Most effective way to increase the size of images for quality control?

Hello,


I am looking to double the size of various images similar to this:



As you can see it's not a real-life photo, so amount of colors used will probably be less.

What is the most effective way to increase the size of an image like this while maintaining as much quality as possible? CS6 has a feature when using "image resize" that is meant for enlargement. While not bad, I was hoping there are some other things I can do to the image to restore more of that crisp feel, as obviously doubling the image size gives some blurriness.

I'm realistic so I don't expect this will look perfect or close to, as good as possible is good with me =).

Thanks!

I seriously doubt you can enlarge an image more effectively than with CS6. An image is composed of pixels. The pixels cannot be increased in size so the only way to increase the size of an image is to add pixels between the existing pixels. The simplest way to do that is to just duplicate existing pixels, resulting in what is called pixelation, the jagged effect that makes pictures look like they were assembled with blocks (which, in fact, they were). More sophisticated programs will approximate what pixels between existing pixels would look like but there is a limit to how much this can be done. For example, many police TV shows and movies show their computer experts blowing up and enhancing poor surveillance photos and videos and getting sharp, crisp results. That is pure fantasy. It simply cannot be done to that degree with today's technology (and I seriously doubt it ever will be done). It's like blowing up an actual film based photo; you can blow it up only so much without it appearing grainy. Blow it up (or magnify it) enough and all you will see are a bunch of dots.

MarkC0 said:

Hello,


I am looking to double the size of various images similar to this:

As you can see it's not a real-life photo, so amount of colors used will probably be less.

What is the most effective way to increase the size of an image like this while maintaining as much quality as possible? CS6 has a feature when using "image resize" that is meant for enlargement. While not bad, I was hoping there are some other things I can do to the image to restore more of that crisp feel, as obviously doubling the image size gives some blurriness.

I'm realistic so I don't expect this will look perfect or close to, as good as possible is good with me =).

Thanks!

Click to expand...

If you are looking for free programs try Paint.NET - Free Software for Digital Photo Editing or GIMP - The GNU Image Manipulation Program.

You will lose a lot of quality in doubling the size.

You can fool the eye into thinking that the image is "sharper" in fact what you do is to increase the contrast. This is best achieved by using the strangely named "unsharp mask" filter. If you would like to put the the original image up to a server and send me the link via PM I will happily have a go for you.

Here's a sample:

Here is my attempt of double size with increased contrast.

And this is my attempt using GIMP and Unsharp Mask...