| Backend | About |
|---|
| Waifu2x Caffe | Waifu2x Caffe does great with Anime and Manga style images. Both the Image output quality and the Alpha quality are top-notch, on the appropriate image type. |
| Waifu2x Vulkan | Waifu2x Vulkan approaches the quality of Caffe, while slashing the computational and memory requirements. The image quality is good, but the Alpha handling can be a little fuzzy around the edges (can be defringed to great effect.) |
| RealSR Vulkan | RealSR's image output is great for more realistic images. The Alpha can be a little dark around the edges, but the detail produced on images is fantastic. |
| SRMD Vulkan | SRMD excels at upscaling poor-quality material. Great for reworking a bad upscale, and also good for upscaling realistic images. |
| Waifu2x CPP | Waifu2x CPP's output is visually close to Caffe's (if, a little muddier), but is quite fast with low requirements. It does poorly on images with Alpha (but the results are acceptable with defringing turned on and calibrated). |
| Anime4K CPP | Anime4K CPP is the fastest of the supported backends. It has a high range of input settings, and is intended for Anime or Manga style images. Visual quality has quite a bit of variance, but can look quite good once the settings are dialed in. |
Images for comparison. The source is not mine, and these images exist purely for edification.
| Source |
|---|
 |
| Caffe 4x | Waifu2x Vulkan 4x |
|---|
 |  |
| Waifu2x CPP 4x | Anime4K 4x |
|---|
 |  |
| RealSR 4x | SRMD 4x |
|---|
 |  |
| ESRGAN (4xBox) | ESRGAN (4x_FireAlpha) |
|---|
 |  |