I wrote two comparative theoretical articles in a row—one industry thinking, one technical discussion—may have dissuaded many people who didn’t know the truth. Let’s take a look at the background data, okay...
The weekend is coming soon, today I will share a light article, introducing an open source AI image magnification and enhancement tool - Upscayl, which is free of charge, highly mature, easy to operate, and has remarkable effects.
What is Upscayl?
Upscayl is a tool for image enlargement and pixel completion through AI models. It is characterized by:
Open source and free; local installation;
Simple operation, 4 steps to get it done. Although only English interface is provided, I believe that the little white rabbit can also get started easily;
The picture enlargement effect is remarkable, especially, it supports sharpening pictures, and it is said that the effect is even better than Photoshop;
Cross-platform, supports windows/macOS and Linux three major operating systems;
Support image batch processing, a proper productivity tool.
Basic Operating Instructions
The operation method of Upscayl is very intuitive, mainly divided into 4 steps:
Step 1: Click [SELECT IMAGE] to select the picture to be enlarged (that is, the original picture).
Step 2: Select the image upscaling type in [Select Upscaling Type].
Real-Esrgan: Improve the clarity of the picture;
RemaCRI: enhance picture effect;
UltraMix Balanced: Improve the color saturation of the picture;
UltraSharp: Improve picture clarity and sharpen edges;
Digital Art: Improved color and texture detail;
Sharpen Image: sharpen only;
Here, the user only needs to select the preset magnification type, which greatly simplifies the operation difficulty, but correspondingly, more professional and detailed manual adjustments cannot be performed.
Step 3: Click [SET OUTPUT FOLDER] to select the export folder. It can be left unselected, and it will be saved in the same path as the original image by default.
Step 4: Click [UPSCAYL] to perform zoom-in.
Explanation of zoom effect
Example explanation:
Original image: output by Midjourney;
Amplification Type: Digital Art, improves color and texture detail.
Prompt：landscape:: by Agnes Lawrence Pelton, by Yaoy Kusama, Mosaic, 4-Dimensional, Star Prism, Upscale is an AI tool that can enlarge images. --ar 16:9 --v 5.1
Zoom in for the first time:
Original image size: 1115×625
Enlarged size: 4460×2500
Zoom in time: about 3~4 minutes
Effect description:
overall comparison. Top: Before zooming in; Bottom: After zooming in. The overall improvement effect on the original image is significant, and the entire picture is clearer.
Zoom in on the image 100% to show the detail contrast. Top: Before zooming in; Bottom: After zooming in. The original details are lost, the filling details are insufficient, and the feeling will be fake.
Second zoom in:
Original image size: 4460×2500
Enlarged size: 17840×10000
Amplification time: extremely slow, probably need, 15min
Contrast effect:
Top left: before zooming in; bottom left: after the first zoom; right: after the second zoom. Using a computer browser to display, the effect of the second zoom-in and the first zoom-in is not obvious, but the size is enlarged a lot.
Of course, if you choose different enlargement types, the final output image effect will be very different.
Above: Enlargement type set to Digital Art, improving color and texture detail;
Below: Set the zoom type to Real-Esrgan to improve the clarity of the picture;
The effect of Real-Esrgan is much better than that of Digital Art. It not only greatly improves the clarity of the original image, but also preserves the details well.
Other zoom types are not introduced here one by one. Interested friends may wish to experience it for themselves.
personal experience
The reason why I want to find an easy-to-use image enlargement tool is because, as an amateur slash stock photographer, I suddenly had a "very chicken thief" idea: Is there a possibility to use Midjourney Generate creative images for storage and sales?
However, the real problem is that although the visual effect of Midjourney output pictures is cool, the quality of the pictures is not satisfactory-the mobile phone terminal can barely be used, but the web terminal is not good enough, let alone commercial scenarios? The key is to solve, how to change the small image to a larger image while ensuring that the display quality of the image does not decrease but increases?
In short, the general idea is like this:
When I first experienced Upscayl, the enlargement type was set to Digital Art. When I saw the output, I felt: Sure enough, I was thinking too much; after experiencing Real-Esrgan, I felt that I was doing it again.
Upscayl is considered to be a highly completed AI application. What’s even more commendable is that it is open source and free. No wonder many domestic software download sites use this to spread malicious viruses. So if you are interested in Upscayl and want to download and experience it, be sure to click on the official website link : https://www.upscayl.org/
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Rui Qi
technical communicator
Brand Content Planning
freelance photographer
Freelance writer
Wang Lidi
Public account: techcomm / htstory
WeChat account: bgrichi
E-mail: [email protected]
