The situation is all-too familiar, and frequent. You’re working on a large poster and your client sends you a 3×5 photo to work with. Using Photoshop’s image sizing tools are of no help, and other 3rd-party options are overly slow and complex. This situation is where Alien Skin Software’s Blow Up 3 shines.
Blow Up 3's simple interface offers a very Mac-like simplicity
Blow Up 3 focuses on simplicity, as evidenced by a quick look at the interface of the Photoshop plug-in. A large preview window, and an input area with just a few controls are all that is necessary to enlarge your images with stunning results (see image later in this article).
The controls area is broken-up into three tabs, Crop & Resize, Crop, and Stretch. For designers, the Crop tab is probably all you’ll ever need, though being able to crop and stretch right inside the plug-in is a nice touch.
As you can see in the image above, the controls are simple. You enter in the size and resolution you want your image to be, and adjust the sharpen and grain amounts to your liking – a process made easy by the large preview window.
Blow Up 3 keeps photos amazingly clear during enlargement, leaving computer artifacts you normally get with a standard Photoshop enlargement behind. And Blow Up 3 is fast. Very fast!
Photoshop (left) vs. Blow Up 3 (right) on a 345% enlargement
I’ve been using Blow Up for years, and the results always seem to get better with each upgrade. In my test image above, my original image was approximately 3×4 inches. I used Blow Up 3 to enlarge it to approximately 10×12 inches. The printout on a high-end Epson was quite beautiful, even when viewed at an arm’s length.
As you can see in the image above, the normal Photoshop enlargement on the left introduces jagged edges around the eyes, hair, nose, mouth, and the edge of the face. Blow Up 3 on the right sharpens those areas easily, and produced stunning results.
Blow Up 3 offers full CMYK support, works with Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, and costs $199. While the price may seem high at first; designers and photographers who frequently work with large sized projects will find it a very small price to pay. A demo is available.
Is this a commercial or a review?
It appears to be a short review, which I actually found quite useful given that it’s obviously not just the author republishing the press release.
I assure you, it is a review. If I actually made money off of the stuff I post I wouldn’t have a “day job.”
This seems like a great product that has passed me by which is why articles such as this one can prove to be priceless. ‘Blow Up 3’ seems to be a great tool to reduce the much hated issue of pixelation. This, as any good designer knows is not good practice at all.