Final2x

With the higher resolutions and larger displays of today, the need for upscaling becomes increasingly more apparent. If you have a few photos that aren’t quite there in terms of clarity, it’s fortunately simple enough to get them to look sharper and clearer. It does help that upscaling is becoming more accessible, and with the hardware of today, easier to run by the casual user.

Final2x is a tool that claims to enhance the resolution and clarity of your images in several ways. It is modern and easy to use, and you won’t necessarily have to do much to get it to work: simply drop your photos in, and it’ll do the rest.

The program is an effort to provide an upscaling tool that is both simple and efficient to use. To that end, the main interface is essentially stripped of any unnecessary elements: for starters, drop your photos in, click Start, and wait a while for the upscaling to finish. That is, in essence, the program’s workflow — provided you don’t care to delve into the Settings menu.

As a casual user, there’s little need to configure the program. Though it’s not too difficult, it’s best you inform yourself on the strengths and weaknesses of each of the available AI upscaling models, as well as experiment with the various Denoise, TTA, and Scale values.

Among the supported models, RealESRGAN, RealCUGAN, SRMD, and Waifu2x are present, each with their separate variations for stills, drawings, and so on.

Perhaps to no one’s surprise, the program doesn’t shy away from consuming a considerable amount of resources while upscaling. If your computer is not up to spec, it’s recommended you look to web-based upscalers instead.

A small gripe I had with the program had to do with the progress bar, which wouldn’t update accordingly. Due to this, I had to look in the Log menu to see the progress of the upscaling.

Final2x is really a very solid choice. It comes with the usual caveats you see about upscalers, however: it’s resource-intensive, and the size of your upscaled photos will be exponentally increased. To its credit, the results do look noticeably better in terms of clarity.