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Thread: Serif Photo Zoom

  1. #1
    JohnRostron's Avatar
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    Serif Photo Zoom

    As a Serif customer, I was offered Serif Photo Zoom, their photo-enlarging program at £23, (80% off). I had a look at the reviews and these were generally positive, so I thought I would give it a try. I chose a photo of a male Chaffinch taken in the cafe gardens on Tresco, Isles of Scilly. I reduced it first to 50%, then to 25% and then used PhotoZoom, Serif Affinity and Photoshop CC2017 to resize back to the original. There was no subsequent post-processing.

    #1 Here is the original at 100%, cropped from the original image.
    Serif Photo Zoom

    #2 Reduced to 50%, then enlarged back to the original with Photoshop
    Serif Photo Zoom

    #3 Reduced to 50%, then enlarged back to the original with Affinity Photo
    Serif Photo Zoom

    #4 Reduced to 50%, then enlarged back to the original with Photo Zoom
    Serif Photo Zoom

    #5 Reduced to 25%, then enlarged back to the original with Photoshop
    Serif Photo Zoom

    #6 Reduced to 25%, then enlarged back to the original with Affinity Photo
    Serif Photo Zoom

    #7 Reduced to 25%, then enlarged back to the original with Photo Zoom
    Serif Photo Zoom

    One thing is clear. None of them make a good job of the detail in the 25% reduction/enlargement. However Photo Zoom does make a better job of the not-so-fine detail. Look at the white feathers on the wing. They do seem clearer in the Photo Zoom image.

    Looking at the 50% images, there is less to choose between them, but I still think that Photo Zoom has done the better job.

    Overall I think it is a good buy. I have a number of images scanned from slides where I saved them as too small. Photo Zoom may well rescue these into a usable form.

    Edit: In my original posting, I had sharpened the final images. I have now reverted to unsharpened versions.

    Comment welcome.

    John
    Last edited by JohnRostron; 22nd February 2017 at 02:42 PM.

  2. #2
    DanK's Avatar
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    Re: Serif Photo Zoom

    Interesting. Thanks for posting. I agree that the Photo Zoom images look better. However, I think a cleaner test would be to do this with no sharpening or other processing after enlargement.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

  3. #3
    JohnRostron's Avatar
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    Re: Serif Photo Zoom

    Quote Originally Posted by DanK View Post
    Interesting. Thanks for posting. I agree that the Photo Zoom images look better. However, I think a cleaner test would be to do this with no sharpening or other processing after enlargement.
    Fair comment. I have replaced the original images posted with unsharpened versions.

    John
    Last edited by JohnRostron; 22nd February 2017 at 02:43 PM.

  4. #4
    Moderator Manfred M's Avatar
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    Re: Serif Photo Zoom

    Quote Originally Posted by DanK View Post
    Interesting. Thanks for posting. I agree that the Photo Zoom images look better. However, I think a cleaner test would be to do this with no sharpening or other processing after enlargement.


    Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
    I would agree and using just the base (raw data) image. The downsizing and upsizing is not a fair test as that brings the downsampling algorithms into play as well. A parametric editor would definitely have an advantage over a pixel based editor in that type of exercise as the original data would be retained and the data the re-upsize would use the original data, not the downsized data.

  5. #5
    JohnRostron's Avatar
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    Re: Serif Photo Zoom

    True, but my ultimate target images were, as I said, images that had been resampled down and where the originals were no longer available to me (the slides had gone back to the original owner).

    In this exercise, I took the original Tiff, and converted to jpeg (for the 100%), then to 50% and 25% as Jpegs in Affinity. I used maximum quality for each of these. Once the various re-scalings were complete, I stacked the seven images and cropped to just the Chaffinch, then exported each as a 80% quality jpeg for this posting.

    John

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