Tutorial: AKVIS Magnifier

Tom Thumb

The author of this tutorial is Gordon Sisson.

In his example Gordon Sisson has demonstrated one more aspect of the usage of AKVIS Magnifier - namely the ability not only to change the image's dimentions but also to improve on its quality. In author's words he frequently needs to increase the resolution of graphics dragged off the internet or clip art collection. These graphics are 72 dpi which is not acceptable for printing, so resolution should be increased to 300 dpi.

In order to compare Adobe Photoshop and AKVIS Magnifier (quickness and quality), Gordon Sisson decided to magnify a photo of a little boy. As everyone knows, growing a child is a very involved process. Let alone the boy is really small - the original image is just of 2.4 inches high! The author claims, however: this task can be done in just a couple of minutes.

Here is the Magic of AKVIS Magnifier:

• Step 1. Open an image in your photo editor (by command File -> Open or hot-keys Ctrl+O in Adobe Photoshop).

Original image (little boy)
• Step 2. Open the Image Size window (by menu item Image -> Image Size or Ctrl+Alt+I-key combination), disable the Resample Image function and increase the Resolution to 300 dpi. This reduces the size to 0.58 inches high.

Resolution change from 72 to 300 dpi
• Step 3. Save this 300 dpi image as .tif file (by command File -> Save As or Shift+Ctrl+S keypressing).
• Step 4. Start AKVIS Magnifier and open the image (drag it into the Magnifier program's window).

AKVIS Magnifier program's window
• Step 5. In the New Size panel specify the final size you want (as percent of the reduced size of the original graphic — in this example 741%).
• Step 6. Consider the Parameters to improve the final quality of the graphic. Some experimentions may be required with the slider adjustments to achieve the best quality. At this level of enlargement, the system provides optimum settings for Sharpen Edges. Simplicity is reduced to zero, parameters Edge Smoothness and Microline are left unchanged, the checkbox Unsharp Mask is enabled with the group parameters Amount = 10, Radius = 1.0.
• Step 7. Click on the button to process the image with the adjusted settings.
• Step 8. Press the button (upper corner second from left) and save the image as a .tif file.
• Step 9. Close the program AKVIS Magnifier with a click on .
• Step 10. Open the image in Adobe Photoshop as a psd file (see Step 1). Now the resolution has returned to 72 dpi but the dimensions of the graphic have increased by more than 31 times (from 0.58 to 17.81 inches).
• Step 11. Returning to the Image Size window, with Resample disabled, reset the resolution to 300 dpi and the dimensions come down to the size which planned (see Step 2). The image height is now 4.27 inches - the boy has become two times taller and the image resolution experienced a four-fold increase.

Resolution change for magnified image
• Step 12. Save the final image (see Step 3) – now it can be printed.

The result from AKVIS Magnifier	The same graphic enlarged in Photoshop

This method produces a graphic of higher quality than the laborious procedure in Photoshop, in about one fifth of the time.
The same procedure can be applied to other images as well.