novice question supersizing..

[mark g]

hi, I have an image thats 700 pixels square,at a resolution of 72... I want to print this image 3ft square at the best quality i can. I have watched the tutorial on rerendering, but this indicates that i need to create an image from scratch using the session history. whats the best way to enlarge this small image?..would i simply open set canvas size dialogue box,set at 3ft sq, increase the resolution,open image, and then go to supersize option,and print? mark

[Synthetik]

You could do a new source and canvas, choose your 700 pixel image, then set the desired canvas size to be the 3ft image. then you run the layer commands : set layer to supersized source menu command. then save it as a photoshop file and/or print.

In general, once you get above 12,000 pixels for your canvas layer size you will start to run into lack of virtual memory issues, so that would be the approx max size you could get to.

Sometimes it makes sense to optimize you image a little prior to suspersizing. perhaps by running the image compressor ip op, or doing a little sharpening, etc.

[Steve Campbell]

John - when you say getting above 12,000 pixels is effectively the limit for this, you mean of course in one dimension, yes? So the biggest you can shoot for is 12,000 by 12,000 px? I thought upon first read that it perhaps meant total pixel count - sorry for being so literal. And by "virtual memory issues", do you mean limitations within the SA software or with OS? Not something that could be resolved with tons of RAM and drive space, in other words.

I'm interested in large scale output just now - and an image which is 12,000 px on it's longest side would print about five feet at 200 dpi, which is pretty good, but I'm curious about possibly doing better. Are there any thoughts about pushing this limit, or any work arounds anyone has thought of?

This is a really old post I'm replying to - guess it will just bob to the top with my reply, yes?

[Synthetik]

Yes, i'm talking about approximately 12,000 x 12,000 pixels.

Multiple undo buffers can take up a huge amount of memory, so cutting that preference down when working on really big canvas sizes is a good idea. You should be using the disk storage preference option for undo buffer as well.

Once we go to a 64 bit build for Studio Artist, then the size limitations will go away. The main issue for us right now is that we use Quicktime api calls that are only available in 32 bit. Apple's quicktime api support is kind of a mess right now, so hopefully they will get is straightened out soon. Also, once we go to a 64 bit build we will no longer be able to support older PPC machines and older OSX versions.

We've talked about doing a separate supersizer application that would only run supersizer and be written to allow for higher output sizes. So that may happen at some point.

Another way of working is to record a PASeq of a painting, and then output it as a eps or svg vector graphics file. This kind of output allows for resolution independent printing. You need to build the paint synthesizer presets you use to be ones that support vector output. This limits the range of paint effects you can work with to things that work as vector output.

There are some tips that discuss generating eps or svg vector output. I've gotten some decent results with this kind of approach.

[Synthetik]

The memory limitations are the limit of virtual memory allowed by the operating system to an application. It's 4 GB for a 32 bit application on the mac. Once you get above approx 3.2 GB virtual memory consumption things start to slow down dramatically, so that's really the limit before you start to run into problems. It doesn't matter it you have 12 GB of ram memory in your computer, the operating system is only going to allocate 4GB worth of available working memory for a given 32 bit application.

[mark g]

out of interest ... is the 64 bit build a long way off?

[Synthetik]

I'm not going to comment too much on that at this time. I'm unclear at this point how much work is going to be involved rewriting all of the quicktime stuff that is currently holding us back.

When it does happen everyone running PPC machines and older OSX versions will not be able to use it. It's surprising how many Studio Artist users still are running older macs. Maybe not so surprising, i totally understand why. We always make a big point of trying to support people on older machines rather than forcing them to have to upgrade to newer machines, but there's just no way to do that with a 64 bit mac build.

We are going to be looking at trying to improve existing memory performance after 4.03 comes out. So we might be able to improve things a little in some future 4.0 build.

[Steve Campbell]

Thanks for the info, John.

[musicstudio]

I have a 27"x27" single layer tiff I was trying to paint onto (8100x8100 pixels) and studio artist 4.03 kept crashing and getting the out of memory error. I have an epson 9800 printer with a 3 year old 64 bit mac desktop (Dual-Core Intel Xeon) and this limitation is a bummer. I realize there is a lot of development needed in order to get studio artist up to speed with 64 bit and it seems most people are using it for video/animation, but 12000x12000 pixels in the print world is definitely a major handicap. Does anyone have any advice for how I can get around this or at least tips for studio artist to work better on large files?

[Synthetik]

You can interpolate in photoshop prior to printing from there to get the final canvas up to the resolution to want for the print. Not an ideal solution i know, but i know of people who have printed really large canvases this way who were happy with the printed results. Some other people have used things like genuine fractals for their additional upsizing before large scale printing.

If enough people are interested we might release supersizer as a stand alone app designed to allow for larger canvas output, so that would be another way to upsize after you were finished.

If what you are doing in Studio Artist can be generated using vector paint presets or the vectorizer (or some combination of the 2) then you can output as eps or svg files. You can then import those vector files into photoshop at really high resolutions for large format printing.

We are going to try and improve the memory performance for a future 4.04 update. No promises on how that will work out, but i think we'll be able to improve things somewhat.

[musicstudio]

Thanks John for the quick reply, I've experimented with the supersizer and also interpolation it's just that having the correct print size canvas takes out a lot of the guesswork when printing. Having that original large sized painting to work off of helps to make changes, see how the brushes, inks, etc will really look when printed etc. I would definitely be interested in memory improvement for the next update (have also changed the undo buffers in general prefs as well but didn't help).