[KineJapan] This is Huge: Upscaling Framegrabs to 300 dpi

[Markus Nornes]

I was prepping a photo for an upcoming publication and made a huge
discovery I'd like to share.

I had a photo I grabbed off the internet that I really wanted to use. I
secured the rights, but the online photo was only 72 dpi and 300 X 168
pixels. Small. Very small.

So I met the photo's owner and we took the printed photo to a place to get
a scan done. When I got home, I was shocked to find they scanned at 72 and
used a setting that blew out all the greys. Incredible. It was such a
production to get the scan done that I fired up Photoshop to play and see
what could be done.

I discovered that recent versions of Photoshop have the ability to upscale
photos. There are a few techniques to wrap your head around, so it might be
tough if you don't know Photoshop. But here is a tutorial that introduces
some key moves:

https://youtu.be/lprshxl46ac?si=2dgRkd4LVDXJTmTH

There are a few other tutorials out there. This is one of the more useful
of the bunch.

(I notice that Topaz and some other software is offering upscaling
functions as well.)

This is huge for our field. Framegrabs from DVDs and most digital movie
files are only 72 dpi; for printing on paper you need at least 300 and a
size set that's at least as big as the printed page.

Usually, when you expand the size of a small photo you get pixelation.
Photoshop can now smooth it all out! I was able to bump up the tiny image
to 300 dpi. There are various changes to the image, so it requires
tweaking. And I didn't test this much, so there might be unwanted artifacts
or changes to the image that would make image analysis tricky. But it
works. I think it's a game-changer for publishing in film and media
studies.

Markus
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.yale.edu/pipermail/kinejapan/attachments/20231208/91334c68/attachment.html>