Alien Skin announces Blow Up 2 resizing plug-in for Photoshop
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 27, 2008 at 12:49pm
Alien Skin Software has relesaed Blow Up 2, the new version of its photo resizing plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. The software handles resizing, cropping, and sharpening.
Version 2 adds presets, Smart Cropping, adaptive sharpening, and built-in batch processing. The output of Blow Up is even better now that it provides more control over simulated natural texture and film grain, says Tom Welsh, designer and lead programmer of Blow Up 2. These effects help to keep enlargements looking natural rather than computer generated. New controls that clean up JPEG compression artifacts and sharpen edges allow enlargement of low quality source images.
As a preset is chosen, Smart Cropping centers the crop area over the most interesting part of the photo, and Auto Rotate adjusts the preset to match the orientation of the photo, says Welsh. Sharpening adapts to match the degree of enlargement and paper type.
The most dramatic improvements to Blow Up 2 are in the new user interface that simplifies and speeds up all aspects of preparing photos for printing. Cropping and resizing at the same time are handled by presets for common output sizes. The Blow Up 2 built-in batch processing is a single step. Blow Up 2 takes advantage of multi-processor and multi-core systems to make rendering as fast as possible.
Blow Up 2 sells for US$249 with an upgrade price of $99 for registered users of Blow Up 1. Free upgrades are available to purchasers of Blow Up 1 who purchased after July 26, 2008.
Blow Up 2 is a plug-in and will require one of the following: Adobe Photoshop CS2 9.0.2 or later, Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0.1 or later (Macintosh), or Adobe Photoshop Elements 5 or later (Windows). Microsoft Windows users must have at least a Pentium 4 processor or compatible and Windows XP or later. Mac users must have a PowerPC G5 or Intel processor and Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later. A monitor with 1024×768 resolution or greater is required.
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Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
