Zoom in, Zoom in… Enhance! Adobe Lightroom CC Brings Spy Film Fantasy To Reality
“Zoom in. Zoom in again. Now… enhance!”
If you’ve seen any spy film or crime drama, and especially if you’ve seen a parody of one — you know this scene. Zoom in & enhance, or just the “Enhance Button,” is a computer function that turns blurred, grainy, or heavily cropped images into clear, detailed pictures. Often, the pictures come out so good that they can be used as crime evidence.
At long last, “Zoom In & Enhance” has moved out of the realm of science fiction and into reality with Adobe Lightroom CC’s Super Resolution feature.
What Is Super Resolution?
Super Resolution uses machine learning to enrich photos by quadrupling the resolution with new pixels. The AI can “guess” how to fill in missing detail with tremendous accuracy.
The result is a larger, highly detailed, and clear image — just like in the movies!
Testing Adobe Lightroom CC Super Resolution
Zoom In & Enhance: Test Image
We’re starting with a snap taken on an overcast July day in Seattle. The image is detailed enough, but what if we want to zoom in and see more detail? That’s where Adobe’s Super Resolution comes in.
Import Image
To begin, import the desired photo into Adobe Lightroom CC:
Select Enhance
Next, simply right click the image to pull up this menu:
Select “Enhance.” In the future, you can also use the keyboard shortcut command + option + E on Mac or control + alt + E on Windows.
After selecting “Enhance” from the right click menu, this is what will pops up next:
Preview Results
In the pop-up, you’ll see a preview of what the image enhancement will look like. By default, the preview box displays a zoomed in portion of the image with enhancement enabled. When you pan around to see the rest of the image, the image reverts to its original pixel density until you stop panning.
You’ll notice that the process will take some time, in this case 27 seconds. Super Resolution is extremely easy to use, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that it’s simple tech. This is cutting edge technology never thought possible before, and it demands a high amount of processing power.
Super Resolution: Activated!
Unfortunately, we aren’t able to display the full-size enhanced image directly on this page, but if you want to see the 30-megabyte photo in all its glory, we’ve uploaded it to Google Drive here.
This all being said, we can still compare small sections of the original image and the image after enhancement.
