#i had to do a lot of clone stamping on the sides! :o

[britishchick09]

senpai talking to a guy from kido radio- the original pic and my tweaked version! ;)

[solradguy]

Hello! I’ve been archiving stuff for a fandom I’m in (RWBY for context) and posting it to a side blog for fun. Really, I’m just compiling stuff I don’t see anyone sharing. I don’t want to misidentify what I’m doing!

I was wondering if you had ever posted anything about how you upscale images? You’re quite good at it, so I was wondering if you had shared any advice. When I upscale, the quality goes way down!

I don’t want you to think I’m using you instead of google! I’ve looked up guides on this, but I’m still struggling a bit. I’ve tried working with “vectors” on the advice of a friend.

Of course, I’m not really sure if this is the polite way to go about this. Maybe it’s a super secret and this is a severe faux pax! Please disregard this if it is! You feel a bit like an upperclassman in archiving (a senpai, if you prefer) and we’ve interacted several times.

Not top secret at all!! It's just kind of... esoteric lol... Been too lazy to explain it. But since you asked... ;P

I use Real ESRGAN for the main upscaling part of the process: https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN/

It comes with instructions but basically you plop your image into the same folder as the .EXE and then run this in the terminal:

./realesrgan-ncnn-vulkan.exe -i input.jpg -o output.png

Replace input.jpg with the full filename of the file you're upscaling and then change output.png to what you want the upscaled file to be named. I usually just make it like [OG filename]BIG.png haha

Waifu2x works alright-ish too, if ESRGAN doesn't work on your machine for whatever reason: https://waifu2x.udp.jp/index.html

Once I've got the upscaled file, I do the rest in Clip Studio Paint EX 2.0. CSP's image resizer's not very good, so I don't rely on it. But the Smart Smoothing and general image adjustment tools are useful. Sometimes I'll do some light cleanup in CSP before upscaling the file too, like removing dust with the Clone Stamp or light redrawing of fuzzy parts, etc. Most art/image editing tools will have what you need. I don't get to use Smart Smoothing for archival stuff often enough to say it's absolutely worth buying CSP for.

ESRGAN is a very powerful tool, but it does lose almost all of the image's original texture when it upscales. Things like analog art or anything with rough or grainy textures will get smoothed, but already smooth digital art upscales beautifully. The best workaround I've found for restoring texture is to take the original image, resize it in CSP to the scale of the upscaled image, and then paste the OG image over it, adjust the opacity, and then use the Sharpen filter to fix it from there.

So if the original image is 400x800px and the upscaled image is 8000x16000px, you'll use the CSP resizer to enlarge the OG image to 8000x16000px and use that as the overlay to restore some of the texture. It's not perfect, but it looks better than leaving it entirely smooth. Each image is different, you'll get pretty good at figuring out what texture to use and which to erase. I've found making a greyscale static texture, setting its layer to Overlay mode, and adjusting that helps a little too. I'll put the texture I use under a readmore below.

If the image is too small, not even ESRGAN can help... It's also not too good at text if there's a lot of .JPG noise in the way. If there's text, there's a good chance you'll have to manually redraw it or font-match it and completely redo it.

Good luck!! Hope this helps. Thank you for the compliments, too!!

Sometimes Gaussian Blur-ing this very, very, slightly works with the image better but most of the time I find that leaving it crisp looks the best. Editor's discretion.

[callum2020]

My Still Life

My Idea

I not sure why it came to my head but it was a movie quote from Gladiator. “What we do in life echoes in eternity”

How to make it a picture. 

I was thinking about how could I show it goes on for ever. I thought at first I could have a couple of mirrors reflecting the objects. When I was setting up the still life it just so happen that I face the mirror each other and it bounced lot of reflection for ever and ever. As soon as I saw it I knew that is what I want to create. However how to photograph it. I googled it and saw it was done in Starwars by using 2 way mirror. 

I wanted to pick some more modern look and feel for a my still life. What I wanting the items to represent:

Cross - religion, for some people religion can be a big part of people lifes.

Poppy - is to represent war and death

Light bulb - is ideas, knowledge

Key - new beginnings 

Ring - love or commitment 

mirror - echoing for eternity

The Set Up

I had my camera connect to the computer and shot tethered. I used a black velvet over the camera to eliminate the reflection in the two way glass and meets I didn't need to be under the velvet. 

The box held the mirror in place but also acted as a flag as the sun light was 5 o clock. (12 o clock from is mirror side of the box) which casted the shadow in the foreground.

I picked the grey sofa to shot on for two reasons. I didn't what a colour or pattern that was going to take away from the subject. When I saw the grey sofa I though the colour grey was a good option as it was not distracting but I felt like it added something to the image. I am not 100 % sure what it what it is adding but i feel like it is a good decision.  

Problems that I had to overcome

1. For the 2 way mirror to work I needed to make the camera side darker that the subject. To do this I got a cardboard box and a hole of the 2 way glass to sit and a smaller hole on the other side for the camera. 

2. The next problem was reflection for the glass. even though I cut a small hole for the camera light was getting into box and bouncing on the 2 way mirror to get rid of that problem I put a my black velvet cloth over my camera and the box to stop the reflection. 

3. I bought all the mirrors the same sizes this was a mistake. the background mirror needs to be smaller that the 2 way mirror as I was getting the cardboard box reflection in the mirror which I did not want. There was no getting around that fact.i tried shooting landscape and portrait. I used the longest Len and tried playing with the foreground distance but you could alway see the box. In the end I did the best to get rid of it in real life. I though I could try and tackle it in photoshop.

4. The natural light had some problems in the sense made it almost impossible to repeat due to the changing light. 

To make life easier I shot tethered so I didn't need to be under the blanket the whole time. 

Raw Image

Photoshop 

To fix the cardboard box I used the used the clone stamp tool and copy and flip the background. After I used the spot healing brush and the clone stamp to clean up the image.

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