To my mind, Super Resolution can be considered an effective tool only for Raw files, where the difference in image quality over other upsampling methods is clearly visible. Super Resolution's results did tend to be just fractionally crisper, but at the cost of being more prone to pixelation. With JPEGs I could see no meaningful improvement over resampling with Adobe Photoshop's Preserve Details 2.0 algorithm. There's no user control whatsoever beyond that, and your results are rendered out to a DNG file regardless of the source file format.Īlthough it's technically possible to process either Raw files or JPEGs using Super Resolution, I've compared numerous enlargements side-by-side and see no real-world reason to use the tool on JPEGs. With Adobe, Super Resolution is literally just an on/off switch that lets you double the linear resolution – that is to say, the width and height – of an image (or, put another way, quadruple their megapixel resolution). It's worth noting up front the most immediately obvious difference between the trio of AI options: their interfaces and overall capabilities.

Three different approaches to UI and complexity The Super Resolution tool in both Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom is an on/off switch, with no user controls whatsoever available. Let's take a look at how it stacks up to what Adobe and ON1 have to offer. And hot on the heels of an update promising even better results, I was keen to learn how it compared both to its nearest rivals.

My time with Photo AI made me extremely curious to see how the program from which Photo AI drew its resolution-enhancing algorithms, Topaz Gigapixel AI, might perform given its rather greater selection of controls. Even when processing photos with quite low resolutions it delivered usable enlargements, with the only Achilles' heel being the results when shots included recognizable logos or barely-readable text. Although I've used competing resolution-boosting tools like Adobe's Super Resolution and ON1 Resize AI in the past, I was nevertheless surprised by the usability of Photo AI's resolution enhancement.

In my recent review of Topaz Labs' Photo AI, I came away more than a little impressed by its AI-powered Enhance Resolution function.

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