reviews
 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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Here are some great reviews of Blow Up 1:
Photoshop User Magazine (5 out of 5 Stars)
"BlowUp is not only extremely easy to use, but it has one of the most feature-rich upscaling options available...Most third party upscaling plug-ins do a good job but based on price, performance, and features, BlowUp comes out head and shoulders above the rest."
- David Singer, Oct/Nov 2006
Tutorials2go.com (five star review)
"I've been using Alien Skin BlowUp for several weeks. I'm satisfied with the results I get from the plug-in and use it frequently. It doesn't tax my system resources (2.8 GHz Pentium P4 with 2 GB RAM), and returns the enlarged image quickly. The interface is intuitive and easy to use”– Doug Sahlin, November 2007
MacsimumNews (10 out of 10)
"If you need to increase [the resolution of] your web images, older images or just using web-ready files to print your company's Web site – the value, performance and, most important, image quality from Alien Skin's BlowUp should [make it] your first purchase."
- Daniel East, October 2006
DigitalDingus
Alien Skin's BlowUp is quite the powerful image upsampling tool. I was surprised to see it is actually better than Adobe's own bicubic upsampling and even more surprised to discover Genuine Fractals Print Pro 5 has been surpassed. This is the third Alien Skin product reviewed by DigitalDingus and from using their applications, I can affirmatively say they know digital imaging technology, inside and out.
–
June 2007
PDonline.com
"The image yielded by Blow-Up was definitely the smoothest and most satisfying."
- Al Francekevich, March 2007
The Seattle Times
"The results look good. The amount of sharpening I applied was just right to articulate the edges. And the printed image doesn't look too smooth or plastic...All in all, I've been won over by these third-party Photoshop plug-ins."
- Linda Knapp, March 2007
Geek.com
"Thumbs-up to Alien Skin for another great plug-in."
- Dan Speca, January 2007
DT&G
"Alien Skin Software's BlowUp...works wonders for both photographers and graphic artists, BlowUp offers a high quality image enlargement that would take hours and hours of manipulation and testing in Photoshop. Yes, there are methods of doing it yourself, but at the modest price, BlowUp simplifies the process and actually pays for itself."
- Fred Showker, September 2006
On Computers
"Now lots of photo-editing programs can enlarge a picture, but what happens fairly quickly is you begin to see jagged edges or marked blurring as the picture gets bigger. BlowUp handles that problem better than anything we've seen..."
- Bob and Joy Schwabach, August 2006
Chicago Tribune
"I can tell you I was delighted at what it did for my serious photographs as well as cell phone miniatures. My 640-by-480-pixel cell shots came up as fine looking 5-by-7s and made acceptable 8-by-10s...BlowUp blew this reviewer's mind."
- James Coates, August 2006
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