Enhance details and super resolution?

[cristphoto1]

I see these features have been added to Photoshop. Under what circumstance would either be used? Is enhance details used vs sharpening. Would super resolution be used instead of Bicubic Smoother?  Thanks. 

[D Fosse]

Super resolution is intended as emergency rescue for very low resolution original raw files (or significantly cropped ones).

It uses AI algorithms to avoid most of the normal upsampling artifacts, and will usually give a more natural-looking result. If you have to upsample, super resolution is probably the best option. But it won't actually add detail and it won't improve anything.

There is little point in using it on high resolution files from a modern camera.

[TheDigitalDog]

See: https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/using/enhance.html

Super Resolution, introduced in Camera Raw 13.2, helps create an enhanced image with similar results as Raw Details but with 2x the linear resolution. This means that the enhanced image will have 2x the width and 2x the height of the original image, or 4x the total pixel count. This feature supports the same file types as Raw Details, plus additional file types such as JPEG and TIFF. Super Resolution is especially useful to increase the resolution of a cropped image.

[cristphoto1]

Since I have a 30 and a 20 mp camera I never uprez my files. So the super resolution feature is something I probably wouldn't use. The enhance details looks like it may be handy. Would it be fair to say it's a high tech sharpener? Virtually all my files start as raw so I apply a bit of sharpening. If this makes the process easier that would be nice. Thanks. 

[D Fosse]

I've never seen any significant effect from Enhance Details and don't really bother with it. The only advice I can give is to try it on a number of images and compare at 100%.

You'd still need to apply sharpening appropriate for the size and output.

Initial input sharpening on raw files should also be set up as default in ACR/Lightroom, along with noise reduction (unfortunately it's now a little more elaborate to set up ISO variable noise reduction, but it can still be done).