Topaz Labs’ Gigapixel AI has probably been the industry standard when it comes to upscaling images to massive proportions. It offers some pretty incredible abilities, claiming to let you to resize up to 600% from the original size “while perfectly preserving image quality”. Recently, Adobe announced their new Super Resolution feature, which uses AI to intelligently upsample images.
But how do the two compare with each other? Which is better? Which is faster? Are they both just as good as each other? That’s what Finnish photographer Peter Forsgård wanted to find out. So, in this video, he compares the two side-by-side on a number of images and talks about the pros and cons of each.
It’s an interesting comparison, which also takes the cost of the two into account (perpetual license vs subscription) and while Peter does believe that Gigapixel AI is the overall winner, especially when it comes to things like architecture, cityscapes and landscapes, it is much slower than the Adobe offering. Of course, it offers a lot of options you can tweak to get the best results and if you want the best results, what’s a few minutes of waiting time?
Photoshop is clearly ahead when it comes to speed, though, producing results in a matter of seconds rather than minutes. And if you’re resizing portraits, there really isn’t all that much difference between the images resized by the two different applications from the example shown in Peter’s video. This is where Photoshop’s speed definitely offers huge performance gains over Gigapixel AI – especially for wedding and event photographers who might potentially have quite a lot of images to upscale.
When it comes to cost, the immediate advantage is going to go to Adobe. More people will already have a CC subscription with Photoshop already installed on their system and they basically get the Super Resolution for free as part of the monthly subscription they’d be paying anyway. Gigapixel AI is going to be a separate purchase, but it’s a one-time deal – assuming you’re happy to not upgrade to newer versions in the future.
If you want to try out Gigapixel AI and see how it compares for yourself, they do offer a free trial that you can download. Although if you do want to buy it, you’ll pay just under $100. Adobe also has a free trial of Photoshop CC available, too.
Have you tried them both? Which do you prefer?
FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!