Blow Up is the image enlargement plug-in from Alien Skin Software that allows you to resize your image upward as much as four times (1600% area) without jagged artifacts or halos. In some cases it can enlarge up to six times (3600% area) without obvious artifacts.
Blow Up is installed as an automation plug-in, and will work with Adobe Photoshop CS2 and greater and Photoshop Elements version 4 and greater. Since it is an automation plug-in, it will not work with other graphic imaging products. You will need a Pentium 4 processor with Windows XP or later, or a Mac using either a PowerPC, or Intel processor and 512 MB Ram.
Once installed, Blow Up is listed on File >> Automate menu. It is very easy to use and intuitive in its concept. Please note, it does have a 30,000 pixel size limitation. Blow Up was created to improve on Photoshop's limited ability to enlarge images. If you have tried to enlarge images in Photoshop, you tend to get the "jaggies". When an image is reduced in size, or when the size is naturally small, there are a fixed set of pixels to work with. When you try to enlarge the image, there are no pixels available to fill the additional space and so it gets that pixilated look to it which give the appearance of a bunch of jagged edges; hence, the "jaggies".
Sometimes you are put into a situation in which you have to enlarge an image. One scenario is that your boss hands you an image that you need to put to use in document. The image they hand you is a small resolution one. What do you do? You could go out and try to get a new image done, but that could take time and money. Well this is where Blow Up may be able to enlarge it enough make it usable.
Blow Up supports many different modes including CMYK, LAB, RGB, Grayscale, and Duotone. It also works with 8, 16, and 32 bit images as well. When you try to resample a layered Photoshop image, you won't loose the layer information. Blow Up can also be recorded and played back in a Photoshop action so you can increase efficiency and maintain consistency while resizing a batch of images.
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