I was playing around with some photos I took in my backyard, seeing if I could use Photoshop to make a successful high res photo using stacking. I took about a dozen hand held 20 MP photos with my camera, doubled the resolution using Photoshop and stacking and viewed the result at 100%. The result was disappointing as the photo lacked the sharpness I expected. Here is the original high res:
I then asked myself if AIS might help the sharpening. This was an 80MP photo so I worried about how long the processing would take, but felt it was worth a test and it was only one photo. It did take 8 minutes to process, but the result turned out to be well worth the wait. Here it is:
This was Sharpen at 50% and I think it is a bit too sharp, so I will try it at a lower setting, but this was so good that I think I will get AIS even though I can not use it in normal processing, given how long it takes to generate an image. I can still use it as a specialty tool for a few selected images. I am hoping that a lower setting will look a bit more natural, but I was impressed.
1 Like
Other than the experiment, I don’t see why you are stacking a dozen pictures. Stacking is usually used for macro shots where the DOF is short. I think just using one 20Mpx shot and running it in Sharpen AI or AI Clear would do the trick and the work flow is much faster.
I was using stacking to create a high res photo, not for focus stacking.
I did not need a high res version of the photo in question, but I wanted to check out the process of creating an 80MP image from a 20MP image to see how well it worked and if it was worth the effort. The results were not particularly good, but AIS did improve it enough to make the process worth considering when a high res photo is needed.
Have you compared it by using one 20 Mpx shot, running it through SAI and then Gigapixel to enlarge it?
Not yet, but that was part of the test. I wanted to see if high res stacking would result in a better job than Gigapixel, but have been so busy with other stuff that I have not yet had a chance to complete the test.
I have created 80MP images from an original 20MP image using 2 methods - Photo Stacking/resizing/AIS and Gigapixel. The idea was to see which was the better method for upsizing an image, but it is hard to tell the difference. Here is a 1:1 comparison between the photos.
Gigapixel is on the left and the stacking-resizing-AIS is on the right. You can see the vertical dividing line in the middle of the image. I see little difference between the two 100% shots, but when looking at the entire image there seems to be less “halo” around the Gigapixel image.
Comments and opinions welcomed.
