Help with Increasing Picture Size without Losing Picture Quality Software Program

Mark Goodwin - Deceased 1950 - 2016

November 29, 1950 - January 16, 2016
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
 
You can resize a larger picture to be smaller, without loosing quality, however, you can't make a small picture larger without loosing quality. This is the reason that most modern digital cameras take pictures in a larger format, because it preserves the details that are usually lost when enlarging.
 
There's not really an easy way to do what you're asking, but if they display well at their actual size, you MIGHT be able to photograph them off of a quality monitor and enlarge them that way. I would suggest finding a way to display them on something with a quality display, like an iPad with a retina display, then set up a digital camera on a tripod and photograph them. You may run into problems with the refresh rate of the monitor if your exposure time is not long enough, so a tripod is the best way to go.

Otherwise, I can't think of a good way to do it.
 
It's not perfect, but it might gain you something. This is a picture of a thumbnail on google displayed on my iPad that I photographed:

larger.jpg


Or you could get them printed out and photograph the prints, which might look better than trying to enlarge a low resolution digital image. This is a picture of a portion of a 4x6 print:


larger2.jpg


Neither one is ideal, but maybe better than what you can do with the original.
 
one way I have found using my photo program is to check the DPI first. some programs call it resolution. most net things wind up being 72 dots per inch. I find if you increase then by no more then 100% each time before you enlarge the picture you can at times get it bigger. never increase the size more then 160% a time either. and use you auto edit in between to get the dots to line up. with a thumb nail your lucky to get it to double with out losing it. the picture of a pictures is a good way to get a bigger one. but hard to keep the color. if you have a screen saver that may get it also. there are sniping programs that will let you capture a part of the screen most of them save in a larger format. but I don't know of a program that lets you one click a small one larger
 
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