hq2x executable that supports PNGs?

[Tallgeese]

I'm mainly asking because I want to scale up a transparent PNG, and Targa transparency does not stick after hq2x'ing.

[grinvader]

i just save it to BMP with a specific colour as transparent placeholder, hq2x it up, and re-png-transparentize it. Takes a while per pic, but works.

[Tallgeese]

I tried that, but it gives me Ye Olde Ghost Border of Doom.

Oh well, no big deal.

[mudlord]

Metatron,

Since you wanted a HQ2X executable that supports PNG, I went ahead and made one:

http://vba-m.ngemu.com/hq2x_freeimage.rar

Let me know how that goes.

[Tallgeese]

Oh, it only outputs PNG or does it take it as input?

Thank you very much for trying, but it seems the PNGs it outputs can;'t be read by Photoshop for some reason?

See, the whole reason I asked was so I could upscale images with transparent backgrounds. If you send TGAs through it, hq2x mangles the alpha channel. But again, thanks for trying.

[mudlord]

Oh, it only outputs PNG or does it take it as input?

Thank you very much for trying, but it seems the PNGs it outputs can;'t be read by Photoshop for some reason?

Yes, it should output PNGs while preserving the BMP's content as much as possible. It uses standard FreeImage API calls for this, so its not complicated at all.

Its very strange that the PNGs don't open in Photoshop for you. What version of Photoshop are you using?

[Tallgeese]

Photoshop CS.

Also, I think you misunderstood what I was doing... I was starting with a transparent PNG and trying to hq2x it, because if I take a BMP and use it, the background and the thing I'm trying to extract blend in, and deleting the background leaves some junk around the image that is annoying. But then I found out that hq2x doesn't take PNGs as input.

So what I did was surmise that I could take a TGA, add an alpha channel, and hq2x that. It 'worked' in a sense... except hq2x mangles the alpha channel so I might as well have used BMP.

Oh well, I doubt it'd work correctly anyway, even if it did take PNGs as input. It'd probably make the outer edges semitransparent or something. As I said, thanks for trying! Scale2X does the job, I just find hq2x more pleasant usually.

[Truth Unknown]

Try spitting the image up into two parts RGB and Alpha, HQ2X-fy them and mask the Alpha over the RBG or something to that effect. My memory is fuzzy on the masking method but I think you can figure that out.

[Tallgeese]

Try spitting the image up into two parts RGB and Alpha, HQ2X-fy them and mask the Alpha over the RBG or something to that effect. My memory is fuzzy on the masking method but I think you can figure that out.

I tried that already, actually. HQ2X mangles the alpha.

[creaothceann]

You saved the alpha channel to a greyscale 8-bit bitmap and applied the filter to it separately?

[Tallgeese]

Ohhh... well that I didn't do. I'll try it sometime, that'll be interesting...

It's a hilarious coincidence that it is your tool I used to get the original image in question.

[creaothceann]