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Gigapixel is a program by Topaz Labs that is able to enlarge small and low-quality (pixelated) photos, while enriching them with higher quality details (between and within the original pixels) by drawing upon a training dataset of thousands of photographs.

If you start with a grainy, old photo taken on a lousy camera, then process it through Gigapixel by upscaling it, for example, 4x in size, it comes out looking as if it came from a UHD DSLR and flawless. Let's just say it looks 10x better than the original, even at a 25% zoom out, and assume that no weird alien-like AI artifacts appear.

Now that it's high quality, what happens then if you downscale this high resolution image back down to its original size (one-fourth of the 4x blow up)? It would still look 10x better than the original right?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Did you try? And would it look better than the image processed at it original size? And how much would it look like the original? If I scrub an old and grainy Sopwith Camel image to make it an F-22 image the new image will be good quality... \$\endgroup\$
    – xenoid
    Nov 28, 2022 at 9:58

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I think you are expecting far too much from Gigapixel; which is not surprising given the amount of BS in some of their marketing. Many of their marketing examples are just... umm... misleading at best... I can only assume they start with a decent image and then destroy it.

I have tested this over the years with many of their example images where I cannot even come close to recreating the results they show (denoise/sharpening/etc)...

For example; this is the current home page for Gigapixel:

enter image description here

But this is the kind of results Gigapixel actually generates when given the original quality image they show:

enter image description here

And no, 6x enlargement and different algorithms do not give notably better results with this source image.

That said; given a decent enough image upsampling (with Gigapixel or other means) can improve the overall IQ/resolution notably, and it will generally retain some of that upon downsampling back to the original resolution.

And FWIW, I have fully paid and current subscription to all of the Topaz products... I find them moderately useful on occasion.

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    \$\begingroup\$ …and it's soooo slooooow. I find On1 to be fairly comparable & a whole lot faster. [I've only tested the Topaz demo, I own On1] \$\endgroup\$
    – Tetsujin
    Nov 28, 2022 at 19:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ If you couldn't re-create the same results with their own software, why don't you whistleblow them? Everyone needs to know this, This is a bombshell news, corruption at the very top. Not buying Topaz ever! \$\endgroup\$
    – user610620
    Nov 29, 2022 at 3:37
  • \$\begingroup\$ @user610620, If I had to whistleblow every bit of misleading advertising, even if only associated with photography, I would never have a moment to ever do anything else... not to mention the overwhelming amounts of wrong/bad information being provided by "professional" lessons/instruction online... hell, there's even a black non-reflective umbrella for lighting now (theblackdish.com) \$\endgroup\$
    – Steven Kersting
    Nov 29, 2022 at 14:50
  • \$\begingroup\$ Or email Topaz support to get the steps on how they processed it before buying \$\endgroup\$
    – user610620
    Nov 29, 2022 at 22:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ @user610620, I knew what I was getting when buying... I used the trials and tested for myself. \$\endgroup\$
    – Steven Kersting
    Nov 30, 2022 at 0:09

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