Jump to content
LaunchBox Community Forums

C64 Dreams (massive curated C64 collection)


Zombeaver

Recommended Posts

@Zombeaver I use Upscayl for most my image upscaling nowadays. You can find some extra models for Upscayl here if you wanted to see if you can get better results. https://github.com/upscayl/custom-models/blob/main/README.md

AI upscaling is not going to get you perfect results however. It's not there yet. I almost always spend quite a bit of time in Photoshop after the fact fixing shitty lines or messed up text.

 

If you have time to put towards it you may get best results tweaking the process a bit more with something like chaiNNer. might be a better option but will have a steeper learning curve. https://github.com/chaiNNer-org/chaiNNer

Edited by JereBear
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

I have Photoshop. I'd like to avoid another monthly subscription just for this so imgupscaler is probably out (and as a side note I seriously hate this pricing structure that a lot of these sites have of pay per number of images processed, that entire model would be unusable for my needs). I've heard of topaz, and looking into it a bit it looks like you can pay once and then use local software, which is much more appealing to me. I'm a little concerned about the fact that it says includes 12 months of updates though - does the software outright stop working after 12 months if you don't pay again or does it just not receive updates anymore (this is implied but I want to be sure)?

I'd be leery of the former but if it's the latter that could work. 

Definitely! I'll send some examples in a couple hours. Thanks for the offer!

topaz continues to work after 12 months, you just don't get updates to the software. It's a dumb plan. but the software is good, been using it for a few years now without updates, honestly never noticed what the updates did.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, JereBear said:

AI upscaling is not going to get you perfect results however. It's not there yet. I almost always spend quite a bit of time in Photoshop after the fact fixing shitty lines or messed up text

Yeah that's fine and to be expected. I'm used to that kind of thing already. There have been some cases where something was so bad that I just completely recreated it from scratch using closely approximated fonts/colors, etc.

2 hours ago, JereBear said:

You can find some extra models for Upscayl here if you wanted to see if you can get better results. https://github.com/upscayl/custom-models/blob/main/README.md

Really good tip here! Doing some quick testing 4xHFA2k and 4xNomos8kSC seem to be yielding the best results so far. 4xHFA2k has been consistently a bit better between the two though, with less weirdness in font interpolation.

41 minutes ago, seaview59 said:

topaz continues to work after 12 months, you just don't get updates to the software. It's a dumb plan. but the software is good, been using it for a few years now without updates, honestly never noticed what the updates did.

That's good to know! I'm not totally opposed to dropping a one time amount of $100 on something like this if I need to. In no dimension would I ever pay $10-$30 a month until the end of time for a finite number of images per month though. That's an insane pricing structure.

I appreciate the tips here from everybody! This definitely points me in the right direction. I'm liking Upscayl quite a bit so far. It's really easy to use, has a nice UI, is fast, yields pretty good results so far, and is free.

Some examples of some lower quality material:

IntergalacticCageMatch.thumb.jpg.9384ee8f8987389e2106684c329268e6.jpg

Stealth2.thumb.jpg.46e43ae82e2b447b8ac2c06780129b87.jpg

LunarLeeper1.thumb.jpg.9a220cdbaecbb593d35e5bee2ed3fd13.jpg

4xHFA2k:

IntergalacticCageMatch_upscayl_4x_4xHFA2k.thumb.jpg.933cc95d17fa041b49c79172b65242b6.jpg

Stealth2_upscayl_4x_4xHFA2k.thumb.jpg.6fd561876e4573daba1c8fbbfdf31aeb.jpg

LunarLeeper1_upscayl_4x_4xHFA2k.thumb.jpg.64e7776f23a83267a98f3ee99ab5beb5.jpg

The second one here seems to be the most problematic, with a fair number of oddities in the text. A few things here and there in the Lunar Leeper one too, but overall not too bad. I probably would use the first and third one here as replacements.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Zombeaver said:

Yeah that's fine and to be expected. I'm used to that kind of thing already. There have been some cases where something was so bad that I just completely recreated it from scratch using closely approximated fonts/colors, etc.

Really good tip here! Doing some quick testing 4xHFA2k and 4xNomos8kSC seem to be yielding the best results so far. 4xHFA2k has been consistently a bit better between the two though, with less weirdness in font interpolation.

That's good to know! I'm not totally opposed to dropping a one time amount of $100 on something like this if I need to. In no dimension would I ever pay $10-$30 a month until the end of time for a finite number of images per month though. That's an insane pricing structure.

I appreciate the tips here from everybody! This definitely points me in the right direction. I'm liking Upscayl quite a bit so far. It's really easy to use, has a nice UI, is fast, yields pretty good results so far, and is free.

Some examples of some lower quality material:

IntergalacticCageMatch.thumb.jpg.9384ee8f8987389e2106684c329268e6.jpg

Stealth2.thumb.jpg.46e43ae82e2b447b8ac2c06780129b87.jpg

LunarLeeper1.thumb.jpg.9a220cdbaecbb593d35e5bee2ed3fd13.jpg

4xHFA2k:

IntergalacticCageMatch_upscayl_4x_4xHFA2k.thumb.jpg.933cc95d17fa041b49c79172b65242b6.jpg

Stealth2_upscayl_4x_4xHFA2k.thumb.jpg.6fd561876e4573daba1c8fbbfdf31aeb.jpg

LunarLeeper1_upscayl_4x_4xHFA2k.thumb.jpg.64e7776f23a83267a98f3ee99ab5beb5.jpg

The second one here seems to be the most problematic, with a fair number of oddities in the text. A few things here and there in the Lunar Leeper one too, but overall not too bad. I probably would use the first and third one here as replacements.

Here's that second page upscaled with topaz for comparison. To me it's slightly more readable although a bit more blurry.

original-standard-width-2400px-gigapixel.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, launchretrogirl2562 said:

my attempt at lunar leeper. (still tweaking though)

 

00002 - Copy.png

This looks similar to the results from Nomos8kSC in Upscayl and demonstrates some of the same font weirdness. This is particularly evident in section 4 of that page.

Nomos8kSC for comparison:

LunarLeeper1_upscayl_4x_4xNomos8kSC.thumb.jpg.41a1c41ee01688d62fe7238662dbe1ee.jpg

I almost wonder if it wouldn't be beneficial to run some of these through multiple models in sequence with each at smaller integer scales.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, seaview59 said:

Here's that second page upscaled with topaz for comparison. To me it's slightly more readable although a bit more blurry.

original-standard-width-2400px-gigapixel.jpg

Thank you for the comparison, that's good to see as an example. I don't think either one looks particularly great honestly. Both of them look what I would describe as "weird" on quick glance. It would be pretty obvious to me that it had gone through some kind of digital tampering in both cases. The other two less so.

I wish there was a model that was specifically trained for text, but to my knowledge there isn't one.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...
On 7/6/2024 at 9:35 PM, totoro said:

I've followed the merging instructions, but for some reason boxart is not showing up.

The 3D-model seems to grab it somewhere in the details. What am I missing?

image.thumb.png.fdaef1ce2fa4fe65263d572ee02a6b81.png

Solved it by myself. If anyone else encounters this: mark all and hit F5 (update graphics).

  • Like 3
  • Game On 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 months later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Unfortunately, your content contains terms that we do not allow. Please edit your content to remove the highlighted words below.
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...