SmartScale is an Adobe® Photoshop® plug-in that can be used to change the scale (size) of an image. There are versions for both windows and the Macintosh.

When you resize an image, detail is often lost and pixelization can become excessive. Extensis pxl SmartScale ™ allows the resizing of images up to 1600% without excessive pixelization or discernable loss of print quality. When SmartScale produces a scaled image, the original image data is analyzed and interpolated. The color and brightness information of each original pixel is stored. SmartScale then creates new pixels based upon the analysis and the target image size. The process is called image resampling. Extensis uses their PixelLive™ technology included in SmartScale to allow you to fine tune the resampling process. Since every image is unique, SmartScale allows you to refine the scale details in order to create the highest possible quality in the scaled image.

If you are a photographer, graphic designer or printing professional, you know how often you need to resize an image. Obtaining a high quality copy of the correct dimensions can be anywhere from inconvenient to downright impossible. Based on my experience with SmartScale, you can expand most of your original digital images by as much as needed and still maintain all of the apparent quality and detail of the original.

Installation was quick and simple. On my Windows XP machine, the default Easy Install option installed the files into all the supported versions of Adobe’s Photoshop® and Photoshop Elements®. I have a supported version of Photoshop, but my version of Photoshop Elements is only version 1.1 I also have Ulead’s PhotoImpact 7.0® and Arcsoft’s PhotoStudio 5.0 ®. The SmartScale PixelLive™ plug-in would not install in my early version of Photoshop Elements, nor in either the PhotoImpact or the PhotoStudio directories, even though they all support Photoshop compatible plug-ins.

I started with a 4x6 picture of my grandson. The image was a snapshot taken with my digital camera (3.1 megapixel). I opened it in Photoshop and then using the SmartScale plug-in resampled the image to 300 dpi from 72 dpi. Then using Photoshop, I cropped a small portion (less than 10 %) of the picture, which contained some facial detail. I use Photoshop’s Image>Adjust>Auto Levels function to bring up the color and contrast, and then went back to SmartScale to expand it another 345%. I could have gone farther, but the picture became too large to easily recognize individual facial features. The eye was now about 5 inches across on the printer and on my screen and was starting to show some pixelization although a lot of detail was still visible (eyelashes, shadows, etc). This is a very powerful tool!

I also used SmartScale to downsize a small collection of 6 megapixel pictures to mail over the Internet. The quality remained good, and the resizing was very easy.

Technical support is available at Extensis during the normal workweek, usually within 24 hours.

Availability: pxl SmartScale can be purchased separately or as part of Extensis’ Photo Imaging Suite. In December during this evaluation, it was available on special on the Extensis web site for $99.99 (Mac/Win), the Suite could be purchased for $499.95 from the same location. I also found SmartScale on the CDW website for $196.84, and on Buy.com for $178.99. Best Buy didn’t have it locally, and neither did CompUSA.

Recommendation:
I liked pxl SmartScale very much. While I wouldn’t recommend expanding any image 1600%, the plug-in is extremely capable and quickly produces excellent results for any reasonable image-resizing requirement. Based on my experience in evaluating SmartScale, their Photo Imaging Suite has several interesting additional tools, which I would also like to investigate at a later date. It contains:

• Portfolio – Visually organize, find and distribute your digital photos and other media files
• pxl SmartScale – (see above) Scale images up to 1600% with no discernable loss in printed quality
• Mask Pro – Unmatched masking power and precision with a color decontamination feature lets you create flawless masks from difficult, semi-transparent objects and keep/drop Highlighters that let you quickly define the specific areas of your mask
• PhotoFrame – Comes with over 2,000 professionally designed frames and borders, including two new volumes, all which can be mixed/combined for an unlimited variety of border effects
• Intellihance Pro – quick color correction and enhancements, and it allows you to compare and print up to 25 enhancement variations at once

Vendor information: Extensis, Inc. 1800 SW First Avenue, Suite 500 Portland, OR 97201 Tel: (800) 796-9798 websales@extensis.com

Minimum Requirements
(CPU, Ram, Disk storage, OS, other hardware)

For Windows

• Pentium III or faster processor
• 128 MB of System RAM (256 MB suggested)
• Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, or XP
• Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1 or higher; or Photoshop Elements 2.0 or higher

For Macintosh

• PowerPC G3, G4, or faster
• 128 MB of system RAM (256 MB suggested)
• Mac OS 9.2.2 or Mac OS X 10.2.5 or higher
• Quicktime 5.0.2 or higher (for Mac OS 9 only)
• Adobe Photoshop 6.0.1 or higher; or Photoshop Elements 2.0 or higher

Reviewer System Specifications
AMD Athlon 1.6 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM, 6 GB IDE drive with Windows XP Pro, 80GB Raid Drive, 64 MB ATI Radeon 7000, DirectX 9.0b, Firewire (IEEE 1394), USB 2.0, On-Lite DVD, On-Lite DVD+-R/RW/CD-R/RW burner, DirectX-compatible Sound Blaster Live card, Logitech Trackball, keyboard.