Monday 18 January 2016

post processing - How can I upscale a low-res image to make it appear higher-res?



I want to enlarge an image to a bigger size. This will cause pixelation.


So I want to apply some treatment to it in Photoshop that will suppress some of this pixelation. Of course I cannot generate new pixel information, only smoothen it etc. so that the pixelation is not so much apparent in full views and prints. Example, one effect popular with photographers is to copy the image into a second layer, set its blending mode to overlay or soft light etc., then apply a blur to it. This somewhat smoothens the image. But it also changes its appearance into a glowy kind of look (which is the aim, usually).


I want a treatment that will fake the appearance of a higher-res smooth image without too many side-effects.


Any tricks of this kind?



Answer



If you've tried enlarging in Photoshop, the first thing is to experiment with the resampling algorithm (photoshop suggests bicubic smoother as the best for enlarging, but I have found it to be image dependent (if you have an image with a lot of edges vs a portrait or landscape).


Rather than smoothing, blurring I would suggest using a denoise program next, because they are smarter than any layer tricks, and can denoise while retaining sharpness.


Or you can use a product that is made specifically for this purpose, like Genuine Fractals. It promises up to 1000% enlargement without loss of quality.


Jeff Atwood has a blog post about this here: Better Image Resizing


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