Professional Documents
Culture Documents
About Smillaenlarger: Usage in Detail
About Smillaenlarger: Usage in Detail
One fascinating aspect of analogue photography is, that by means of an Enlarger, you can pick an interesting part of your photo and blow it up to poster size. Whereas zooming into a digital photo just leads to a bunch of colored blocks. My little tool tries to be an easy-to-use equivalent of the analogue enlarger for the digital photography: You choose an image file, pick a rectangle and decide how big the result should be ( by scaling factor or by giving width or height of the result ), then you press 'Enlarge & Save' and get an enlarged image with smooth curves instead of blocks, where edges in the original stay ( more or less ) unblurred edges in the result.
Usage in detail:
When starting SmillaEnlarger you will see a husky named Smilla in the tabbed view on the right side, and a thumbnail version in the column to the left, together with some buttons and input fields. To replace Smilla and open another input image, grab an image somewhere and drop it onto the enlarger window, or paste something from the clipboard, or open a file using 'Open...' in the file menu. Now you should see your image in the right view and a thumbnail of it on the left. The thumbnail shows a small version of the output image, giving you an impression of its contents and format.
Cropping:
In the right tab, titled 'Cropping', you can select a region of your image for enlarging. When you hold down the mouse within this view and drag it around, you will see that a frame appears, the cropping rectangle. It won't disappear when you release the mouse. You can move it by grabbing its interior or resize it by grabbing the frame. To make it disappear, click anywhere outside the rectangle. The contents of this cropping rectangle are enlarged when you click 'Enlarge&Save'. If no rectangle is defined, the complete input image is enlarged.
In the combo box under the picture you can select one of several fixed cropping formats for the rectangle, for example 'square', or '1 : sqrt(2)' ( the format of a normal Din A4 paper ). Use 'free' to allow arbitrary cropping. After clicking 'Center View' the view will center around the selected region. This is useful for fine adjustments if you have marked a very small part of the input.
output image Specify height of result - give desired number of pixels for the height of the output image Fit inside boundary - set maximal pixel values for width and height of the result. The Enlarger will choose the maximal dimensions fitting into this boundary. Stretch to fit - set the pixel values for width and height of the result. The Enlarger will stretch the image to fit into this rectangle, possibly changing the aspect ratio. Crop to fit - set the pixel values for width and height of the result. The image will be enlarged to cover the given rectangle, the overlapping parts are cut away. ( You can additionally change the aspect ratio by changing 'StretchX' ) Fit inside, add bars - set the pixel values for width and height of the result. The image will be enlarged to fit inside the given rectangle, which then is filled up with black margins.
For each of these methods you can get an impression how it works by changing the size and format of the cropping rectangle and watching the effects and displayed size in the Thumbnail Preview. Some methods are mostly useful for batch processing.
SmillaEnlarger supports Drag & Drop: You can drag a file or image from any folder or from another program offering Drag&Drop and drop it onto the enlarger window. The enlarger then tries to open it as new source. If you drop a folder or multiple images at once, batch processing is started instead of displaying a new source: The images are directly moved to the job queue using the current enlarger settings. You also can paste the contents of the clipboard, i.e. use Copy within another program on a file or image and then in SmillaEnlarger call Paste from the File Menu ( or press Ctrl V / Cmd V ) to load it into the enlarger. Or choose 'Open...' in the file menu or press Ctrl-O / Cmd-O. Or click 'Open...' above the view in the 'Cropping' tab. After selecting a picture, you will see it displayed in the 'Cropping' tab. To quickly switch to another file in the same folder, click onto the box containing the filename, you will see that it's a combo-box listing all pictures in the source folder. Supported types for loading are JPG, GIF, TIF, BMP, PPM and PNG.
sharp Flatness: higher values produce more 'painted' looking results with less gradients PreSharpen: applies simple sharpening to the source before enlarging Dithering: add a slightly analogue looking grainy structure to the result DeNoise: remove some noise and artifacts from the source FractNoise: just a gimmick: get some irregularity into your result; contours and colors are modified by plasma fractal noise.
You can switch between predefined settings in the combo box.To change a setting, first check 'Allow Changes'.You can create a new set cloning the current one by clicking 'New'. For a new settings name type something into the combo box, don't forget to hit the ''Return' key at the end to adopt the changed name. You can test the effects of different settings by clicking onto Preview.
Batch Processing
SmillaEnlarger can automatically process a batch of images with the same settings: If you drop a folder onto the enlarger, the contents are scanned for images of supported type ( subfolders are ignored ). Onto those images the current parameters and the resizing method chosen in the Output Dimensions box are
applied at once. The new jobs are moved to the queue automatically, you don't have to press 'Enlarge&Save'. The results are put into a new folder, the name is that of the source with an appended '_e'. Also, when you drop multiple files, those are likewise pushed into the queue automatically, but in this case no new folder is created for the batch results. Important: Before dropping more than one file, check if all settings are as you want, especially look under 'Write Result to:' in which folder the results will be saved ( probably you will want to uncheck 'Use Source Folder' and give a new location where your batch results are saved together ).
Contents/MacOS/, inside you will find the SmillaEnlarger binary, grab it with the mouse and drop it onto the terminal window, the terminal then will fill in the full path to the binary. Usage of SmillaEnlarger: SmillaEnlarger [ < sourcename > ] [ -options... ] with options-z <number> / -zoom <number> Set zoom-factor to <number> percent ( integer value ).-o <filename>Write result to file <filename> .-saveto <foldername>Write results into folder <foldername> . Output Dimensions:-width <sizex> and -height <sizey> set size of resulting image.If both width and height are given, aspect ratio is changed by default. Additionally, if you have set -width AND -height , you can set one of the following options: -fitFit output inside the given rectangle. -fitandbars Fit output inside the given rectangle,fill up with black margins. -cover Cover the given rectangle.-coverandcrop Cover the given rectangle, cut away the overlapping parts. Enlarge Parameters:-sharp < n >, -flat < n >, -dither < n > deNoise < n >, -preSharp < n >, -fNoise < n > Set the enlarge parameters with integer numbers < n > between 0 and 100. -quality <number> Set image quality of the result. -h / -helpPrint this help.-i Start in interactive mode.