Photomatching Technique

[joelsabi]

Once you get to the site like getty what technique do you use when you have a photo that looks like a match. It looks like some people enlarge the photos to get a better look at the equipment in question. if true, what tools are you using? is it photoshop? thanks in advance.

[zonker]

as long as you have a good video card in your computer with a high resolution. the window's picture and fax viewer seem's to work pretty well for me, but i'm sure other's have a better way kyle has good luck at this so maybe you can ask him his technique.

[kylehess10]

For enlarging images I use Infranview, which is free

[Jags Fan Dan]

For enlarging images I use Infranview, which is free

Kyle, is this program significantly better than just using "Paint" and enlarging photos that way?

[kylehess10]

Kyle, is this program significantly better than just using "Paint" and enlarging photos that way?

They're pretty much the same but Infranview is a lot easier when it comes to resizing. Plus it's also an editing software

[kingjammy24]

as i mentioned in another thread, compressed formats like .jpgs and .gifs are poor candidates for enlarging. compressed formats become blurry and pixelated when enlarged past a certain point, thereby defeating the entire purpose. unfortunately, most places don't offer images in uncompressed formats.
plus, every time you work with and save a compressed file, the quality degrades slightly. after 15 or 20 saves, it's noticeably worse because it keeps re-compressing. photoshop, at a minimum, allows you to save images on a sliding scale for image quality/file size whereas many other free or cheap editors will simply save in a default setting that tends to result in noticeable image quality loss.

personally, i use photoshop. it's long been the industry gold-standard and i'm unaware of any other piece of photo-editing software that has a more powerful engine. if your only purpose is to enlarge images, then photoshop is overkill. adobe likely has other, less expensive solutions like photoshop elements.

i've never heard of infranview. i suspect the freeware that kyle is referring to is irfanview. it's a miniscule piece of freeware created by a guy in bosnia. it's simply a graphic viewer though. i use it because it's able to view graphic files in tons of different formats. its editing capabilities are extremely light to say the least. you're just as well off using MS Paint. Paint is editing software, whereas irfanview really is intended solely as a viewer. in lieu of photoshop, my other recommendations would be paint shop pro or photoimpact. if you're determined not to spend a cent, there are some free graphic editors out there, namely GIMP and and google's picasa. adobe is soon releasing a new photo editor called express. you can use the beta version on their site for free.

rudy.