I used to Print photos for funerals, and it's something nobody can plan for in advance. There is often not enough time to dig for the perfect photo. The photo must be printed today to be ready tomorrow morning is the normal flow. Once I discovered Gigapixel AI by Topaz Labs, it was an instant game changer that allowed me to print much better looking photos. This not a sponsored post or anything.

I just use this software on nearly a daily bases and want to share my work and what I've learned. These photos are usually printed around 24" tall, fairly large. This one was printed smaller at 11"x16"

Now my trick is it's not just Gigapixel AI, It's 2 main tricks. Trick #1, I run multiple passes of the photo through gigapixel AI by first doing 3 different starting resolutions 72, 100, and 300 or around that, then I will blend the 3 new AI layers with the original photo at the original size by just adjusting the opacity of each AI layer that is on top of the pixelated original, around 20-40%, just eyeball what looks best. Then that AI compellation of the 4 layers will also get a pass through Gigapixel AI. it's like running a half AI photo through AI. Sometimes I do this compellation process 2 or 3 times and just keep blending the results together. (On this Photo, there is also a blend of a layer in there where I used a Denoise AI jpeg, and then ran that Denoised AI photo through Gigapixel AI.)

Trick#2, I also use the Camera Raw filter in Photoshop to boost color, fix skin tones and add Grain for the final touch. AI leaves it's own artifacts that sometimes don't look quite right, so I add a grain at just the right size to sort of blur those artifacts, this one probably needed a larger grain size, but it's was beginning to look a little too blurry and defeating the purpose of AI, so it's a balance to just try to get the best image you can.

As you can see, It's not perfect, but it is much better than the original. Once you get the hang of this whole process, it doesn't take much extra time to make it 10 times better.

One other final tip, I left the edges uncropped so that you can see that there is usually an AI artifact around the edges. So just plan in advance on your project that you'll need to crop the final result.