Adobe has released Camera Raw 13.2 which brings in a couple of new features which got me thinking: I can now use Adobe Camera Raw to double the resolution of an image and enhance the details at the same time. I could just enhance the details and keep the same resolution but if I am going to do it why not make it a large one?

Powered by Adobe Sensei, Enhance allows you to increase image quality for making large prints or increasing the resolution of a cropped image.

I needed to test this. So I travelled to a place I hadn’t been to in a long time, the Nelson Memorial in Merton, situated next door to St John the Devine church. The memorial has two cannons flanking a dedication stone.

As a memorial of Lord Nelson and the splendid services which he rendered to his country this land (which formed part of his Merton estate) was given on the first centenary of his death to the Merton Parish Council for a public recreation ground by a great-nephew of the late Rear Admiral, Isaac Smith of Merton Abbey

115 years after the memorial opened in 1906, I splendidly trudged up in the early hours of the morning. I last visited here a number of years back to practice with my Canon 550d (no pun intended) along with the 50mm f1.8 lens.

This time I had with me the Sony α7 III with the Sigma 10-20mm f3.5 wide-angle lens nailed to the front by the Sigma MC-11 adaptor. When the wide-angle lens is attached to the Sony α7 III, it drops down to crop sensor mode, reducing the megapixel count down from 24 to 10. The thinking behind this experiment is to take a shot and upscale it using Adobe Super Resolution to see the quality and validity of using this, instead of purchasing a native wide-angle lens.

So this is the original shot. The image was thrown into Camera Raw and using the Super Resolution tool resulted in the following differences. You immediately notice the file has changed to a DNG file, Adobe’s Digital Negative raw format. It’s a lot bigger than the original so how does zooming in look like?

Original: Pixels: 3922x2615 24MP / Raw File: 11MB / Jpeg: 9.84MB / JpegMini: 4.6MB / JpegMini Final: 2.4MB
Super: Pixels: 7872x5248 42MP / DNG File: 156MB / Jpeg: 38.5MB / JpegMini: 19.4MB / JpegMini Final: 12.1MB

I next wandered into the grounds of St John the Devine to take a shot of the church. and tried the same experiment. Again a large DNG is produced.

Original: Pixels: 3922x2615 24MP / Raw File: 11MB / Jpeg: 9.59MB / JpegMini: 4.6MB / JpegMini Final: 2.37MB
Super: Pixels: 7872x5248 42MP / DNG File: 146MB / Jpeg: 34.3MB / JpegMini: 12.1MB / JpegMini Final: 10.3MB

In conclusion, is this worth it? Yes, Super-resolution does allow me to boost the MegaPixel count to a great degree and I can crop in a little if I need to. I rarely have a need to print out high detailed posters so for now, this saves me having to purchase a native wide-angle lens for the Sony α7 III.

One thing to note. When Rawsie arrives it can also compress DNG files if they haven’t already been created with lossy compression. That might help the larger DNG over the original RAW.