Aiarty Image Enhancer
Game-changer in terms of quality, especially faces
What we like
- Easy to set up and use
- High-quality image augmentation
- Works best at massive resolution
What we don’t like
- Can be memory hungry on small systems
- Lower resolution result not so appealing
A new software from Digiarty allows you to take low-resolution images and run them through an AI to enhance the detail and enlarge the picture for high-quality printing. I know this looks like the same old image-boosting software we’ve seen before, but that’s not the case. Aiarty Image Enhancer adds detail where there was none. Find out more in this review.
This is a sponsored article and was made possible by Digiarty. The actual contents and opinions are the sole views of the author, who maintains editorial independence even when a post is sponsored.
Content
Smoother, Smarter Images
Aiarty Image Enhancer is a standalone image-enlargement software that uses AI to expand the resolution of any image. It can raise the resolution x1, x2, x4, x8, or to a video resolution of 1K, 2K, 4K or 8K. I know what you may be saying, “How can you raise resolution by x1?” Obviously, you can’t – it’s just a way of saying keep the resolution the same but enhance the image.
It’s a tough sell, I know. We’ve seen this kind of thing many times before, but rarely was it worth talking about until now, as this time, something very important changed.
Far from being the same old-same old, this is genuinely new. Most AI image-enhancement tools do a fair job of sharpening edges to remove the jaggies and a smart smoothing of flatter tone areas to result in a smoother, sharper result. This can make images look cartoony and artworked, rather than photographically rendered.
Aiarty Image Enhance contains “More Detail GAN” (more of that in a moment), a new model that provides next-level image-enhancement and detail creation, using the AI to interpret the pixels in the source image and enhance them by creating new detail. It does this by adding textures and other features understood by the trained AI model. Formerly impossible, it adds detail that wasn’t there.
Making It Big
Getting set up with Aiarty is easy. Download and install the free trial software. Then, start flinging images at it to see what it can do.
Aiarty fixes and restores photos and images. It can enhance up to 32K quality for printing and both enhance and restore low-quality pixelated photos of all kinds: high-ISO photos (grainy), night photography (very grainy), long exposures (blurry) or underexposed (noisy) photos. You can potentially rescue photos that have been impervious to help from regular image processing tools. That’s a bold claim.
The software is very similar to previous offerings by the same company, but don’t be fooled – that’s just the front end.
There are three AI models that have been specifically trained to make the most of certain types of images. There is no one-size-fits-all solution here.
More-Detail GAN
This model has been trained on features that lack detail in poor images – skin, feathers, hair, fluff, etc. – to produce what they call greater “perceptual quality.” Features such as skin, hair, pores, and fur can be added to blend into the image and make it more detailed.
This is the feature you would use to sharpen and enlarge a low-resolution picture, such as old pictures from low megapixel cameras like the ones we thought were so cool 20 years ago. This would include old scans of photographs, too. A modern usage may be to upscale an AI image, most of which start life as fairly low-resolution images. The software handles all such cases very well.
Smooth Diff Restore
This is a more basic level – enhancing fidelity and clarity while eliminating flaws. You can use this with images that don’t need more detail, such as drawings, digital imagery and artwork. No enhanced detail is necessary, as the lines it needs to enhance will be there. Smoother images don’t need extra detail, either. This would include old scans of artwork, where the scanner didn’t have a high capture resolution, or old photographs of artwork.
Real-Photo
This model is for photos, obviously, and has been trained on typical photo subjects: people, buildings, nature, landscapes, etc. This setting would be used to enhance old photographs, either captured with a scanner or by photographing a print. It can treat the photographs more sensitively and deal with grain and somewhat blurry images a bit more artistically. Hard lines and heavy smoothing are not required if you want to keep the character and feel of the original photo.
In use, it’s very simple: either drop the image you want to process on the workspace, or click to load it. I recommend choosing which model you are going to use and resolution you are going to try beforehand, as it starts as soon as you load the image. It may take a while to return control if you don’t. It’s a time-saver if you know what you want.
Choose the model you want to employ, the size you’d like it to be, and add text to the image.
Restoration Possibilities
If you are restoring old family photos or trying to print low-resolution artwork you created digitally, this is a fabulous tool for enhancing the quality.
What impressed me most about the results of using this tool is the way it adds texture to things like skin and lips in such a subtle and realistic way. It’s mind-blowing how far we’ve come with AI in just a few short years. The result is really fascinating.
In the original, the lips are really blurry and not well-defined. It’s impossible to know the detail that should be there, but the software makes a very good guess.
Obviously, there are times when it falls down, providing detail where there shouldn’t be any. (Note the horrible side of the woman’s face.) But usually, this can be fixed using a different mode. Don’t use More Detail mode when you just need to enhance.
Overall, the software is very easy to use, even on a machine without any hardware acceleration. And obviously, if you want to crunch a lot of data, use it on a machine with a graphics card.
The only downside I discovered is if you are, like me, using the software on a computer without much RAM. You can’t have four to five pictures of 4K resolution on deck and expect to do another one – it will crash your software. Delete the pictures as you go. Don’t fill up your memory, and you should be fine. (I may have just bug-tested the software.)
Another very minor downside, if you can even call it that, is the results of going from, say, 1024×512 images up to 2048×1024, are not as impressive as blowing them up to 4096 or 8192. The software seems to work best when you really push the resolution to the limit. The more gentle the raise in resolution, the more “meh” the result looked to me. This may be a personal opinion, but I get the feeling it thrives more on challenge and may be optimized to go big or go home.
These are minor quibbles. I am favorably dazzled with this tool, and I intend to use it a lot in the coming months in my work. Remarkable, and given my older computer, very fast.
Availability
The Aiarty Image Enhancer software has a free trial. Once the trial ends, there are two options: $75 a month (billed yearly) or a lifetime buyout for the bargain price of $99, if subscriptions aren’t your thing. I think most people would choose the lifetime subscription for just a few more dollars.
Phil South –
Contributor
Phil South has been writing about tech subjects for over 30 years. Starting out with Your Sinclair magazine in the 80s, and then MacUser and Computer Shopper. He’s designed user interfaces for groundbreaking music software, been the technical editor on film making and visual effects books for Elsevier, and helped create the MTE YouTube Channel. He lives and works in South Wales, UK.
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