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Review
"Imagener" Resizing Software by Kneson
WARNING: There's a bit of techno-jargon in this review, and a good bit of text. Complete "newbies" may find it a bit confusing, but if you go to the basics page and do some studying first, you'll have a better grasp of the contents of this article and a bit of what I'm talking about here.
As you read this, there are probably thousands of people in retail stores, looking to buy their first digital camera. With today's technology, chances are they will buy a camera that has 3, 4, or even 5 megapixels in resolution. For these people, making larger prints won't be an issue as these newer cameras have enough pixel power to crank out larger prints that look pretty darn good. But what about those who bought their first digital cameras earlier in the game? Three or four years ago, consumer level digital cameras were hovering around the 1.3 to 2 megapixel mark. These were "state of the art" back then, and in the case of quality built cameras, were very expensive. Many people who own these cameras simply do not have it in their budgets to upgrade to the latest technology every couple of years, yet, they desire to make larger prints. Since even with a good lens, you can only get photo quality prints up to 5x7 with these older models, what do these owners now do? Buy a new camera regardless of their budget? Maybe not... Enter... "Imagener" Size MattersIf you want larger prints, you need more pixels, period. Typically, most lab prints or home inkjet printers are optimized for "300ppi" ( pixels per inch ), regardless of the claims they make of huge resolution counts. To the human eye at least, 300ppi is "photo quality". Using "300" then as our starting point, you can determine the maximum image your camera can crank out by doing some simple math of it's maximum image size time 300 ( ppi ). Example: If you have a 1.3 megapixel camera that take a top image size of 1280 x 960 pixels... divide by 300; 1280 divided by 300= 4.26, and 960 divided by 300= 3.2. So technically, that 1.3 megapixel camera can produce a "photo quality" photo at 300ppi of 4.26 by 3.2 inches. ( Read it again, it'll eventually kick in ). Obviously, if you want an 8 x 10 print at 300ppi photo resolution, 1.3 or even 2 megapixels then just won't cut it. You must increase the pixel size of the photo using commercially bought photos software packages, or perhaps the software that came with your camera ( most of which offer basic image adjustment abilities ). Most photo software programs today come with a feature where you can "resize" your image to a higher size. This is also called "interpolation" by some. You simply open your image, find the "resize" command, type in the new dimensions you'd like your image to be, and bingo - it's larger. The problem with this is that you are NOT adding detail. The software is simply adding pixels in-between the ones that already exist, in order to increase the image size. This does help to eliminate jagged edges ( jaggies ) on slopes and angles in the image, but usually degrades an images quality a good bit too, making it appear very fuzzy or lacking in detail. Over time, a couple of very expensive pieces of software have come along that serve only the purpose of resizing images, supposedly with much greater success than typical home packages, but they are very expensive, sometimes costing even hundreds of dollars.
Bigger Prints For Less
Imagener works much the same way as the very expensive software packages. It is designed primarily to do one thing well - resize images. No other thrills or fluff. By focusing on this one task, the designers are able to create software that take more time to analyze an image before it resizes it, and does a better job when adding the extra pixels to increase the size. The result is a larger image with less distortions ( or "artifacts" ) in the newly resized image than you get with cheaper software packages. So... does it actually WORK? The short of it... YES. There are two versions of Imagener available. The "Enhanced" version which sells for $19.95, and the "Pro" version which sells for $49.95. Both give you the ability to resize images from a variety of popular image formats ( .jpg .tiff .gif .bmp .pcx .png, and more ), and both allow you to print from the program for test prints first. The Pro version however, eliminates the small banner ads that appear on the Enhanced version, and, adds a second level of resizing which is supposed to be even better than the regular level. A "Kneson Progressive ++" level as they call it. The screen ( seen at the top of this page ) is very simple. It allows you to find your stored photo via the drive of your choice, load it up, and then enter the new size you'd like it to be in pixels, inches, metric, and more. The software takes it from there, resizes the image, and you can then save it to do with as you wish. A general rule of thumb is that you'll want to reopen it in the image editor of your choice and sharpen it and perhaps tinker with the color saturation and so forth before printing, to get optimal results.
My TestI took a 1.3 megapixel photo of one of my dogs with an image size of 1280 x 960, which I took with a mid-range Olympus camera about three years ago, and loaded it up into two of today's more popular image editing programs - Photoshop Elements 2.0, and Paint Shop Pro. I then resized it to equal roughly a 6 megapixel image size of just over 3000 pixels wide, in each of the programs. After resizing, I cropped out full-sized selections of just the dog's face and put them side-by-side so you can compare. Note that under normal conditions you will not view a photo at 100% size on your computer screen. Resizing to a higher size is for PRINTING purposes only. When viewed at 100%, most consumer level digital camera photos will look a bit "soft", but once printed at the appropriate size per their megapixel rating, they'll look better. First, here is a 100% size crop of the dog's face, as it appears in the 1.3 megapixel image before any resizing:
Say it ... she's cute. :-)As mentioned, I then resized and cropped out a section of her face ( now larger of course ). Here are the results:
Paint Shop Pro and Elements 2.0 pretty much did the exact same job on the photo, with Elements maybe doing just a little better ( but you have to look REAL close ). The Enhanced version of Imagener did a noticeably better job of removing artifacts and distortions from the image compared with the others. The pro version too is better, but I have to wonder if perhaps it's adding some software-sharpening to the image to simulate more detail. Of the four, I actually prefer the Enhanced version, as I can add my own level of sharpening later in the image program of my choice, to suit my own needs. For the record, I also tried resizing using Microsoft Picture It and MGI Photosuite software packages, and the results were about the same or slightly worse than Paint Shop Pro and Elements. For the sake of space, only the results above are shown.
An Added Benefit
At the time I initially visited the Imagener web site, the site touted the benefits of being able to enlarge your images, and as you've seen, it does do a better job of this than the typical consumer level imaging program out there. I did however, find an added benefit to this program which the folks at Kneson did not mention on their site... resizing images DOWN is also handled much better by this program, too! How many times have you taken a multi-megapixel image, and resized it down to let's say, 640 x 480 pixels, so you could view it better on your monitor or send it to someone via email? If the photo contains sloped lines, you know what happened... jaggies, and BIG TIME in most cases. Roof lines, the lines on cars, and pretty much anything that has a sloped line to it gets that "stair step" look to it, and it's irritating as all get out. Well, after doing my upsizing tests, I decided to try the reverse, and downsize some images. Wow - it does a great job of that, as well. Take a look at this image of a truck where I work, below:
The truck on top was a 6 megapixel image resized down to about 540 pixels in width, and then cropped a bit, using Paint Shop Pro. You can see what happens... jaggies on the sloped lines of the vehicle. Yuck. The image below however, was the same large image resized to the same dimensions using the Imagener Enhanced version. MUCH better, and much smoother lines. There are a few artifacts because I've compressed the image a bit so as to load quicker for those of you with slower connections but the point being the jagged lines are much improved when you use the imagener.
So - Would I Recommend It?
In a nutshell... YES. I took the blowups from the Elements image and the Imagener Enhanced image to my local Sam's Club, and printed them out at an 8 x 10 size using the store's Fuji digital printer. This way, I get "real" lab prints just the same as film, at very reasonable prices ( free plug for Sam's Club, there ). ** Side Note **: Keep in mind, you really need a decent image to start with. Images from $50.00 webcam-like devices that take 640 x 480 pixel images are NOT going to be made into photo quality enlargements no matter what you use ( though you might be able to make better 4 x 6 prints using the Imagener with these ). My opinion is that if you have a good quality 1.3 to 2 megapixel camera and need better larger prints, the Imagener is for you. The print results from the Imagener were better than that from the Elements enlargement. Now, were they as good as if I actually took the image from an expensive camera that has a real 6 megapixel image size? No. This software will NOT replace a larger megapixel camera. It will however, act as an enhancement to the equipment you already own. I think most home users, and those who typically read this site, will get along fine with the $19.95 Enhanced version, but pros who need even larger blowups might get better use from the Pro version. Order and Use Imagener Now
Below I'm including some links to the Kneson site, where you can order and download your copy of the Imagener. Using these links helps to support this site, and you can get started almost right away using the software. By clicking the appropriate link, it will take you to the order page for the version of the software you pick. Buying via this link does help support this site as well as allows you to purchase and download the software immediately to your computer.
The banner above is for the $19.95 "Enhanced" version of Imagener
The banner above is for the $49.95 "Pro" version of Imagener
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