An unremarkable stock image, shot on my Fuji X-Pro 111. However it is huge. It's 8000 pixels longest size and around 42MP. Which is bigger than the 26MP that came off the Fuji. It is also pin sharp. It was created using the enhance function in Adobe Photoshop Raw. Now this was always very impressive. (And do not believe people who say it isn't. They are are either lying or working for one of Adobes competitors) However this always took a very long time. Not any more. My Intel Macbook recently died and I've replaced it with the cheapest alternative I could find, a refurbished Macbook Air with 8MG of ram and a 256MB hard drive. And now the creation of a super resolution enhanced raw file takes 10 seconds, instead of nearly a minute. Now this not that much different to Olympus and Panasonics stacked images, high resolution functions.
And of course this is much more useful. I can shoot normally with my Fuji's and not have to wait while the camera creates the image. I was looking at the new Panasonic G6, which is VERY impressive, but realised that I would be paying for a lot of functions I didn't need. i.e. Video. The Adobe enhance function is in both Photoshop and Lightroom now, so it is available to most photographers. However you will need a fast computer to avoid waiting for it to create the file.
The new M1 chip Macs are indeed amazing. I now have two. The Macbook Air and a Mac Mini, which I use for music. The Mini is in fact the cheapest computer I've ever used and also the best. Astonishing. The software does in fact create a much larger image than the one at the top of the page, but most picture libraries won't accept files that big, so i reduce the size.
What of course this all means is there is absolutely no need to keep upgrading cameras just to get a higher pixel count. No need for 50MP+ files, no need for MF cameras. I checked out the results from my Fuji AP-S sensors using Adobe enhance against raw samples from the Fuji 100MP medium format cameras and I was hard pressed to see any difference. Now there may well be a difference if you print the size of a wall, but how ofter do we do that? I see great advantages from this Adobe software. It means I can use cameras I like without having to continually upgrade to get better quality.
I repeat again, the Adobe enhance high resolution software is spectacular. For me it's the greatest advance in digital photography in the past few years. It turns your run of the mill cameras into high resolution monsters, capable of incredible results. Why more people don't use it and rave about it bewilders me. I make my living from photography and never use anything that compromises quality and certainly the Adobe enhance high resolution software is no compromise at all.
There is also another use of this software and this is with smartphone cameras. The image below is the same size as the Fuji X-Pro 111 image at the top. Shot using my iPhone 13 in Apple Pro Raw mode using the 13mm (35mm equivalent) lens. And no it's not as good as the Fuji image, but is still capable for high resolution reproduction. A bonus for those who are looking for the best results from smartphone sensors and lenses.
