
ISL wrote: post #6

As a metrologist (and photographer), the difficulty with these techniques is that they can over-represent the information contained within an image; they present an image of what was "probably" there, rather than representing what was. These aren't so different from our own brains, which remember what we thought we saw, rather than the light that reached our retinas. These methods are already in extensive use (most s…

What worries me is that COTS photo equipment increasingly comes with these algorithmic retouches that "over-represent" the data - or, put another way, bake its own interpretation into image, in a way that cannot be distinguished from source data. It's nice for a casual Instagrammer, but then a lot of science and engineering also gets done using COTS equipment. I worry that at some point, a lot of money will be burned…

Well just don't use it

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#99

Post by bscphil »

jrockway wrote: post #95
bscphil wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google downrez'd all my photos, so the negatives are all I have Wow, Google ate your one digital copy? That's tragic. What's the approximate resolution you could get out of a scan from these labs? I was interested in getting into film cameras at one point, and I was disappointed with how low the scanning resolution is from most labs. For example mpix only advertises 18MB, which they say is good enough for a 12in by…

Yeah, paying people to scan your photos doesn't yield good results. I did that early on and found it expensive and low quality. Honestly, the process they use doesn't scale well, and I think they offer film scans to be nice, rather than because it's a viable business. With my home setup, I can easily do 50-80 megapixels on a 4x5 negative. I use a flatbed photo scanner (the Epson V800) and wet-mount the film. It is Qu…

Wow, I didn't realize you did your own scans. That's very interesting and cool, thanks for the information about it.

Looks like you can get those scanners used for pretty reasonable prices. Maybe if I've got a house one day and I think the odds of having to move within a few years are low I'll get into it and try setting up a lab.

> In summary, you can see why even pixel peepers are content with their Sony A7R. Press button, get 50 megapixels. And no toxic chemicals being absorbed through your skin.

Yep, and on top of that we're not limited by the sRGB gamut or bit depth issues of early digital cameras. Recent ones produce raw files that are extremely easy to develop and manipulate into something very nice looking.

The thing is, even on top of the enjoyment some people get out of working with film, if you're after a particular film-like look you might be able to save yourself a significant amount of post-processing time by just going with film. I've seen no one-click filter that can approximate it.

Re: Adobe Photoshop's 'super resolution' made my jaw hit the floor

#100

Post by mastazi »

bscphil wrote: post #97
mastazi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to clarify, the one that costs US $9.99 per month is the Photography bundle (Lightroom and Photoshop). Just adding this as there are many different Creative Cloud subscriptions with monthly prices as high as US $52 https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/plans.html

That's right, thanks, I'd forgotten. That said, Photoshop is all you'd need to test the feature here.

Yes, and confusingly, as I just discovered from the link I posted above, Photoshop alone costs more than the Photography bundle! I didn't realise that at first, I was planning to get Photoshop by itself, so it seems that your comment just ended up saving me a few bucks :-D
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