Alien Skin Blow Up 2.0

Allows you to enlarge your pictures to any size and maintain the quality.

Product website: Click for the official Alien Skin Blow Up 2.0 website

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Product Description

Blow Up 2 is a Photoshop plug-in that produces enlargements dramatically sharper than any other software, especially Photoshop! Blow Up uses an innovative algorithm that temporarily converts pixels to a vector representation which results in perfectly smooth, crisp edges. Simulated texture and film grain keep photos looking natural even in extreme enlargements. Blow Up can even clean up JPEG compression artifacts when a client insists on using a low quality source image from the Web.

New Features

Image Quality
Image quality is improved in many ways. Results are sharper, both during upsizing and downsizing. Noisy images are handled better. Research from our Exposure product was used to improve simulated grain. You now have control over simulated natural texture.

  
In this extreme enlargement (400% on a side), notice how much sharper Blow Up’s results are (LEFT) compared to Photoshop’s bicubic method (RIGHT).

Output Sharpening
There are now controls for output sharpening. Just choose your medium (paper type or Web) and Blow Up sharpens the right amount.

JPEG Repair
There is now a slider for cleaning up overly compressed JPEG images. When a client insists on giving you a blocky photo they found on the web, you can clean it up during the resizing process.

Easy Batch Processing
There is now a batch processing tool that comes with Blow Up 2. This requires much less clicking than recording a Photoshop action and then running Photoshop’s Automate->Batch command.

Previewing and Cropping
The previewing system has been completely redesigned. Zooming and cropping are integrated for improved workflow.  The Crop to Size Tool is an easy way to crop and resize to a specific output size at the same time. Previewing is faster on multi-processor or multi-core computers.

Settings
There is now a Settings Tab with over 100 presets. You can also save your own settings. Settings let you easily choose a standard output size and medium, such as 8x10 Inkjet Matte Paper. Proper output sharpening is applied to match the paper type. Presets automatically rotate to fit the orientation of your image and find a suitable crop area.

Huge Images
You can resize up to 300,000 pixels per side, the maximum Photoshop can handle. Of course, Photoshop would choke on a square image that big, but if you are making a billboard that Photoshop can handle, so can Blow Up 2!

System Requirements

Blow Up 2 is an automation plug-in and can only be used with the following host programs:
• Adobe Photoshop CS2 9.0.2 or later
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0.1 or later (Macintosh)
• Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 or later (Windows)

System requirements
Blow Up 2 requires the following:

Macintosh Systems:
• PowerPC G5 processor or Intel processor
• Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later

Windows Systems:
• Intel Pentium 4 processor (or compatible)
• Windows XP or later