Some image manipulation...

[Dan Hintz]

I figured these two items might prove useful to a few here...

First up is an image background removal service (they do offer other image manipulation services). Rates start at $0.49 for simple images and go up to $6.99 for some fairly complex images... custom rates available for ultra-complex stuff (think full head of hair blowing in the wind). They even offer a free trial:
http://www.clippingpathspecialist.com/


Second is an open-source program that enlarges images. I have not spent any time with it yet, but the image quality looks decent enough to be usable:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/imageenlarger/


Enjoy!

[Darren Null]

I don't often recommend shelling out actual cash for programs, but here's one I've been particularly taken with of late: Portrait Professional ($50)

What it does is enhance portrait shots and gives them a professional airbrushing that makes everybody look like a model. It can compensate, with about 5 minutes of point & click for a surprising amount of bad skin, teeth, photography and lighting. And you can enhance your model with the background in situ.

It IS cheating really- the program whitens teeth and brightens eyes; changes the face shape to drop a few Lbs; skips over skintone and adds a variable amount of suntan amongst other things. On the other hand, everyone you photograph ends up looking fantastic which has to improve customer relations. Not to mention repeat sales.

Here's the examples page of the site:
http://www.portraitprofessional.com/gallery/?p=0
There isn't an example in this lot -which is surprising- but the program is really good at wrinkles. Living in Spain, I get to see the 'saddlebag look' on massively and repeatedly tanned skin quite frequently. You can take 20 years off with the right photo.

[Bill Cunningham]

Wow.. !! That really will turn a sows ear into a silk purse.. It solves the age old problem of "there is no such thing as a woman that's satisfied with a picture of herself".. Heck!! That could even make 'me' look good..

[Doug Griffith]

I have a real hard time believing the above image is without further manipulation. Look at the pupil. How does the program's blurring and sharpening algorithm turn an asymmetric array of square pixels into a perfect circle?

[Darren Null]

I wasn't going to mention women, but the female members of my family have been particularly pleased with the portrait program. I already know I look good (or I'm beyond the help of software...depends who you talk to)!

As for the image enlarger, I'm quite impressed with it. Free, portable (ie, you can run it from a USB stick), and definitely gives the $159.99 Genuine Fractals a run for it's money.
Whether the round iris is post-processed; luck; a very-carefully chosen part of a photo the exact resolution the program is best at; or genuine is open to debate...but in the brief spin I've given it I have to say it's looking good. The results are similar to genuine fractals, but there seems to be some sort of shape detector in there...almost vector.

EDIT: At the very least, by ramping the image size up and then resampling back to original size, the enlarger works as a very effective jaggies and noise remover. This doesn't sharpen an image...smooths it a little in fact. What it does do is give you nice clean lines in an image for unsharp mask to get hold of for a lasered image. When you unsharp mask a bad image, it unsharp masks everything; jaggies noise etc. You could rescue a moderately bad image this way.

[Dave Johnson29]

Heck!! That could even make 'me' look good..

Hey Bill, it is just software not a magic wand.

[Bill Cunningham]

Hey Bill, it is just software not a magic wand.

Ya I know!!! When folks say "how are you" I say "My wife tells me I'm better than nothing, and thats all I can hope for"..

The website for that software has a down loadable free trial.. I have down loaded it, but have not installed it as yet.. I'll wait until I really need something fixed Like maybe a new avatar

[Darren Null]

Getting back to the OP...background removal.
Not particularly cheap at $149, but if you need a lot of things clipping, it won't take you long to make it back at $7/image. Vertus Fluid Mask, it's called, and it's probably what the clipping service use in the first post:
http://www.vertustech.com/fm_overview.htm

I've given it a demo, with the results below. It took me about 30 minutes; but much of that was reading the manual and waiting for the HDD to stop thrashing. Now that I know what I'm doing, and assuming a laptop that isn't a complete shed, I'd guesstimate 5-10 minutes for a job of that complexity and image size (10 megapixel).
There's still a blue tinge around some edges, but I reckon that's more likely my incompetence rather than the software. Impressed, on the whole. That would have taken DAYS clipping it out manually.

EDIT: The sunset is the fiddled-with image.

[Darius Ferlas]

GIMP for $0.00 (taxes included)