# Adobe Super Resolution



## BobT (Mar 13, 2021)

I understand "Super Resolution" is now available in Camera Raw but not yet in LR.  I'm not at all familiar with Camera Raw.  Is there an easy way that we can utilise it in Camera Raw for our LR images?  Is there a timeline for its availability in LR?


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## PhilBurton (Mar 13, 2021)

BobT said:


> I understand "Super Resolution" is now available in Camera Raw but not yet in LR.  I'm not at all familiar with Camera Raw.  Is there an easy way that we can utilise it in Camera Raw for our LR images?  Is there a timeline for its availability in LR?


No one knows for sure.  However, the next release of Lightroom Classic is probably going to happen within several weeks.  It would surprise me personally if that feature of ACR isn't incorporated into LR Clasic.


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## PhilBurton (Mar 13, 2021)

I will be interested to learn if this new Adobe feature eliminates the need for third party programs.


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## happycranker (Mar 13, 2021)

If you haven't seen this then Eric Chan has a good article on the subject and yes it will be coming to LR!

https://blog.aFrom the ACR team: Super Resolution


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## BobT (Mar 13, 2021)

If it is anything like the Topaz version which I've used then it would certainly be a welcomed addition to LR.


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## clee01l (Mar 13, 2021)

BobT said:


> If it is anything like the Topaz version which I've used then it would certainly be a welcomed addition to LR.


I'm guessing that Topaz GigaPixel AI does the same thing.  From the Eric Chan article, it appears the Lightroom/SCR version is more flexible in that it works with RAW files and will apply Lightroom adjustments to the Super Resolution image.   Topaz GigaPixel AI only works with RGB images that have adjustments baked in.

For all of those that from time to time pose the question , "Can I delete my RAW original and keep one a smaller JPEG derivative?"    Here is a technology  advancement that  requires that original RAW image


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## Conrad Chavez (Mar 13, 2021)

clee01l said:


> I'm guessing that Topaz GigaPixel AI does the same thing.  From the Eric Chan article, it appears the Lightroom/SCR version is more flexible in that it works with RAW files and will apply Lightroom adjustments to the Super Resolution image.   Topaz GigaPixel AI only works with RGB images that have adjustments baked in.


It's sort of the opposite situation compared to Topaz. Not only does Super Resolution work with raw files, it's raw-based to begin with. Because they put Super Resolution into Camera Raw and not into Photoshop itself, the question coming up on the Adobe forums is how to use Super Resolution with non-raw images. For example, some people are opening the Camera Raw filter when a Photoshop document layer is selected, and Super Resolution is not in there.

The answer is that Super Resolution is one of those Camera Raw features that is not available when used as a filter on a Photoshop layer. So if you do want to apply Super Resolution to a non-raw image, you have to change Camera Raw preferences to make it open TIFF and JPEG files, then open your non-raw image into Camera Raw.

Of course, this should be simpler if Super Resolution does turn up in the next Lightroom Classic update, because hopefully Super Resolution will work on any image format supported in a Lightroom Classic catalog. But I'm just assuming that for now, when it actually  gets here we'll have to see if there are any restrictions .


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## Gnits (Mar 13, 2021)

I like the fact that 
a) it is close to or part of the Raw processing pipeline (and that other formats are also allowed)
b). It may breath new life into some of my legacy images, even images that I might have been happy with in the past


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## Denis de Gannes (Mar 13, 2021)

Did some test today to see how the Super Res would help me.
Used ACR to create the Enhanced DNGand then PS to create the 16-bit tiffs.
Exported the RAW files from LrC with 2 X resize in pixels to 16-bit tiffs. 
Imported the tiffs to compare in the Library module. The screen captures are very small sections of the images due to the limit in file size that can be uploaded.
The display is iMac 27" 5K. I guess the Enhanced image will provide better prints than resizing in LrC.


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## Denis de Gannes (Mar 13, 2021)

This screen capture shows the crop in the screen captures above. It is from the Navigator window in the Library module.


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## prbimages (Mar 14, 2021)

clee01l said:


> Here is a technology advancement that requires that original RAW image



Not quite true ... as Eric Chan explains in the article linked above, the technology works on JPG, PNG, and TIFF files as well as RAW. 

Still, as you say, it's a good reminder of the general concept that original files should always be kept.


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## clee01l (Mar 14, 2021)

prbimages said:


> Not quite true ... as Eric Chan explains in the article linked above, the technology works on JPG, PNG, and TIFF files as well as RAW.
> 
> Still, as you say, it's a good reminder of the general concept that original files should always be kept.



While I said “the original RAW image” what I should have said was “the original Image”. The point as you have agreed is that you need to revert back to the “least” modified image for the best result. 


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## Lawrence Woodd (Mar 14, 2021)

As near a I can tell, you can't open an image in Camera Raw from Lightroom, but you can from Bridge.  
Opening the Camera Raw as a filter in Photoshop gives you almost everything EXCEPT Super Resolution.
I think I'm just going to wait until the next Lightroom Classic update and hope it's in there.


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## clee01l (Mar 14, 2021)

As I understand, ACR has be updated to include Super Resolution. 

Lightroom Classic (which accesses ACR under the hood) has not yet been updated to the latest (n.2) release. I expect to see it in LrC 10.2.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk


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## BobT (Mar 14, 2021)

Lawrence Woodd said:


> As near a I can tell, you can't open an image in Camera Raw from Lightroom, but you can from Bridge.
> Opening the Camera Raw as a filter in Photoshop gives you almost everything EXCEPT Super Resolution.
> I think I'm just going to wait until the next Lightroom Classic update and hope it's in there.


I managed to find "Super Resolution" via Photoshop.  I don't know if it's the same thing.  All it did was produce one humongous DNG that LR wouldn't open for some reason so I saved it as a TIFF.  I didn't see any improvement other than an up-res.  However, I worked on an already improved image.  I'll take on Cletus's advice and try it on an unimproved image.


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## PhilBurton (Mar 15, 2021)

happycranker said:


> If you haven't seen this then Eric Chan has a good article on the subject and yes it will be coming to LR!
> 
> https://blog.aFrom the ACR team: Super Resolution


Thanks for this link.  Great read.  A tantalizing comment in the blog is the comment about GPUs:

_If you’re in the market for a new computer or GPU, look for GPU models optimized for CoreML and Windows ML machine learning technologies. For example, the Neural Engine in the Apple M1 chip is highly tuned for CoreML performance. Similarly, the TensorCores in NVIDIA’s RTX series of GPUs run Windows ML very efficiently. The GPU landscape is changing quickly and I expect big performance improvements around the corner._

Some questions?

So what about older generation Macs?  Not recommended because they all use AMD GPU technology?
Why is AMD not mentioned?  (Does Adobe favor Nvidia over AMD?)
Just how many tensor cores?  In other words, does it pay to spend (even) more for a more powerful Nvidia 3000 series card, assuming that any are available at non-scalper prices?  (Ha!)


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## Gnits (Mar 15, 2021)

A useful reference to Eric Chans article. 

I sense GPU technology will be a scary place for the next while. Reference to Core ML and Windows ML, architectural changes from Apple M1 and that roadmap, the obvious response by Microsoft and or Intel to the  Apple M1.  It looks like the centre of architectural battlegrounds and most of the big players are in the mix.

I would be very nervous of spending a lot of money on graphics cards for the next while. I plan to watch from a distance.


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## Denis de Gannes (Mar 15, 2021)

BobT said:


> I managed to find "Super Resolution" via Photoshop.  I don't know if it's the same thing.  All it did was produce one humongous DNG that LR wouldn't open for some reason so I saved it as a TIFF.  I didn't see any improvement other than an up-res.  However, I worked on an already improved image.  I'll take on Cletus's advice and try it on an unimproved image.


Hi LrC is presently at 10.1.x ACR 13.1 and ACR is now 13.2 so LrC can not process the Super Resolution edits that ACR created.
To open the raw file in ACR go a raw file on you HHD and right-click and select open with PS 2021. Photoshop will boot and open the ACR window with the raw file displayed. Right-click the small image at the right/bottom of the window and click on Enhance. There will be a pop up displayed which will allow you to select Super Resolution then select Enhance it will take a minute or two and you should see the spinning ball. In the next pop-up select open and a tiff file will open in PS be patient it takes a while.


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## Colin Grant (Mar 15, 2021)

Seems to me that Adobe is building in functionality that is processor/gpu intensive. I just hope they do not go too far and we end up with a bloaty piece of software containing functions that many if us hardly, if ever, use. Being on a subscription means we get dragged along with all this stuff and even if we decide not to upgrade we still have to pay our rent!


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## Conrad Chavez (Mar 16, 2021)

Colin Grant said:


> Seems to me that Adobe is building in functionality that is processor/gpu intensive.



This is a trend across the software industry. Other photographic software is doing the same, Adobe is simply keeping in step with what's going on generally. Part of the point is to make more things faster, which is what we all want. CPU processors , especially from Intel, have stagnated in recent years, so instead CPU makers added cores. GPU power has advanced much more quickly, but that power is not fully used by most software because it can take some work to do properly. Recent major versions of Lightroom, Photoshop, and other vendors’ applications have tried to take better advantage of both the additional cores and GPU power that are available in the computers you can buy today.

Also, the new Enhance feature is powered in part by machine learning (ML). Again, this is a general trend in computing. The potential of machine learning/neural networks/AI is so high that both Windows and macOS have implemented machine learning support at the OS level in recent system updates. If you use the new Neural Filters in Photoshop, those OS versions are required. The new Apple Silicon in Macs includes a hardware Neural Engine for the same reason: The entire industry expects applications to increasingly use ML/AI/neural capabilities from this point on, because it is useful in so many ways, and the hardware support is now there to make it happen.



Colin Grant said:


> I just hope they do not go too far and we end up with a bloaty piece of software containing functions that many if us hardly, if ever, use.



It’s hard to think of why Super Resolution would be bloat. It has attracted a lot of interest, because many photographers are interested in making larger prints from tighter crops or smaller sensors. Like a lot of ML-based features, the time needed to do the required calculations is impractical with older computers, but has now become practical with the multicore CPU/GPU/ML power we have today. Before Super Resolution, many Lightroom and Photoshop users paid an extra $99 for Topaz Gigapixel AI to do the same thing. Now, there may be a fair number of potential Gigapixel AI customers who will decide that the one in Camera Raw is good enough, and choose to save that $99.

And the performance improvements from optimizing for current CPU and GPU power certainly have universal appeal, something everyone wants to use.


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## Denis de Gannes (Mar 16, 2021)

If software can enhance digital files from smart phones and smaller, lighter, less expensive hardware to provide the necessary ability to print and share that is where the new users will migrate. Just a thought.
Just twenty years ago the majority of serious photographers were resisting the switch from film to digital. Many companies that did not make the change quickly did not survive.


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## BobT (Mar 16, 2021)

I have played around with Topaz Gigapixel a bit and I can assure you the AI database is huge so bloat is on the cards unless they do that bit in the cloud.  I expect it's not so much a sophisticated algorithm but a huge database of as many generic items as is practicable that are likely to be encountered in photography.


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## Colin Grant (Mar 16, 2021)

One man’s must have is another man’s bloat.


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## Johan Elzenga (Mar 16, 2021)

As you may have noticed by now, Lightroom Classic 10.2 does not yet include the new Super Resolution. It does read and edit these images, however.


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## clee01l (Mar 16, 2021)

Johan Elzenga said:


> As you may have noticed by now, Lightroom Classic 10.2 does not yet include the new Super Resolution. It does read and edit these images, however.


Yes,  I was disappointed.    The Super Resolution DNG created by ACR  is just another DNG.  There should be no reason that Lightroom Classic would not be able to read and edit the DNG.


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## BobT (Mar 13, 2021)

I understand "Super Resolution" is now available in Camera Raw but not yet in LR.  I'm not at all familiar with Camera Raw.  Is there an easy way that we can utilise it in Camera Raw for our LR images?  Is there a timeline for its availability in LR?


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## Johan Elzenga (Mar 16, 2021)

clee01l said:


> Yes,  I was disappointed.    The Super Resolution DNG created by ACR  is just another DNG.  There should be no reason that Lightroom Classic would not be able to read and edit the DNG.


I don't know all the details, but I don't think it's "just another DNG". The size of this DNG is almost twice what you'd expect. If I use Super Resolution on a 24.8 MB DNG, the resulting DNG is not about 100 MB as you'd expect, but 181.5 MB. I've read that some software can show these images, but shows them in the original resolution. That makes me believe that the original file is embedded, but that still does not explain the massive size.


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## fredbreitw (Mar 16, 2021)

BobT said:


> I understand "Super Resolution" is now available in Camera Raw but not yet in LR.  I'm not at all familiar with Camera Raw.  Is there an easy way that we can utilise it in Camera Raw for our LR images?  Is there a timeline for its availability in LR?


Super Resolution is for printing very large images. We are talking 20x30 and above. It doubles the size of your image creating a very large file size. I enlarged a file using super resolution and then exported the same file as a tiff with the same enlarged measurements in Lightroom. When I compared them I couldn’t see any difference.


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## PhilBurton (Mar 16, 2021)

clee01l said:


> Yes,  I was disappointed.    The Super Resolution DNG created by ACR  is just another DNG.  There should be no reason that Lightroom Classic would not be able to read and edit the DNG.


I'm also disappointed, if only to see how long Super Resolution would require with my ancient video card to process a Nikon D3 NEF (~ 25 MB).

Phil


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## prbimages (Mar 17, 2021)

PhilBurton said:


> I'm also disappointed, if only to see how long Super Resolution would require with my ancient video card to process a Nikon D3 NEF (~ 25 MB).


Well, you can try it using Camera Raw / Photoshop.


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## prbimages (Mar 17, 2021)

Johan Elzenga said:


> The size of this DNG is almost twice what you'd expect. If I use Super Resolution on a 24.8 MB DNG, the resulting DNG is not about 100 MB as you'd expect, but 181.5 MB.



I am seeing my 24 MB ARW files blow up to 330-350 MB DNG files. Ouch! I'm wondering if mine are twice as big as yours because of the camera raw bit depth setting - I have mine set to 16-bit, maybe yours is 8-bit?


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## Denis de Gannes (Mar 17, 2021)

Ok so LrC u10.2 has been released and there is no option to create a Super Resolution file like ACR 13.2.
At this stage it is my expectation that this function will eventually be available in LrC but it may take weeks for this to be implemented and I wish to adapt an effective workaround.
My normal work flow is normally confined to Lightroom processing my raw files and only occasionally I will use the edit in function to send an image to PS.
I would like to adapt the most efficient way to create a file to send to an external printing service using the Super Resolution feature.
I sent a few files earlier for printing but I took me a while to complete the process.
After rethinking I tried the following, select a raw image in LrC which has edits, croping, enhancements etc. Save metadata to the file, I do not do this normally.
Then I locate the file on the hdd right click and select edit in PS which boots and the file opens in the ACR window and it shows the edits done in LrC.
This is fine and I proceed to create the Super Resolution dng when completed I click the done button and exit PS. The DNG that was created is now on disk alongside the original raw file. I then synchronize the folder and import the DNG to LrC.
When I select the DNG in LrC the only edits that have been applied are the Default Develop settings so I now have to copy / paste the rest of the edits before proceeding to export the tiff.
Any ideas for a more efficient workaround?


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## PhilBurton (Mar 17, 2021)

Denis de Gannes said:


> [ ]
> At this stage it is my expectation that this function will eventually be available in LrC but it may take weeks for this to be implemented and I wish to adapt an effective workaround.


I'm going to guess that we will see Super Resolution in two months, with the LrC 10.3 release.

Honestly, I can't understand this omission.  With an LcR release, this new feature would get more attention.  I'm, sure that there is a backstory here.


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## Johan Elzenga (Mar 17, 2021)

prbimages said:


> I am seeing my 24 MB ARW files blow up to 330-350 MB DNG files. Ouch! I'm wondering if mine are twice as big as yours because of the camera raw bit depth setting - I have mine set to 16-bit, maybe yours is 8-bit?


The Camera Raw bit setting is only relevant for images sent to Photoshop, not for this (and my settings are 16 bits, ProPhotoRGB too). It probably depends on the type of image. I tested it with a DJI Mavic Air 2 file. That is only 12 Mpixel, so the  original DNG is already quite big. Sony ARW files can be compressed or uncompressed, so your 24 MB image may represent an entirely different size image than mine. A 23 MB Canon CR2 file from my EOS-1DX is blown up to about 250 MB.


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## Johan Elzenga (Mar 17, 2021)

BTW, I realised where this massive file size increase must come from. Even though the enhanced DNG files can be edited like they are raw files, they are not. They are already demosaiced to linear RGB in the 'Enhanced Details' step, which always takes place. That means that your 1 color/pixel raw image is now 3 colors per pixel (and indeed 16 bits, but your raw file was 14 or 16 bits too) and you now have 4 times as many pixels. In other words: without any compression you would expect a 12x bigger file.


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## PhilBurton (Mar 17, 2021)

Johan Elzenga said:


> BTW, I realised where this massive file size increase must come from. Even though the enhanced DNG files can be edited like they are raw files, they are not. They are already demosaiced to linear RGB in the 'Enhanced Details' step, which always takes place. That means that your 1 color/pixel raw image is now 3 colors per pixel (and indeed 16 bits, but your raw file was 14 or 16 bits too) and you now have 4 times as many pixels. In other words: without any compression you would expect a 12x bigger file.


Time to buy a bigger disk drive.


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