Friday , March 29 2024
If you need to dramatically increase your image size while maintaining quality, then you need Perfect Resize 7.

Software Review: Perfect Resize 7 From onOne Software

The problem begins when you have a really great image, but because you shot it with your point-and-shoot camera, you can get a decent 8 x 10 inch print, but what is going to happen when want to take it larger? Or your DSLR does great to 11 x 14, but you want to make a 20 x 30? Well that is where Perfect Resize 7 comes in. It will do all the work for you when it comes to creating crystal clear enlargements of your images.

This new version of Perfect Resize 7 represents a rebranding of onOne’s image resizing product Genuine Fractals. Perfect Resize 7 is a Adobe Photoshop Plug-in that will allow you to enlarge your images over 1000% with no loss in quality or detail. It also allows you to crop and resize your image in a single step. By using the plug-in, all that you have to do is open the image in workspace, select the size of print that you want to produce, and select the resolution best for your printer. Perfect Resize does the rest.

What is new in Perfect Resize 7

• Smoothness Control allows you to adjust the smoothness of curved edges to minimize artifacts. This feature is very useful when resizing images and is especially valuable when working with lower resolution source files or when an extreme crop is required from a higher resolution source file.

• Loupe Tool will give photographers an instant 1:1 or 100% magnified preview of enlargement quality while still seeing the entire image with the Loupe function of the Navigator.

• Presets will let you achieve consistent results in less time by saving commonly used settings with the new Presets feature. If you routinely send images to labs you will benefit by creating a preset that allows them to resize the image, apply a specific sharpening amount and apply a gallery wrap all in one step. For those stock photographers who need to resize batches of images before submitting them, you will also benefit from this new feature.

• Sharpening methods have been added to let you sharpen small details without causing halos on larger, distinct edges. The first sharpening method targets out-of focus images and the second method adapts the sharpening amount automatically to the size of image details.

• Lightroom and Aperture integration will let you work directly with
Photoshop Lightroom and Apple Aperture just like you do with Adobe Photoshop and it will no longer require a host application to get results when enlarging an image.

• Gallery Wrap has been improved so that you can now preview the Perfect Resize gallery wrap results in real time, allowing them to quickly fine tune your settings for the perfect gallery wrap. Additionally, gallery wrap corners are automatically filled in with matching image detail from the surrounding area. While it may not sound like much, the improvements to this feature alone will save you hours of time when assembling your gallery wraps.

• Tiling has been improved to now automatically save each tile as new file. This makes it much easier to save and print individual tiles especially when sending these tiles out to a print service provider. Additionally, because each tile is its own file, it is now easy to create canvas diptychs, triptychs or mosaics with the improved gallery wrap feature.

• Batch processing enhancements will let you work with images of mixed size, type and orientation with more batch-processing engine options. You can save time by batch processing images from the Export dialog inside of Lightroom.

• Other improvements include presets for common printer resolutions, improved progress indicators, improved film grain simulation, and the additional document size presets for panoramic and no-crop sizes.

• Video tutorials have now been updated to provide the training and education that you need to get the best out of Perfect Resize 7. There are over a dozen built in videos that cover topics from basic to advanced techniques.

My favorite new features are the integration with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom since that is where my workflow starts. I also really like the additional presets, the Smoothness controls, and the Gallery Wrap features as well.

When you add in the sharpening methods and the Loupe Tool, Perfect Resize just keeps getting better. It installs easily and really requires no learning curve to begin to use it. It does take a little bit of time to analyze and reproduce your image.

Perfect Resize 7 is available as a standalone product for $299.95 for the Pro version or $159.95 for the standard. You can also get it as part of the Perfect Photo Suite 5.5 Bundle for $499.95. The standard does not contain the ability to resize CMYK images, the Gallery Wrap feature, and the ability to integrate with Lightroom and Aperture.

If you have the need to enlarge your images beyond the size that is recommended for your image, or if you want to improve the quality of your larger images with cleaner detail and better shadow and highlights then I highly recommend Perfect Resize 7.

About T. Michael Testi

Photographer, writer, software engineer, educator, and maker of fine images.

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