Detail-preserving Upscale effect

Upscale footage in Adobe After Effects to increase resolution while retaining sharp edges and fine details.

The Detail-preserving Upscale effect can scale images by large amounts while preserving details. The sharpness of sharp lines and curves is preserved. For example, you can scale up from SD to HD, or from HD to digital cinema.

This effect is closely related to the Preserve Details resampling option in Photoshop's Image Size dialog box. 

Effect controls

The following controls are available for the Detail-preserving Upscale effect:

• Fit To Comp Width: Sets Scale percentage so that the layer's width matches the composition's width.
  
• Fit To Comp Height: Sets Scale percentage so that the layer's height matches the compositions's height.
• Scale: The minimum value is 100%.
  
• Reduce Noise: Used to apply noise reduction before the scaling calculations. Increase the value so that noise is not mistakenly treated as a detail that should be preserved.
• Detail: High values increase the sharpness or contrast of edges; however ringing or halo artifacts may be introduced. Low values of Detail keep the edges more smooth and natural.
• Alpha: Processes the alpha channel differently from the color channels. You can choose to process the alpah channel differently than the color channels, for performance reasons. The default is Bicubic.

The Detail-preserving Upscale effect is slower than other scaling alternatives, such as using the layer's native bilinear or bicubic scaling in the Transform property group.