How to enlarge a image with higher resolution without fading the picture?

Question

The picture is not in the camera, so I can't set up the higher resolution, is there anyother way to enlarge the image?

Answer 1

Increasing the resolution with software involves creating new pixels based on the surrounding pixels. If you do this too much, it blurs image edges and generally degrades the pic.

By the way, increasing the resolution of an existing pic in the camera uses the same kind of process. So that wouldn't really help. It's best to take pics at highest resolution, then downsize later if you don't need that much.

Sometimes you can still get the enlarged pic good enough for printing by tweaking the image. (It always looks worse on a screen.)

Try these:
. Increase Saturation
. Increase Brightness and Contrast
. Adjust Color to bring out more of the predominent color
. As a last step, use the Unsharp Mask filter to tighten the edges a little

You will have to experiment a little. But don't repeatedly save and re-open the same jpeg image. You lose a little clearness everytime you open and save, because of the jpeg compression. (It's ok the repeatedly Save, as long as you do not re-open every time.)

Good Luck

Answer 2

Your best bet in this situation is to use some kind of software, like Alien Skin's Blow Up to enlarge. There are other programs out there, but their name eludes me at the moment.

Just "up-sampling" the resolution will "fade" or "pixelate" the image, as you already know.

Answer 3

There's no way to avoid deterioration in quality if you blow the image up. Photoshop and other bitmap editors compensate by using synthetic sharpening which is effective but MUST BE USED WITH CARE; the effect it produces can be nasty if overused. It works by identifying areas of highly-contrasting adjacent colours and darkening or lightening them accordingly. If you have Photoshop you can see this - use the 'unsharp mask' filter for greatest control.