Nearest neighbor scaling (sampling) - simple and vital
After Effects allows you to use Bicubic, bilinear, and nearest neighbor ("draft") for scaling. (Also known as "sampling" or "interpolation.")
Premiere should absolutely have the option for the Motion effect to use Nearest Neighbor. (It would still be bicubic by default, as it is now.)
This is very important for sprite art, screenshots, screen recordings, etc.
Here is a forum thread on the issue from 2012, where most people unfortunately don't even understand what the problem is:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1061901
NOTE: The TRANSFORM effect currently has the option for bilinear and bicubic. It would be good to add nearest neighbor here, but that should not be the ONLY place where it is available. The Transform effect still has severe issues with buggyness, instability, and choppy movement. Again, it is important that the MOTION effect has the option for Nearest Neighbor.
TaranVH
shared this idea
Currently, Premiere uses the Lanczos method for intrinsic scale and rotation. Lanczos is an exceptionally high-quality interpolation method which generally yields better results than bicubic, bilinear or nearest neighbor. From reading the forum post, it seems that up-scaling is the real issue here. I suggest looking at the Detail-Preserving Upscale effect in After Effects. It does a really good job and gives you some parameters to tweak to fit your specific content.
8 comments
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TaranVH
commented
@Francis Crossman
I've created a comparison of several up-scaling methods for you to look at. (all upscale comparisons.png)
As you can see, only Nearest Neighbor provides the desired result with sharp pixel edges - all other methods, including detail-preserving upscale, are blurry.
Here's a direct link to the sprite so that you can try it yourself:
https://i.imgur.com/Mdnm5lr.gif
Put this into a 1080p Premiere sequence and up-scale it to 3000%, and you will see the same blurry result.(Note: If you open it in Photoshop and zoom in, it WILL retain its sharp pixel edges, because Photoshop's canvas (correctly) uses Nearest Neighbor for that.)
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TaranVH
commented
@Francis Crossman
Thank you for reading and responding to this feature request, but, with all due respect, you don't understand what we're asking for.
Detail-Preserving Upscale does NOT solve the problem of preserving sharp pixel edges. I've created another comparison to prove it to you.
This is an extreme example, but the differences between Nearest Neighbor and Lanczos are still noticeable even at 200% and 300%. I can upload more comparisons if you would like.
I've also uploaded the original sprite so that you can try it yourself. On a 1080p timeline, scale link_sprite.gif to 4000% and you will see the same result. -
I love taran I’d marry him
commented
Yes
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TaranVH
commented
IMPORTANT:
Additionally, a hybrid of Nearest Neighbor and Bilinear would also be very useful.
I made a video just to explain how it works:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKV1JFE0_Nk&feature=youtu.be
And here's a screenshot that makes it very clear:
https://i.imgur.com/Zu8aXBS.png -
Sean McNally
commented
Crazy that premiere doesn't have this. They should either implement nearest neighbor, or give the option to disable interpolation altogether!
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Andrew
commented
This is a simple idea but really important for a lot of editors.
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TaranVH
commented
Apparently, there is a Premiere plugin that will do this. I haven't tried it yet, but I hear that although it has Nearest Neighbor, it is very slow to work. https://aescripts.com/gpuresize/
I'd still very strongly prefer to get this in vanilla Premiere. -
Anonymous
commented
That forum post hurt to read
