reviews

School Tech Talk
Lisa Hill demonstrates with examples how Blow Up 2 outperforms Photoshop’s Bicubic algorithm when enlarging images using a Nikon D200. She also says that, “Blow Up opens in an intuitive, clean, easy-to-use interface that provides intuitive defaults and the power of custom adjustments.”

Photoshop User Magazine (5 out of 5)
Dave Huss wrote a glowing 5 diamond review of Blow Up 2 in the January/February issue of Photoshop User Magazine. The best part is Dave’s real world test. “To test the product, I enlarged several images and submitted them to the inspectors of a major stock photography house. These inspectors have an insane eye for detail. Of the five photos that I enlarged by 300% and then submitted, four were accepted. In short, it was pretty impressive. The resized images are sharp and didn’t suffer from the softness associated with image resizing.”

Macworld
James Dempsey praised Blow Up 2 in his Macworld review. He demonstrates an extreme enlargement that clearly shows how much better Blow Up is than Photoshop at resizing. James says, “So what were the results of my tests? I used several different images—some grayscale, some color—with a variety of subject matter. The results in all cases were quite good, with some being nothing short of stunning.”

Ron Martinsen’s Blog
Ron Martinsen wrote a great review praising Blow Up 2. Here are some choice quotes. “I can say, without reservation, that I highly recommend this product as the best resizing tool on the market that I have seen to date!”

“Alien Skin claims it can upsize to 400% which is hard to believe, but I tried it and sure enough the results are amazing.”

“For those who print their own images, you probably frequently turn to onOne Software’s Genuine Fractals for resizing their images to the desired output size. However, those of you who read my review for Genuine Fractals 6 back in December saw that the king has lost a little of its edge to the (almost) new kid in town”

Mac|Life (4 out of 5)
Michelle Delio’s review has lots of compliments for Blow Up.  She says, “For more complicated resizing jobs, Alien Skin’s Blow Up 2 plug-in for Photoshop is awesome. We tried it with a dozen images, and with great photos, we could increase the size by about 150 percent with virtually no visible loss of image quality. Some strongly graphic images could be pushed twice as far.”

Designorati.com (9 out of 10)
Jeremy Schultz wrote a detailed review of Blow Up 2 on Designorati.com. He said, “BlowUp 2 gave me significant improvement in printed image quality. The grain adds ‘pop’ to the photograph and makes the image look sharper, while the actual details are definitely improved.” He concludes, “I am impressed by the quality of Blow Up 2 and its output.”

Digital Arts (4.5 out of 5 Stars)
Neil Bennett says, “Blow Up 2’s output is a definite improvement over the first release – and hugely better than Photoshop’s Image Size.” This is a great in-depth review of Blow Up 2. Neil mentions our lack of presets for European (ISO) paper sizes. Those are now available in our forum.

Mac User UK (4 out of 5 Stars)
Steve Caplin at Mac User UK gave Blow Up 4 out of 5 stars. He concludes, “So is Blow Up 2 that much better than straightforward enlargement in Photoshop? Yes, significantly so. As a one-step solution, the results are crisper, more lifelike, and more finely detailed - within limits, of course.” Steve mentions the lack of European paper size presets, but we quickly addressed that. You can grab those for free on our forum.

Photo District News
Theano Nikitas wrote a short but sweet review of Blow Up 2 in the December issue of PDN. Some of her many compliments are, “The user interface has been revamped and is incredibly easy to use,” and, “I especially like the check box to have the plug-in duplicate the image before resizing.”

Designer Today
Jake Van Ness wrote a thorough review of Blow Up 2 on the Designer Today web site.  He shows off multiple examples and really goes into detail. He describes a real world example, “I was impressed with how well it enlarged a logo I received from a client that was in raster format. In the past I would have had to request better than 72 dpi artwork but with the Blow Up 2 plug-in I was able to up the resolution to 300 dpi and have much smoother edges compared to what PS Bicubic resizing did. What a time saver for me! Not having to go back to the client kept my project on track and the client was very happy with the end results.” He concludes, “I think Blow Up 2 is a great plug-in and recommend it for photographers and designers alike.”

Pixelmania (in Dutch)
The team at the Dutch Pixelmania web site wrote a glowing review of Blow Up. Google Translator and the Pixelmania team helped confirm these quotes that were originally in Dutch. “The interface is much improved and the program works faster than before…Blow Up 2 receives (again) a Pixelmania Award,” and finally, “Recommended!”   

Forensic Photoshop Blog
Jim Hoerricks is a book author and blogger who writes about using Photoshop for law enforcement work.  In his blog, Jim says, “Meet my new best friend. Blow Up 2 is now an integral part of my workflow. I have not seen a third-party plug-in handle the interpolation of dodgy CCTV images as well as Blow Up 2. Blow Up 2 is now firmly ensconced on my ‘must have’ list.”

Animation Artist
A thorough review by Ko Maruyama can be found on the Animation Artist web site. We like the way he started off. “I first used Alien Skin software back in the late 90s when I was first introduced to Photoshop. The art director at the studio told me that he didn't know how he designed elements before he had their plug-ins. You will feel the same about resizing images after you check out Blow Up 2.” Ko goes on to mention advanced topics like processing video using Blow Up’s new batch processing tool.

The3dStudio.com (5 out of 5 stars)
This review ends wonderfully with, “The real question is: Why Adobe hasn’t bought up Alien Skin and simply included all of their cool plugins right into Photoshop? The3dStudio.com gives BlowUp 2 from Alien Skin Software 5 out of 5 stars, and two enlarged thumbs up.”

About.com (4.5 out of 5 Stars)
Sue Chastain gave Blow Up 4.5 out of 5 stars. Sue ends her review by saying, “if you need such a product, Blow Up is super easy to use, performs well, offers some unique features, and can handle the high-end image modes and massive sizes that most competing products don't support.”

MaUsE Doubleclick
Macintosh Users East (MaUsE) is a well established Mac user group in Ontario, Canada. They wrote a glowing review of Blow Up 2 in the October 2008 edition of their Doubleclick newsletter on pages 19 and 20. In a test, the reviewer (probably Michael Shaw) does a test of Blow Up against Photoshop and says, “I don’t know how well the differences between the two images will show up on your monitor when you read this article in your PDF copy of the October DoubleClick, but on my 24-inch iMac monitor the contrast is striking: the image I created with Blow Up 2 looks great and managed to retain a resolution of 230 dpi while the Photoshop image degraded into pixels as it was expanded and achieved a resolution result of only 84.86 dpi.”

Jumper Magazine (in Italian)
Luca Pianigiani wrote a review in the Italian magazine Jumper. Google’s translation is good enough to show that Luca was impressed with Blow Up 2 versus Photoshop in the test he did.

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