Help with Increasing Picture Size without Losing Picture Quality Software Progra

[Mark Goodwin]

Help with Increasing Picture Size without Losing Picture Quality

Recently a friend of mine sent me several pictures via e-mail. All the pictures are excellent in quality, except they are thumbnail size. When I tried to blow them up the quality of the picture clarity is greatly reduced to a fuzzy mess.

Does anyone know of a software program, preferably free or very reasonable, that will allow me to resize these pictures and still keep quality images?

I have seen several individuals here on the board, take pictures posted and improved them immensely as far as quality and clarity is concerned. So I'm hoping to do the same with these thumbnail pictures.

Mark

[The Tassie Devil(le)]

G'day Mark,

From what I can gather, once the images have been reduced in size, unless you have the original on your own computer, they cannot be enlarged without the problems you have encountered.

Simply, what the reducing does is remove the "superfluous" pixels to allow the image to be visible in a smaller size, but going the other way, there is no computer in the world that knows what colour or shape is missing when it is enlarged.

If an affordable computer was made that could do that, then the maker would become an instant Billionaire.

Bruce.

[Ross Morgan #22943]

Mark / Bruce

There is software that does this.  From what I understand (and it's what I do) most people use Adobe Photoshop.  There is now also a stand alone software package that does exactly this (ie, enlarge plus lots of other things) called "Perfect Resize 7.5" ($149 retail).  The tutorials are here http://www.ononesoftware.com/learn/training/video/category/perfect-resize-7-5/

I use both. What do they do? They use an algorithm that increases the file size and fills in the pixels (so on enlarging, you don't get the "boxes"). It's fantastic technology and if you want to enlarge a print, they work really well. I've got prints blown up to 4' x 3' in size and they look great.

BUT, BUT, BUT an original photograph, with hi-res and enlarged is much sharper VERSUS a photoshopped or Perfect Resize 'd low-res photo - the latter is good but it doesn't get it back to original - it's simply not as sharp. I hope that makes sense.

Regards, Ross.

[Makandriaco]

Both answers are right in their own way. Yes, there is some software that interpolates missing pixels, anti-aliass the result, blur the blown up pixels, and many other techniques; so after enlarging the picture you do not get a pixelated one. But, as Bruce said, there can't be any magic and the software can't really know what information is missing, so if you have a "thumbnail" which by definition is a very very small version of the photo, you will not get a good larger one regardless of the computer or software you are using, at best, you will get a blurred version of it.

[Art Director]

Mark / Bruce

There is software that does this.  From what I understand (and it's what I do) most people use Adobe Photoshop.  There is now also a stand alone software package that does exactly this (ie, enlarge plus lots of other things) called "Perfect Resize 7.5" ($149 retail).  The tutorials are here http://www.ononesoftware.com/learn/training/video/category/perfect-resize-7-5/

I use this Photoshop plug-in for some photos that appear in The Self-Starter. There is a limit to how far you can enlarge in Perfect Resize (depends on the size and resolution of the original photo) but the program has enabled many photos to publish in the magazine that otherwise would have not, because the photos were not large enough for print.

The results of resizing in Photoshop by itself still brings pixilation to the photos. I agree with Ross and highly recommend Perfect Resize.

[veesixteen]

I have had moderate success using PhotoShop CS5 to increase smallish images by up to 50% without then getting too FUZZY. But there's no miracle solution!