How often, looking at photos on a computer, we threw out cool frames because they turned out to be too small in size and of poor quality. But with the help of special programs you can save almost any image!
Improving image quality is a very voluminous topic. To improve the quality of photos in Photoshop, color correction, sharpening, retouching, and many other operations can be used. All of them require certain skills and possession of special techniques.
But there are also less complicated methods when you just need to increase the image without losing quality. Below we will look at an example of how to improve the quality of a photo if you need to enlarge a photo without losing quality.
How to enlarge a photo without losing quality
Everyone had to deal with a small image of poor quality. In such images, when magnified, the pixels are clearly visible, the points from which the raster image is built.
Enlarging an image by stretching it with free transformation will only worsen the situation.
In this lesson, work will be done in Photoshop CC 2017. But first, we will look at a method for other, older, versions of Photoshop. And then we'll show how Photoshop CC 2017 can do the whole procedure automatically.
Open the image in Photoshop. Now we will gradually increase it in several passes. It is worth noting immediately that you can increase the photo and raise the quality, but with a size limit.
Press the key combination the Alt + I of the Ctrl + . This will open the "Image Size" window . It is necessary that between the "Width" / Width and "Height" / Height a clip is pressed. Then the width and height will change proportionally.
Enlarge the image twice, each time by 20%. To do this, in the drop-down list opposite the “Width”, change the pixels to percentages (Pixel / Percent), and the numerical value from 100% to 120% and click Ok . Then we again call up the image size window ( Alt + Ctrl + I ) and increase it by 20%.
We enlarged the image almost one and a half times and even improved the quality. As you can see, pixelation is less noticeable if you zoom in on the image.
It remains to refine the result. Apply the Smart Sharpness filter to the resulting image.
Go: “Filters” / “Sharpness” / “Smart sharpness” / Filter / Sharpen / Smart Sharpen . Moving the sliders, we select the appropriate sharpness. If you click and hold the left mouse button in the small preview window on the image, you can see the image before applying the effect. The difference is palpable. Particularly noticeable is a smooth transition of color (without cubes) on the lenses of glasses. We completely removed the noise by moving the slider all the way to the right. The sharpness radius was 0.3 pixels, the effect was applied at 79%.
On the left is the original image, in the center - after increasing the size, on the right - with the use of "Smart sharpening" .
After the application of “Smart sharpening” , noise went out on the photo, the image became cleaner.
Open the image in Photoshop, press the key combination the Alt + I of the Ctrl + . This will open the “Image Size” window . Pay attention to the item “Fit to” / Dimensions . Expand this list. In it you will see the blank options for increasing / decreasing the image without loss of quality. We will use automatic selection (the second item in the list). In the window that opens, select "Good" and click Ok . It’s not worth choosing the best one, because the original image is of too low quality, and there is no point in enlarging it so much.
Please note, if we were able to select an image to increase the image from 950x632 pixels and a resolution of 96 pixels / inch to 1368x910 pixels with the same resolution, then the program made an increase to 1969x1310 pixels with a resolution of 199 pixels / inch.
Now you yourself have seen that you can enlarge a picture without losing quality, and even improve the quality of the photo.
It is worth noting that this method can be useful not only for enlarging and improving small photos. For example, you need to provide a photo for an online resource or for printing at a publisher. Your photo is of excellent quality and large size, but the publisher needs an even larger size. Applying the described method to increase the image and improve its quality, you will get an excellent result. After all, photos of large sizes with good quality will go through this procedure much easier.
The procedure is extremely simple. Do not cross on small pictures. Give them a second chance.
