Scanning photos

[oblivion]

One of my friends has been given a gift of a photo-to-canvas-print offer; she has to provide a digital image on CD and they output it onto a 16x12" canvas and frame it. So far so cheesy.

Thing is, she doesn't  a digital image. She has a photo, made from an original digital image that she's lost. And the photo is only 6"x4".

So she's asked me to scan it for her and blow it up.

I have a nasty feeling this is not going to go well; extrapolation can only go so far. However... has anyone done something like this and had any sort of success and, if so, what did you do and how did you do it?

I have an HP scanner-built-into-a-printer thing and various bits of commercial and freeware image manipulation software: Sagelight, Xara P&G, Serif PhotoPlus, GIMP, all that jazz.

[Ath]

I'd go for a pretty good scan of the image at 600 DPI, and have that printed on the canvas. The texture of the canvas makes it relatively coarse, so I'd expect the extrapolation not to hurt the quality of the final print.

[oblivion]

I'd go for a pretty good scan of the image at 600 DPI, and have that printed on the canvas. The texture of the canvas makes it relatively coarse, so I'd expect the extrapolation not to hurt the quality of the final print.

Will do. Thanks. Should have occurred to me that the canvas medium would coarsen the result regardless.

I'll probably tweak the colours a bit -- the skintones are very orange, in the print -- and maybe produce a few versions, tweaked in different ways, so they can choose the one they like. (Sagelight's VERY good for that stuff, as good as, if not better than, anything I've ever used.)

[cyberdiva]

Though I haven't used this, I thought I'd mention Reshade, since I recall hearing some good things about it.  Here's the developer's blurb on CNET:
Reshade Image Resizer offers the most powerful photo enlargement framework available on the market. Resize images without the usual blur, jagged edges, halos, loss of sharpness or detail associated with image up-rezing. Easy to use, intuitive controls, make Reshade the best choice for beginners and experts alike. Create photo-realistic resizes at almost any zoom factor, 20x and more. Quickly adjust images for printing, high resolution publishing or other photograpic display, web design or scientific purposes. Crop and batch process your pictures easily while resizing them in various file formats like jpeg, tiff, png, bmp (supports most image modes including CMYK).

It's very pricey, but I think you can download it and try it out, which may be all you need. 

[Renegade]

I did some in-depth research on this a while back. From what I've found (and read), this is THE best photo enlargement software out there, period:

http://www.ononesoftware.com/products/suite/perfect-resize/?ind

It's currently on sale for $100 off, or $200. They have a standard version as well that's also on sale, and less expensive.

I never looked at Reshader though, so I would recommend comparing the two. I simply cannot comment on it as I've not tried it before.

They're both comparable in price, so... Who knows?

The Reshader looks better suited though as you can purchase credits for a quick 1-off job.

[oblivion]

It's currently on sale for $100 off, or $200.

I think I'll stick with what I've done. This was a favour to a friend, not something I do for a living or would feel I could charge for, and there's no way I can afford that sort of thing, especially not this close to Christmas.

(But fractal-based resizing? Sounds like an approach that would stand a chance of having good results. If I ever decide to change career, I'll do it!)