Using Adobe Super Resolution on GFX100 Images
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According to the Adobe Blog, Super Resolution is now shipping in Camera Raw 13.2 and will be coming soon to Lightroom and Lightroom Classic.
They go further to say;
The term “Super Resolution” refers to the process of improving the quality of a photo by boosting its apparent resolution. Enlarging a photo often produces blurry details, but Super Resolution has an ace up its sleeve — an advanced machine learning model trained on millions of photos. Backed by this vast training set, Super Resolution can intelligently enlarge photos while maintaining clean edges and preserving important details.
And I have to say, I’m mightily impressed.
Firstly, this feature is different from the Enhance Detail setting you see in Lightroom currently. However, I fully expect the new Super Resolution to migrate from Camera RAW to Lightroom very soon.
In a nutshell, The Adobe Super Resolution tool will allow you to take a RAW file (though it will also work on a JPEG from within Camera RAW) and create a super-sized image. And it appears with little to no artefact deficiencies.
Here is an example image. The first image is a standard GFX100 Image, the second is the Super Resolution version. Links to the converted JPEGs are below.
Download the Super Enhanced & Original Image
You can see the original GFX100 Image (58MB) and the Super Enhanced Image (145MB) by downloading this zip file.
In terms of resolution, you’ll see that:
Original GFX 100 Image has a pixel size of 11,648 x 8.736 Pixels
Super Enhanced GFX 100 Image has a pixel size of: 23,296 x 17,472 Pixels
Which is approximately double the size.
How to use the Super Enhanced feature of Camera Raw:
Currently, the Super Enhance feature is ONLY available (as of March 2021) in Camera RAW. However, as I mentioned, I expect this to come to Lightroom soon. It’s a really easy process.
Open the RAW image in Camera Raw.
Right-click on the Image and choose Enhance.
You will see in the pop-up dialogue that it estimates 5 minutes for this file. However, the true time taken is between 10 and 30 seconds on my machine. However, I do have a fairly beefy PC, so assume that large RAW file Enhances will take a few minutes.
The file created will be a DNG, which I then imported into Lightroom and applied my own presets.
It really is quite remarkable.
Why would you use the Super Resolution Feature?
That’s a very good question, and I can’t imagine myself needing it too often. However, I can see a few uses of this feature:
Billboard Images
Forensic (assuming no artefacts) Photography
Medical Photography
Museum and Gallery archive projects
Enhancing older generation RAW files to be suitable for larger prints
It’s a really interesting technology but it certainly doesn’t mitigate the need to have a large sensor camera in my mind. It would be difficult to do this for every image, and ultimately, the standard size images would be fine in most cases.
Here are a few more examples of Fujifilm RAW files upsized using the new Adobe Super Resolution Feature:
New Lightroom Profile Based Presets for 2021
All the images in this article are processed with one click from my new 2021 Essential Film Lightroom Profile based Presets.
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