Digital Photographer's Software Guide - Bertemes - Net

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The Digital Photographer's Software Guide
PhotoZoom Pro
Vendor: BenVista
Purpose: Image magnification for printing using an adaptive S-Spline XL algorithm
Description
PhotoZoom Pro is an image-magnification package that uses an adaptive S-Spline XL
algorithm (another spline variant) to achieve high-quality interpolation. In this technique,
the algorithm deals with actual pixel values—not just their position in the
image—to derive different weights for calculating new pixels. The image remains sharp
and focused but avoids jagged edges and the slightly artificial look associated with some
forms of enlargement. PhotoZoom Pro supports 48- and 64-bit images and contains
some fine-tuning tools to maximize the quality of the upsized image.
Comments
The developer, Rogier Eijkelhof, is sufficiently confident to allow you to flip between
images processed by PhotoZoom and other packages and to examine the results in closeup.
Reviews have been very positive, several of them saying this is the best image rescaler
available. That may be going too far, given the quality of the competition, although the
results are clearly very pleasing. The product is marketed by Shortcut Software
(www.shortcutinc.com) in the United States.
Version: PhotoZoom Pro 2.3.2 (2008)
Plugs into: Windows Photoshop 6 or higher, Corel Paint Shop Pro and Photo-PAINT; Mac
CS2/CS3
OS: Windows 98, ME, NT4, 95, 2000, XP, and Vista; Mac OS X 10.3, 10.4, and 10.5
RAM: Windows 64MB; Mac 128MB
Supported file formats: As host
Price level: Approx. $150
Address: Shortcut Software Europe Ltd., Meander 251, 6825 MC Arnhem, The Netherlands
www.benvista.com
Liquid Resize
Vendor: onOne Software
Purpose: Content-aware image resizing plug-in that minimizes geometric distortion when the
aspect ratio changes
Description
Liquid Resize is a “content-aware” image-resizing application that allows you to change
the aspect ratio of an image without distorting the contents. At the time of writing it is
still in early development, but the vendor has made a preview version available to anyone