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Chris P. Bacon
Chris P. Bacon
Inspiring
December 10, 2022
Question

Super Zoom in Photoshop vs Super Resolution in Lightroom

  • December 10, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 6059 views

If I want to use both to upscale an image for better print quality, to reach 400 PPI, which should I apply first?

Are these 2 the same "effect" or are they different?

Should I apply "JPEG artifacts removal" before or after applying these effects? I suppose before...

How do I achieve the best possible quality?

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

TheDigitalDog
TheDigitalDog
Inspiring
December 10, 2022

If any sharpening is being applied in the process, the ACR engine (which LR uses) will be superior because it uses an Adaptive BiCubic interpolation, again on the data you wish to apply it on; raw. The adaptive method used by Camera Raw does not use a fixed set of cutoff or switchover points. In other words, the transitions are done smoothly instead of just picking from a discrete set of options.
As a rough analogy, consider a radio with three discrete volume settings (low, medium, high) compared to another radio with an analog volume dial that you can use to modulate the volume continuously.

Author “Color Management for Photographers" & "Photoshop CC Color Management/pluralsight"
    Chris P. Bacon
    Chris P. BaconAuthor
    Inspiring
    December 11, 2022

    I work with JPEGs though, so I have no access to the RAW files, and I do the Super Resolution in Lightroom on low resolution JPEGs, then I apply a 3 x Super Zoom in Photoshop (together with "Enhance Image Details, Remove JPEG Artifacts, Noise Reduction, Sharpening and Enhance Face Details), to make them print ready A3s, with about 6000-7000 px width resolution, 400 effective PPI, it will usually get up to 600 actually.

    I tried  "Sharpening for matte paper" in Lightoom, but it makes the image pixelated, so that's surprisingly bad, at least for JPEGs.

     

     

    D Fosse
    Community Expert
    D FosseCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 11, 2022

    If you need that much enlarging, and starting with jpegs at that, then 400 ppi makes absolutely no sense. You won't have any useful detail above 150 ppi or so - AI or not.

     

    Enlarging can sometimes be marginally useful with optimal sharpening, because you can potentially get sharper edges. Not more detail, but sharper edges. But that requires a very high quality image to start with.

     

    200 ppi is in any case plenty enough for A3. You won't see any pixels, no matter how close you go. General image quality is much more important.

     

    I would suggest you concentrate on reducing jpeg artifacts, using the AI filters available for that, and improve the general image quality as much as possible. And stop at 200 ppi.

      H
      honeybramble
      Participant
      December 10, 2022

      Honestly, I've gotten to a point where Lightroom is my go to when it comes to higher relsolutons for print quality perfection. D fosse's research below is a clear and wonderful example of why I go with Lightroom over Photoshop. To answer your question, go with Lightroom for the best quality before transfering into Photoshop.

       

      Thanks! Wish you the best of luck, Cherilyn @ https://honeybramble.com 

      D Fosse
      Community Expert
      D FosseCommunity Expert
      Community Expert
      December 10, 2022

      Yes, the general golden rule is always to do as much as possible in the raw processing, before going to Photoshop. This isn't about Lightroom vs. Photoshop, but about raw sensor data vs. rendered RGB data. That wasn't the surprise.

       

      The surprise here was that for this particular operation, I didn't expect linear mosaic data vs gamma encoded RGB data to influence the result to the degree it did.

        D Fosse
        Community Expert
        D FosseCommunity Expert
        Community Expert
        December 10, 2022

        I decided to test this for myself - and the result was highly surprising and not at all what I expected.

         

        The three examples here are, from top:

        • 100% crop from Super Resolution in Lightroom
        • 100% crop from Super Zoom in Photoshop
        • screenshot of original displayed at 200% zoom

        As you can see, the result from Lightroom is vastly superior to the other two, which are basically indistinguishable.

         

        I had expected no significant difference between any of these three, but clearly it pays to do this at the raw stage.

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