Upsizing program that works with Affinity photo?

[michie]

I have a project that I really want to get done. I have video files that someone accidently set the camera to video instead of photo. So far I took screen shots with my macbook pro. The woman wants 4"x5" photos to put into an album. There are approximately 75 photos.

Can anyone recommend a program that would increase the size of the screenshot and make the photos clear and crisp? I have looked at several programs. Topaz although does a beautiful job, theywant them stored on cloud which I am sure you have to pay for. I also don't want a subscription program. I am unfamiliar with other programs that would do a good job at this with these. If you have any other suggestions to help with these issues, I welcome them .

• upsize photo
• clear & crisp image
• no subscription
• no cloud storage (I want them on my hard drive)

This is a project that is very important to me. I am doing the project for free for an older woman whose husband died. They photos are very meaningful to her.

Thank you. ahead of time.

Michie

[Ldina]

@michie It might help to upload one of your screenshots, so people can take a look at one of your "originals". For inkjet printing, I find I can get great prints from good quality 200-300 PPI originals, so for a 4x5" print, you'd need a resolution of 800x1000 pixels at 200 PPI, or 1200x1500 pixels at 300 PPI. That's pretty low Rez, so your screenshots may be more than enough to get good prints if the original images are of sufficient quality and you get a good screenshot. 

I've used UpScayl (standalone, but free) for doing some upsizing. It works fairly well on some images, and in others, it, turns some details to "plastic". I generally try to avoid upscaling unless absolutely necessary. You can also try upscaling in AfPhoto if needed, using Lanczos (separable or non-separable, which are the sharpest algorithms). If the results are too "crunchy", (very possible with portraits), try Bicubic or Bilinear, then sharpen some afterwards. As long as the upscaling is clean and fairly free of artifacts, you can always do some careful sharpening (Unsharp Mask or High Pass). 

I haven't played much with plugins, so I can't offer any help there. 

[David in Яuislip]

Rather than screenshots, presumably using a video player on pause, I'd go back to the video files using ffmpeg and extract the best stills, probably i-frames. Then use Photo to upsize as Ldina described. If they're not good enough you can try Imagemagick which has 31 resize algorithms, my current favourite is Sinc eg
magick input.png -filter Sinc -resize 1500x outputSinc.png
There is all sorts of voodoo associated with upsizing eg blur a bit first, upsize, sharpen, someone else will probably recommend the reverse. Be prepared for some experimentation but whatever you do I doubt you'll equal Topaz. Good luck

[GaryLearnTech]

It may well be that your video is already sufficiently hig-res for your requirements.  It may, in actual fact, be getting scaled down to be displayed on your MBP display so you can take your screenshots, which you now want to scale back up!

Open your video in QuickTime Player - probably the default if you simply double-click on the file - and select Window > Show Movie Inspector.  Or just press command-I.  The file's resolution can be found in the General section.

Or, in the Finder, simply select the file and choose File > Get Info and look under More Info > Dimensions.

Assuming the resolution is large enough in its raw state, try this…

1. Open the file in QuickTime Player and size your playback window to suit - it does not have to be viewed at 100% for this to work
2. locate your first position and pause playback
3. right-click anywhere on the video and select Copy Image (not Copy Subject - that will attempt to do background removal first, though this might be worth exploring for some of the images?).  Even if the video is only displayed at, say, 33% of its full size, the Copy will grab the frame at 100%.
   
4. Jump over to Affinity Photo and select File > New from Clipboard - or just press option-shift-command-N
5. Process as required - or simply save for now as you work through the video's timeline.
6. Repeat…

Alternatively, you could use the free and open source cross-platform multimedia player "VLC media player" instead of QuickTime Player.  If you don't already have it, it can be grabbed from the official site here: https://www.videolan.org.  It appears to have a dedicated snapshot mode.  Go into the Settings > Video screen and set a default location for the VLC screenshots to be saved to.

Then, in a slightly different workflow to the QuickTime Player suggestion, work through the video timeline and harvest all your snapshots in one pass.  Pause when you want a frame and either right-click anywhere on the frame and select Snapshot or select Video > Snapshot.  Or just use the keyboard shortcut option-command-S.  Then resume playback until you're at the next location and repeat.

Once you have your collection of PNG files, you can then process them at your leisure in Affinity Photo 2.

[carl123]

7 hours ago, michie said:

There are approximately 75 photos.

Please provide a couple of examples of what you're working with. There are too many variables to give pertinent instructions for your specific images

[michie]

5 hours ago, GaryLearnTech said:

It may well be that your video is already sufficiently hig-res for your requirements.  It may, in actual fact, be getting scaled down to be displayed on your MBP display so you can take your screenshots, which you now want to scale back up!

Open your video in QuickTime Player - probably the default if you simply double-click on the file - and select Window > Show Movie Inspector.  Or just press command-I.  The file's resolution can be found in the General section.

Or, in the Finder, simply select the file and choose File > Get Info and look under More Info > Dimensions.

Assuming

Unfortunately the video files size is much small than the one you showed. I have to move these short videos to the clearest image. Here's a screen shot of the file size. I may have to buy Topaz which I really don't want to . Thanks for your indepth help.

[michie]

7 hours ago, Ldina said:

@michie It might help to upload one of your screenshots, so people can take a look at one of your "originals". For inkjet printing, I find I can get great prints from good quality 200-300 PPI originals, so for a 4x5" print, you'd need a resolution of 800x1000 pixels at 200 PPI, or 1200x1500 pixels at 300 PPI. That's pretty low Rez, so your screenshots may be more than enough to get good prints if the original images are of sufficient quality and you get a good screenshot. 

I've used UpScayl (standalone, but free) for doing some upsizing. It works fairly well on some images, and in others, it, turns some details to "plastic". I generally try to avoid upscaling unless absolutely necessary. You can also try upscaling in AfPhoto if needed, using Lanczos (separable or non-separable, which are the sharpest algorithms). If the results are too "crunchy", (very possible with portraits), try Bicubic or Bilinear, then sharpen some afterwards. As long as the upscaling is clean and fairly free of artifacts, you can always do some careful sharpening (Unsharp Mask or High Pass). 

I haven't played much with plugins, so I can't offer any help there. 

I am having them professionally printed. I appreciate you recommendations. I've been putting this off this project so its done right. Thank you for your input.

[michie]

Here are 2 of the mov files. The indoor ones are most problematic. I have to move to a clear area spot on the video, which you can see in the 2nd mov file. Thanks for any suggestion you might have. Thank you so much.

[michie]

7 minutes ago, michie said:

I am having them professionally printed. I appreciate you recommendations. I've been putting this off this project so its done right. Thank you for your input.

I have not heard of Lanczos and will check it out. Thank you.

[David in Яuislip]

Inside
Only 1 keyframe was found and it was rubbish so I did 
ffmpeg -i IMG_8020.MOV inside%2d.png
stacked the pngs in Photo and choose the sharpest. I think it could do with a white balance at least

Outside
ffmpeg -i IMG_8113.MOV -vf "select=eq(pict_type\,PICT_TYPE_I)" -vsync vfr key%02d.png
produced three images and I chose the third. I have made a quick curves adjustment to get the faces to show

Resizing
The images are 980x1308. 1308/5=262dpi which may print ok without upsizing

The pngs are in the zip

Frames.zip

[stuck]

16 hours ago, michie said:

I have video files that someone accidently set the camera to video instead of photo. So far I took screen shots with my macbook pro

That's not the approach I'd take.  I wouldn't take a screen shot, I'd be looking for an application that can extract single frames from the video to give me a photo.

If the video was taken on a Canon camera then Canon's own software, Digital Photo Professional, can do this.

[michie]

3 hours ago, David in Яuislip said:

I will send both to test print and see how it turns out.  I appreciate your suggestion and help.

Thank you.

 

Inside
Only 1 keyframe was found and it was rubbish so I did 
ffmpeg -i IMG_8020.MOV inside%2d.png
stacked the pngs in Photo and choose the sharpest. I think it could do with a white balance at least

Outside
ffmpeg -i IMG_8113.MOV -vf "select=eq(pict_type\,PICT_TYPE_I)" -vsync vfr key%02d.png
produced three images and I chose the third. I have made a quick curves adjustment to get the faces to show

Resizing
The images are 980x1308. 1308/5=262dpi which may print ok without upsizing

The pngs are in the zip

 

 

Frames.zip 3.8 MB · 0 downloads

 

[michie]

10 hours ago, carl123 said:

Please provide a couple of examples of what you're working with. There are too many variables to give pertinent instructions for your specific images

 

9 hours ago, michie said:

I am having them professionally printed. I appreciate you recommendations. I've been putting this off this project so its done right. Thank you for your input.

 

2 hours ago, stuck said:

That's not the approach I'd take.  I wouldn't take a screen shot, I'd be looking for an application that can extract single frames from the video to give me a photo.

If the video was taken on a Canon camera then Canon's own software, Digital Photo Professional, can do this.

The camera was a Nikon D40 maybe. I didn't know there was software like this. I'll look into this. Thank you.

[stuck]

4 hours ago, michie said:

The camera was a Nikon D40 maybe

Google search says, not a D40, that camera has no video mode.

[David in Яuislip]

9 minutes ago, stuck said:

not a D40, that camera has no video mode

When I searched it could produce movs or mp4s but whatever

exiftool IMG_8020.MOV
reveals
Make                            : Apple
Model                           : iPhone 7 Plus

also this which explains the frame size that ffmpeg produced
Image Width                     : 1440
Image Height                    : 1080
Clean Aperture Dimensions       : 1308x980

[stuck]

17 hours ago, David in Яuislip said:

When I searched it could produce movs or mp4s

Umm, at the risk of being annoyingly pedantic, there's nothing in the D40 manual about it being able to record video:

https://www.nikonusa.com/pdf/manuals/kie88335f7869dfuejdl=-cww2/D40_en.pdf

PS that's your cue to find the page where the manual does show it can record video.

[R C-R]

10 hours ago, stuck said:

Umm, at the risk of being annoyingly pedantic, there's nothing in the D40 manual about it being able to record video:

From the info in various results from "https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Can+Nikon+D40+record+video&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8 seems to indicate it cannot. Something to do with the mirror or some such.