I am increasingly impressed with the products from ON1. Does their latest software update, ON1 Resize AI 2022, meet the standards of other products from that stable feature and its “Perfect” legacy?
If you are not familiar with the ON1 product line, you may remember it with its old name Perfect Photo Suite. Part of that package was an industry-standard image resizing program once called True Fractals. That later became Perfect Resize and is now called AI Resize ON1. As the name suggests, it is an application designed to resize your photos. Also, it can enlarge the image without losing details.
ON1 Resize is something I’ve been using quite a bit over the past few years. I have pictures in my gallery that were taken quite a while ago with 10 and 12 megapixel cameras. The client still wanted their large prints, so I used Resize to upscale those images. I find it to be a much more precise tool than Photoshop.
ON1 now manufactures AI-enabled components for its product suite, and they work well. Tone and color settings in the Develop module of ON1 Raw Photos 2022 great one-click results much closer to what I was hoping to achieve with Lightroom’s automatic settings, so I had to make less manual adjustments. Later, ON1 NoNoise AI is a program that is resistant to Topaz DeNoise AI, which works faster and, arguably, gives better results than its main competitor.
so, no ON1 Resize AI 2022 live up to this legacy?
Set ON1 AI 2022 Resize through its tempo
The image renders before it opens, just over a second on my machine.
Once loaded, there are a bunch of presets on the left panel. I find it best to start here and choose a preset closest to the desired final image. These allow you to crop and resize the image to fit the media size that you will be using. They are nicely organized into different categories to help you quickly select the desired size and aspect ratio.
Once you have the preset selected, further adjustments in the crop tool can be made to the aspect ratio and output size using the custom boxes at the top of the screen. The output size is specified in pixels, inches, mm, centimeters, or percent. You can also choose how many pixels per inch you want.
Deselecting the crop tool by selecting the view tool will create a resized preview so you can zoom in and out. You can both see that the image size has changed via the right panel.
Then you have a bunch of adjustments available. I’ve found the genuine Fractals zooming method to work best in the past. This was improved with the AI version of the images I tried with it. It still uses the patented fractal-based algorithm, but the AI optimizes the settings. A full explanation of how these functions work is available in Instruction Manual Resize ON1.
Selecting a preprogrammed setting for landscape shots worked well for the photos I tried for this review. However, like other programs, the default sharpness is too much for my camera’s already sharp images. Therefore, I reduced that setting to 0. If you use a different brand with softer coarse files, you may need to experiment with sanding to discover which works best for you.
You can also add film grain and tiling, and there is also the option to wrap the gallery with different wrap variations available, useful for canvas prints.
Just like other AI programs from ON1, it is very fast. I use an eight year old computer with relatively low specs by modern standards, but the conversions work in seconds. The results are excellent.
The software works best on images taken with high-performance professional lenses. If there are any defects, the program will also magnify those defects. Further tests show that doubling and quadrupling an image works well. However, it still stands out when resizing images from older cameras. I used a nine-year-old 16-megapixel Micro Four Thirds OM-D E-M1 camera in the following example.
Increasing a 16 MP image up to 32 MP is not a challenge for ON1 Resize, as you can see from the before and after 100% crop of the image above. On the left is the original 16 MP photo and on the right is the enlarged version.
Furthermore, even pushing the software to extremes, it works amazingly well. “Extremely”, I mean zooming in on it up to 108 megapixels. While not perfect when viewed at 100%, the results are still pretty good, but artifacts have started to appear when peeking at pixels. However, when standing back from the screen, since one needs to see the entire image, the full sized image looks fine. It was a fun experiment, but I can’t think of any probable reason why I would want a 108 MP image.
That said, ON1 Resize can also reduce JPG artifacts. For example, for photos that are too compressed or those that are small in size, ON1 Resize AI can reduce the effects of compression and create new details, thus resulting in higher quality images. with increased resolution.
I ran 15 photos through the resizing process, both older and new versions of the program, and the results were good with the former and amazing with the latter.
What I did and didn’t like
ON1 Resize 2022 is a supersoftware that does what it claims: it resizes photos – enlarges or shrinks them in size – thus allowing images to have multiple resolutions and aspect ratios to match. suitable for different vehicles.
Unlike some other programs, it’s nice that it doesn’t use customer data. Its AI learns from thousands of photos taken by employees at ON1, all of whom are photographers. With other apps, it seems that after we purchase their product, they will use our image data for free, so congratulations ON1 for staying away from that approach.
I mainly use it when creating large prints from smaller files, but I will also use it to scale down the accuracy of files for printing.
This app will be useful for those who want to upscale their images for display on larger, higher-resolution screens, although modern cameras offer resolution sufficient for 4K. It will also be useful for photographers who use lower resolution cameras and those who crop photos a lot. Of course, billboards will continue to use it to upgrade their image.
It’s easy to use and most will find that they’ll simply use the presets. You can create your own presets and streamline the included values by removing unwanted ones.
However, clear results may require some tweaking. So like all software, it would be beneficial to spend a little time learning how to drive it. Discovering how adjusting the zoom parameters to best suit your camera images is well worth doing. For example, the default sharpness is too much for super sharp images from my OM System OM-1, which is true for most programs.
It works as a plugin for Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture 1 and Serif Affinity, priced at $99.99. Although, it’s better value when purchased as part of the ON1 Professional Plugins Bundle which includes all other On1 plugins for $149.99. For users on ON1 Photo Raw 2022, Resize AI 2022 will be an included module as part of the following free update, which will take effect in a few weeks; Its pricing varies with multiple options, from $79.99 for a perpetual upgrade license to $179.99 for an annual license that includes 1TB of cloud storage.
On1 Resize AI 2022 is great software and a superb addition to your arsenal of amazing images.
