Blow Up

We have to confess that we weren’t expecting too much from Blow Up. There have been several resizing plug-ins developed for Photoshop over the years, but very few have really managed to improve upon Photoshop’s built-in resizing controls.

However, Blow Up does actually manage to produce results that are noticeably better than you can get from Photoshop on its own. The plug-in works in a very similar way to Photoshop’s own Image Size dialog box, offering the same options for adjusting pixel dimensions or document size. The main differences are the large preview of your resized document and two simple slider controls.

Once you’ve entered the new dimensions for your image, the resized version is shown in the Preview pane. You can then use the slider controls to sharpen the image or add grain. The most important option is the Sharpen control, which you can use to help reduce the blurring and loss of detail that results when you increase the size of an image. The Grain control adds a slightly grainy texture, which compensates for the too-smooth appearance that can also result.

We experimented with a variety of images, including some low-res (72dpi) photos that we thought Blow Up would struggle with. In all cases, however, the plug-in did manage to produce results that were noticeably sharper and less blurred than we could get from Photoshop’s standard resizing controls.

Blow Up can’t work miracles, but it’s certainly one of the better resizing plug-ins currently available for Photoshop.