Expanding images without losing definition

[Yellow Fang]

So far the best way of increasing the size without losing definition has been to print them out and then scan them in again at higher resolution. I've scanned them at 600 dpi. They're now pretty large, but the definition is not bad. I'm not sure it's good enough though.

 

[Ticktockmy]

Genuine Fractals (http://www.ononesoft...e/features.html) is the industry standard for photo enlargement but costs a wee bit. Otherwise as others say, you're stuck with the data you've got. An easy, though pretty crude, alternative is to resize and then use a gaussian blur effect on photoshop to smooth out the pixels, but I'd recommend genuine fractals or obtaining the original pics.

Mel

Genuine fractals is brill at increasing the image size, I use it all the time, but yes it is expensive, unless you need to use it all the time. The latest version is called perfect resize 7. but not tried it yet.

 

[ColinJ]

So far the best way of increasing the size without losing definition has been to print them out and then scan them in again at higher resolution. I've scanned them at 600 dpi. They're now pretty large, but the definition is not bad. I'm not sure it's good enough though.

Sorry, but that has to be one of the worst possible ways of doing it.

Your way:

• Printer driver or printer software resamples the original pixel data to the printer resolution
• Mechanically print that out at that resolution
• Mechanically scan the picture back in at a different resolution

As opposed to:

• Resample the original pixel data to the new resolution you want

Why introduce 2 extra processes which degrade the image quality? (Or ask people how to do it, and then do something different anyway?)

 

[Yellow Fang]

Sorry, but that has to be one of the worst possible ways of doing it.

Your way:

• Printer driver or printer software resamples the original pixel data to the printer resolution
• Mechanically print that out at that resolution
• Mechanically scan the picture back in at a different resolution

As opposed to:

• Resample the original pixel data to the new resolution you want

Why introduce 2 extra processes which degrade the image quality? (Or ask people how to do it, and then do something different anyway?)

I don't want to spend any money so some of those suggestions are out. I've tried resizemypicture but the result was blurred.

I couldn't get anything to increase the size of the images without it looking blocky or blurred, so I decided I'd try print them out, go over them with ink and stencil then scan them back in. After much hassle trying to get my scanner to work, I found that if I used reset the scanning resolution, the images looked alright. Not dead sharp, but better than anything else I tried.

I am struggling with GIMP at the moment to improve them, but it's not very intuitive. The sharp, unsharp, blurring, etc features don't seem to work all that well. Increasing the contrast seemed to sharpen them up a bit, and I'm using Gimp to re-write the text, once I can work out what all that layering is all about.

Thanks for your suggestions. I do appeciate them.

 

[ColinJ]

Er, sorry, I might have across a bit grumpy there - I was just surprised that you'd resorted to that method!

How many times are you trying to enlarge the picture(s)? When I tried resizemypicture.com it seemed to make a pretty good job of doubling the size of my test picture.

If you'd like to email me a few pictures I could have a go at them for you. If so, I'll PM you one of my email addresses.

 

[Norm]

Maybe you should consider doing your own images?

It sounds like the journal has specified a certain size to ensure original images are used and stop peeps stealing the work of others.

 

[Crackle]

Gimp, I feel, is the way to go. I know it's not intuitive, especially with the layers and everything but it is as powerful as Photoshop and if you persevere and find a decent tutorial it will give you the results you want or more importantly, your end user wants, of course that does depend on the original images which may in the end prove the limiting factor.

 

[Yellow Fang]

Er, sorry, I might have across a bit grumpy there - I was just surprised that you'd resorted to that method!

How many times are you trying to enlarge the picture(s)? When I tried resizemypicture.com it seemed to make a pretty good job of doubling the size of my test picture.

If you'd like to email me a few pictures I could have a go at them for you. If so, I'll PM you one of my email addresses.

About 10x it seems. They need to be at least 2400 pixels wide, which means 600 DPI for an image about 4". When I scanned them in at 600 DPI, they were massive. Thanks for the offer, but don't spend too much time on them.

Maybe you should consider doing your own images?

It sounds like the journal has specified a certain size to ensure original images are used and stop peeps stealing the work of others.

It's a literature review; I'm reviewing other people's work. I have obtained copyright permission to reproduce their illustrations. I was thinking of drawing some of the images out again, perhaps in Visio, but I think that would take even more time. They weren't all drawn in Visio in the first place.

Gimp, I feel, is the way to go. I know it's not intuitive, especially with the layers and everything but it is as powerful as Photoshop and if you persevere and find a decent tutorial it will give you the results you want or more importantly, your end user wants, of course that does depend on the original images which may in the end prove the limiting factor.

I'm beginning to find Gimp a bit more useful. I've found out I can do some effects in Paint or Visio and then copy them across to Gimp. It's quite good for cleaning images up, but it tends to get its knickers in a twist quite often.

 

[Norm]

It's a literature review; I'm reviewing other people's work. I have obtained copyright permission to reproduce their illustrations. I was thinking of drawing some of the images out again, perhaps in Visio, but I think that would take even more time. They weren't all drawn in Visio in the first place.

Ah, it becomes clearer.

The only way that I've got anything like a decent result from that sort of magnification is to convert the image to vectors. They deal with lines rather than pixels, essentially like the fractal program mentioned above. When you magnify a lime by 10x, it is a line which is much thicker. When you magnify a pixel by 10x, it often becomes a meaningless blur.

Whilst a commercial fractal program will be pricey, there were a lot of vector graphics programs around a few years ago, so you might find a previous version as a freebie somewhere.

Sorry I can't help more, I'm using the phone to browse at the moment.

 

[ColinJ]

10 times - blimey - sorry, I don't think you're going to have much joy simply resizing images to that extent!

You think about it - 90% of the pixels would have to be 'guesstimated' by the software.

 

[S_t_e_v_e]

Can you post an image? then I'm sure a friendly CCer will enlarge it for you...

 

[Yellow Fang]

I am using Gimp to re-trace over the lines. Three done, three to go. The ones I've done look quite good, definitely much sharper. It's just so time-consuming. Should be done in another day or so.