Remini Photo Enhancer

[emeraldcity]

Did a search but couldn't find any reference to this on the forums.

I highly recommend playing around with an app called Remini. It uses smart AI upscaling to "enhance" photographs to an incredible degree. Here's an example Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/StuartHumphryes/status/1235234622033850368

Now of course it is still very much a gimmick in the sense that it is guessing detail (the image is "fake" on some level), but it's still miraculous and pretty jaw-dropping seeing people brought to crystal clear resolution. It works better on some images than others (in terms of uncanniness), but every one I've tried has been interesting and quite revealing. I recommend trying it out. You get three for free and then the rest you have to wait 15 seconds through an advert, unless you pay for the full version. There's no computer based app unfortunately but works on Android and iOS.

[Mart 'n' Al]

This sounds very interesting. I shall give it a try. I might even try it on that portrait of myself that I keep in the attic.

 I will be interested to see what happens if you try it on an already good photo.

Martin

[Mart 'n' Al]

I gave this a try, on three photographs that I really wanted to enhance. I attach two of them here. One is a crop of me from a rather grainy wedding photograph and the other is of my grandmother. The first one makes me look like some scary doll out of a Stephen King horror novel. My grandmother does look enhanced. The third one, not included here, was of my grandfather, with a bit of shadow on his face. The manipulation of it makes him look as though he has some hideous growth or skin ailment.

Martin

[Christopher Lewis]

I have been playing around with Remini for a few months and it is a great app, but only for certain types of photos. The app works great with improving blurred faces and unfortunately sometimes you get some unusual effects like two lots of spectacles, extra ears being added. I have added an example to show how Remini can work so well..

[emeraldcity]

It really does depend on the type of image you feed into it - the bottom one looks good though, Martin. I tried it with an image that had quite a bit of rip damage and it gave me faces right out of a horror movie, almost like living embalmed! I've found there's a sweet-spot for images used with this software - you don't want images that are too good to begin with (otherwise there's not much point, and it just adds an uncanny valley sheen to it), likewise images too damaged or dark to begin with won't offer much - but it's fantastic for those images where you just wish you could see a little bit closer or have it blown up somehow. I think in order to work it has to have a clear detection of the face, so anything with obstruction results in odd image deformities.

[Mart 'n' Al]

That second image of cap man looks as though he's had Botox and surgery. It really is very impressive. Perhaps we should fix him up with my late grandmother.

Martin

[Christopher Lewis]

Another great feature of Remini is that it increases the size of the photo with no interpolation.