I heard somewhere that there is a program that, when an image is enlarged, it "fills in the gaps" so that the picture isn't as choppy. Somehow it gathers the colors of the surrounding pixels and adds to them, to increase the quality. Please post a reply if you've heard of it. Thanks you for your help!

-- Ted Delmer (tdelm@netcom.com), July 12, 1999

Answers

Many programs will do this. Look for a 'resize' command, and try enlarging by 400%. You will see whether it creates large blocks, or interpolates the values. There are different interpolation algorithms, that give different qualities.

I have a program called iPhoto Plus that does interpolation. However, I use my own software for this task (using a bilinear interpolation, which is a fairly simple algorithm giving reasonable quality).

Microsoft Photo Editor 3.0 and Paint 4.0 can resize, but they don't interpolate. Doubtless Photoshop does interpolate, but I don't have a copy handy to check.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), July 13, 1999.

PS has its own interpolation (including bicubic), but these is also a PS plugin called Genuine Fractals that does a better job (in most cases) than Bicubic. Download the free demo at www.genuinefractals.com

andy

-- andy (andycure@hotmail.com), July 13, 1999.

I forgot to mention that iPhoto Plus came free with a #40 scanner. I'm not recommending that software, just saying that some very cheap software can do interpolation. I would expect PS to do it far better.

-- Alan Gibson (Alan.Gibson@technologist.com), July 14, 1999.

The fractal based programs are... amazing. I've always been skeptical about interpolators, you can't add info that isn't there, and interpolation isn't entirely good. But fractals defy these notions. Must see to believe, makes printing larger pics possible.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), July 15, 1999.