I continue my work with Topaz Gigapixel AI (still 45% off through 1/1!)

In my last blog post I described how I was using Topaz Gigapixel AI and Studio 2 with the AI Clear filter to salvage a bunch of old images for use as stock imagery. During this “dead week” between Christmas and New Year’s (or shall we call it a “dead YEAR”-!), I continue to explore my archives, pulling out all sorts of images and preparing them for posting.

Below is one example I did today, one of my great-grandmother’s old postcards from almost 115 years ago. These were her “social media” as she kept in touch with her teenaged friends when they took vacations and holidays.

I borrowed these cards from a relative several years ago and had scanned them at 300ppi; looking back I should have gone for 600ppi or higher, but still the results were quite good. This is the uncropped image I worked with (originally 1665 x 2122px before cropping down to just the photo), reduced here:

Here is a 100% cropped view showing the original scan quality. Like I said, it should have been bigger…

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After cropping and otherwise prepping this postcard (and a collection of others like it) in Photoshop (spotting and tonal correction), I batch-processed them along with some random others in Gigapixel AI, enlarging them all 4X:

Next I used Photoshop 2021’s new Neural>Colorize filter to add some quick color to the Easton Library image:

Here is the 4X-enlarged and colorized result (details at 100%, please open in new window to view full-size):

Now you see why I love Gigapixel AI so much! Look how it made this small image usable at even huge sizes! Here are a couple of examples from my Fine Art America page for this particular image, where the enlarged photo easily fits on blankets and other large items:

If you haven’t tried it already, you really need to test Gigapixel AI on your own quality-challenged images! Photos you may have rejected years ago are now perfectly viable for all sorts of purposes.