Retouching and upsizing photos from a GoPro. It is not every day a photo of yours is blown up to a staggering size onto a huge billboard. What was really astounding was that it was from a tiny GoPro camera.
Enlarging GoPro photos
the first thing you need to do with your GoPro, to even stand a chance of enlarging the photo. Is to make sure that you have the settings optimised. I have adjusted my GoPro settings to “Protune”, this is the equal of using “Raw” instead of “jpeg” in your camera. Protune is a setting in GoPro so that photos hold far more information than the Jpeg version. This is vital if you want to be enlarging your GoPro photo in photoshop. All the photos I took were also shot using the most neutral settings in the GoPro camera.
I find the standard GoPro colour settings a bit too vivid and sharp for my liking. I then retouched and toned the colours using Lightroom.
blowing up small pictures
The GoPro photo was used to promote the entire season (2017/2018) of concerts and events at the ADDA. The main auditorium in the province of Alicante -Spain. If you look at the banner. It is 43.5 by 5.6 metres in dimension. Which means the actual image I shot had been successfully retouched and enlarged to 7.5 by 5.6 metres. and is still clear and not distorted or pixelated.
What makes this even more surprising for me was that I took the photo using my using my GoPro Hero 4 black. I was on holiday in Formentera, one of the Balearic Islands (Spain).
While I was there, I took a few underwater holiday photos with my GoPro. I have included a few images of the trip. I particularly like the plunge my son made. Especially the composition of the anchor and the bubble trails he left behind when impacting the water.
an underwater Gopro photo using Protune
The slogan for the 2017/18 season was “Submerge Yourself in the Music”. Which explains why they used my photo.
The photo for the billboard before enlarging
Another great second camera I take with me is my trusty Panasonic Lumix FZ 2500. I used it to capture my son pictured below plunging into the sea.
My son diving into the sea
Enlarging GoPro photos. To achieve this, as mentioned before, adjust the camera to optimise the photos.
