Upscayl – Free and Open Source AI Image Upscaler for Linux, macOS and Windows

[a1371]

Why all the negativity in the comments here? Yes, sometimes it is extremely valuable to make a nice thin wrapper on existing tech. As a community, we can't always complain about the user interface of FOSS tools, and then when someone makes a UI, again complain that they haven't done anything or the size is large. Pick a side!

[knaik94]

More feature rich UIs already exist as thin wrappers for this tech. Some linked from the Real-ESRGAN github repo. More importantly, Google Colab notebooks exist already as well, so you don't even need a graphics card.

People are allowed to question what aspect of this project this is novel. I believe it's a fair critique when many tools already exist. A criticism doesn't imply a negative connotation.

I personally appreciate the before/after comparison demo aspect of this tool. However, I value the ability to modify parameters and models more than a before and after comparison tool.

I see parameters/models are on the road map but I personally believe it should be part of a 1.0 release.

I personally am a fan of https://github.com/AaronFeng753/Waifu2x-Extension-GUI

[rvz]

It's Electron. That is why.

[LaputanMachine]

The app contacts Github's CDN every 45 seconds. Is there a particular reason / need for this behavior?

Tested on macOS with the following command:

  sudo tcpdump -k -i en0 | grep Upscayl

[samstave]

Just an aside as we all get Old Fat and Ugly, its actually a good thing to have such a simple reminder to grep for shit out of your egress just so you stay close to whats happening on the wire.

I haven't thought about TCPDUMP in a long time, and I appreciate this man page.

[NayamAmarshe]

It must be because of the auto-update checker. It's a useful feature that lets us notify users about new versions and also let them download and install without opening the Github repository.

[rahimnathwani]

Why not use Real-ESRGAN directly?

https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN

[GrayShade]

I actually tried, couldn't do it. Some version of numpy in their requirements.txt doesn't build with the Python on the my system.

Sure, I could probably install another Python with conda, but it's not my idea of fun. The app here actually worked fine from the first try, without taking gigabytes of disk space.

[lynndotpy]

I do machine learning and use Python a lot, and even then I'd sometimes prefer something packaged like this. Dependencies are Python's hell and I can't usually know in advance if a repo will be a 1-minute install or a 15-minute install.

[creativenolo]

Visual feedback. Visual interface. The GUI fad is still around.

[knaik94]

This UI wrapper doesn't have any way to set options for upsample or tile size parameters. I also don't see any way for it to set the model yourself.

https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN

The Real-ESRGAN page has links to additional uis to try out.

[NayamAmarshe]

Scaling is broken on Real-ESRGAN. That's why I had to remove the option for 2x and 3x and tiling can sometimes yield totally unexpected results. These 2 are the primary reasons why Upscayl doesn't show them.

[simonw]

Nice to see one of these that can use the GPU on my Mac laptop out of the box - I just tried it after installing from the .dmg, it worked great.

[NayamAmarshe]

It's honestly a relief. I do not have MacOS so I had to compile the software with a MacOS VM without hardware passthrough, it took me a whole day to set that up. I wasn't able to test it on the VM (because of lacking hardware acceleration) but some nice people from the community helped us test it and find bugs and issues for the Mac builds :)

[Sugimot0]

I like video2x[1] for this, a nice simple CLI with lots of different options for different cases, (especially the anime upscalers) used it quite a bit, also played with realcugan-ncnn-vulkan[2] which has given me pretty great results.

[1]: https://github.com/k4yt3x/video2x [2]: https://github.com/nihui/realcugan-ncnn-vulkan

[aantix]

Video2x - is it only for cartoon/anime video?

[behnamoh]

Would it be too difficult to add video upscaling feature to this? It'd really help with old videos.

I have videos I took on my Sony Ericsson w810i in the 2000s. The joy of being able to capture something animated on a small screen... I remember it used to show what song is playing at the top and I thought "cool, it shows banners similar to what we see at the bottom of news channels"! Would be great to elevate those videos to today's standards.

[social_quotient]

It’s not what you asked for exactly but I’ve had good success with this product

https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

Sometimes it drops the audio channel but it’s not too bad getting it added back in.

[lijogdfljk]

re: Videos, that's the first item on the roadmap on the linked page

[can16358p]

Anyone compared it against Topaz Labs' Sharpen AI/Gigapixel AI?

Which is better (putting paid vs open-source debate aside) in terms of result image quality?

[can16358p]

Update: tried it, and it failed miserably.

I really wanted an open source project to be on par with a commercial/paid software but realistically speaking, the difference is day and night and Topaz wins hands down in my cases.

[stavros]

I tried Real-ESRGAN but it seems to dream up slightly too much? Has anyone else had this problem? It tends to generate details where there shouldn't be any.

Maybe I need to add some setting?

[physPop]

This is commonly called 'hallucination' and is a confound in super resolution. Its particularly concerning when people throw SISR at medical imaging ...

[IceWreck]

How does Real-ESRGAN used here compare to waifu2x ? I've had great success using waifu2x, especially for blurry artwork.

[Tajnymag]

ESRGAN works better for photos in my testing.

[liuliu]

NCNN does work with just CPU. Just need a little bit more packaging.

[Cipater]

It really does need a GPU. Tried it on a laptop with integrated graphics and it crashed completely. Didn't even give a BSOD, machine just went dead and rebooted.

[Dwedit]

It's just relabeled Real-ESRGAN. Real-ESRGAN is still a very good solution, but I don't know if this project is contributing anything new.

[NayamAmarshe]

We're making sure Real-ESRGAN reaches people who cannot use CLIs (so that pretty much includes 99% of the population). Also, I have a PR in the making for their ncnn-conversion script, it ain't much but it's honestly the best I can contribute when it comes to Python and AI.

Real-ESRGAN creator also encourages others to use their tech in their projects, as mentioned in their readme.

I know we're not really enhancing Real-ESRGAN's code at the moment, but we don't want to disrespect or disregard their hardwork either.

[solarkraft]

It sure does for me. The other projects linked here are I find overwhelming, Upscayl I find approachable.

The alternative I see to Upscayl would be some online service that's similarly approachable for "I just want to upscale this right now".

[eating555]

Thanks for the great tool! Although i know how to use those models, this makes my life more easier!!!!

[ldng]

Could something similar applied to 3D scanner points cloud ? Would Real-ESRGAN work in 3D ?

[WrtCdEvrydy]

This is awesome... I wonder if we'll get something for video upscaling like this?

[rixrax]

Another interesting feature might be image sharpener while maintaining the resolution?

[NayamAmarshe]

That is planned :)

[willnonya]

Zoom and enchance!

[willnonya]

"Make the whole world use FOSS"

At least they have realistic goals...

[akerr]

Was Upscail taken?