March, 2008
Like many cell phones my own comes with a camera. I have found myself using the camera more and more to capture those "at the moment" shots. Unfortunately I have come to find, if I zoom in my pictures become much smaller. This was a bit of a disappointment. I stress... "was."
When I discovered the Topaz Vivacity Plug-In for Photoshop, this put an end to tiny pictures from my phone. One of the features of this plug-in is a 2x enlargement. I was able to take my camera phone photos and make them twice as big as the original. The amazing thing is the plug-in was able to make it so the picture was clean and crisp even at the larger size. Normally if you were to just increase the photo size by 2x you would end up with a fuzzy image. Definitely not with the Topaz Vivacity Plug-In!
Here is the original photo I took with my camera phone.
Here is what normal 2x enlargement in Photoshop would look like and also what it looks like with the Topaz Vivacity Plug-In. You can see the sharpness around the eyes, wiskers and white stripe down his forehead. Unfortunately at the limited size it is tough to really judge a difference. You can see a much better example on the Topaz website here: Enlarge Image
The 2x enlargement feature is only a small part of this wonderful plug-in. The plug-in also includes a powerful sharpening feature that far surpasses the one already included in Photoshop. As you can see from the photos below, the sharpening does a wonderful job on this flower photo. It even sharpens so well as to bring out the veins in the flower peddles.
Before:
After Topaz Sharpening:
In the images below, you are given an even better look at the power of the Topaz Vivacity Sharpening tool. If you look at the folding in the brown leaf, you can see how much clearer they become after sharpening.
Before:
After Topaz Sharpening:
The Topaz Vivacity Plug-in has a bunch more features such as repairing JPEG artifacts, reconstructing edges and reducing noise in the pictures. One last really cool feature is the ability to create an interesting artistic effect with Topaz Clean. Below you can see the same flower picture as above put through this part of the plug-in. It is a fun little feature.
The Topaz Vivacity plug-in is very powerful but does take some time to get used to. The adjustments are very minor which is good but can be a bit combersome at times. As with many Photoshop filters or plug-ins, it takes time to figure out what setting work best. One draw back with this plug-in is that the preview window is very small and only pans out to 100%. This can be a bit frustrating when trying to see how the settings effect the whole image when it is larger. I think the reason for this is that the plug-in is really to be used for very detailed work.
Overall I was very impressed with this plug-in and very happy to find something that allowed me to increase the size of my camera phone photos and still keep them looking as crisp and clear as possible. I think this is a great plug-in to add just a bit more clearity to your photos and you can also have a little fun with the clean option to create some fun artistic effects to your photo.
Pricing: $49.99
Company Website or URL: www.topaz.com
Requirements:
* Adobe Photoshop 7, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Adobe Photoshop CS, CS2 and CS3 for Windows.
* Or Windows software that supports Photoshop plug-in, for example:
- Photo Impact
- Paint Shop Pro
- IrfanView (needs Photoshop plug-ins add-on)
- GIMP
List of filters:
* Topaz Enlarge2X: Enhance image resolution with rich details and clarity.
* Topaz Denoise: Very effective noise reduction filter based on a new wavelet algorithm.
* Topaz Clean: Noise reduction filter based on detail preservation. Synergistic w/ Denoise.
* Topaz Clean(YCbCr): Topaz Clean in the YCbCr color space instead of RGB.
* Topaz DeJPEG: Optimally cleans JPEG checkerboarding and other compression artifacts.
* Topaz Sharpen: Sharpens and enhances edges without ringing or noise amplification.
Mac version coming end of March 2008
Copyright (c) 2008, Jacob Van Ness, All Rights Reserved
