Emlarging photos without losing clarity?

[TallDarkandDisfigured]

Hey guys, So I have a couple pics I want to get blown up poster size without losing the clarity in the pics? What is the best way to do this?

Best i could come up with is to print them at the regular size and rescan them at a higher DPI? Does that make sense?

If anyone is wondering, it's the Tim Sale paintings from Heroes, I found imaes on NBC.com a long while back... wanna blow em up and print them on canvas...

Any other input is welcome!

 

[MattMunson]

Best i could come up with is to print them at the regular size and rescan them at a higher DPI? Does that make sense?

Nope, that won't really help. You cannot add information that has already been lost. CSI lies!!!

You could run some filters on it in photoshop and POSSIBLY get a little sharper picture, but you will sacrifice other things to get that sharpness.

In general, your best bet is to just send it to the printer as is, and see how it turns out. If you don't know photoshop, that's what I'd do.

 

[lonepigeon]

The simple answer - you can't.

Even if you ran filters on them pics from a website will not enlarge that big.
As Matt said you can't add information that's already gone.

You could recreate the paintings larger or hire an artist to do it.
NBC probably sells some better quality recreations too.

 

[Hecubus114]

its kind of like if you shrink an image in MS paint, then try and blow it back up to its original size - its blurry because making it small took out a bunch of the pixels...

 

[Skaught]

Turning your wallet inside out doesn't make more money appear. Nothing you can do to a photo will add more detail. It can only be as good as how it is right now. Printing it out and scanning it will only make it worse.

Scott

 

[TallDarkandDisfigured]

Thanks or the quick replies guys. I think I might print it as is, then resize it in photoshop to the size I want and bust out the digtal airbrush... using the original to guide my work...

My laziness was just hoping for an easier solution.. :lol

 

[bigcow]

I hope , I will help you with some information, With photoshop size pics with 300 DPI. I have made from 8x10 pic to 29x56 and they look good to me.

take a look at Genuine Fractals 5 .



http://www.ononesoftware.com/tutorials/tutorials_genuinefractals.php

Fernando :cool

 

[Clerval]

Never underestimate the power of fractals.

 

[CSMacLaren]

Taking a cruddy 72 dots per inch web image and sizing it up to 300 dots per inch in Photoshop unfortunately results in a cruddy 300 dots per inch image.

Some software have some algorithms to add a little bit of blur to make the increased image look a little less harsh on the eyes. This is why when purchasing a digital camera you essentially ignore digital zoom and focus solely on what optical zoom delivers. If a camera fails to pick up details with its own optical lens, then digitally enlarging the image results in the computer throwing in more pixels, blur, fractals, etc. in order to create something out of nothing; it's a processed image and not the true image of what was photographed.

It is possible to get an incredible image from a less-than-superior lens but this technology is not available on a widespread basis. A long time ago, one of the Viking satellites's primary camera crapped out. Someone who understood light waves and how a lens' sensors can interpret those images came up with some extremely advanced mathematical computations for the backup lens. A Fortran program was uploaded to the satellite, and the resulting images were actually superior to those taken by the primarily camera.

The software suggested by BigCow is create if you actually have a large image with a lot of graphical information to begin with. The Flash tutorials show a starting image to be at 10 MB in filesize. If you happened to find something on the web, it's probably less than 200 kb.

In photoshop, if a JPEG happened to be saved at a high level of quality and without compression, it's possible to make it larger. If it's saved with a high level of compression so as to reduce file size, you will see all kinds of "lossy" effects - "artifacts" and what-not. If you increase this to 300 dpi, the artifacts also gain in size. Fractals will enhance the artifacts.

You can, with Photoshop CS3, manage and reduce some of the noise and create a larger image. You might not need a lot of detail for a large format poster - you may find that a certain level of blur might be okay for a poster that will be regarded 8 feet away.

The rule of thumb is that you have to have some graphical information in the image to enhance.

 

[lonepigeon]

Thanks or the quick replies guys. I think I might print it as is, then resize it in photoshop to the size I want and bust out the digtal airbrush... using the original to guide my work...

My laziness was just hoping for an easier solution.. :lol

No need to print it at all.
Take it directly to Photoshop to increase the size and begin repainting over it.
You'll only lose more detail by printing it.

 

[Contec]

Re: Enlarging photos without losing clarity?

I was in thailand last year and got a painting made from a tiny little photo: 5x9 inches of Nx-01 to a 24x40 inches canvas
If i had come to them early they could have done it better. This took 4 days ,ready the same day i went home.

The pictures i used:

I told them to lose the pod in the foreground.
They are very talanted.
/Conny

 

[Knightjar]

I think this is what you need:

 

[renzaijh]

What about photographing a slide of the image and making enlargements from it?

 

[Great_Bizarro]

I use Genuine Fractals and Adobe Photoshop for best results.

 

[franz bolo]

Re: Enlarging photos without losing clarity?

Wow, great job!!!

FB

I was in thailand last year and got a painting made from a tiny little photo: 5x9 inches of Nx-01 to a 24x40 inches canvas
If i had come to them early they could have done it better. This took 4 days ,ready the same day i went home.

The pictures i used:

I told them to lose the pod in the foreground.
They are very talanted.
/Conny

 

[defyitall]

Re: Enlarging photos without losing clarity?

To reiterate what's been said: Genuine Fractals would work.

 

[TallDarkandDisfigured]

No need to print it at all.
Take it directly to Photoshop to increase the size and begin repainting over it.
You'll only lose more detail by printing it.

Yeah, I just meant printing it to hang there as a visual aid to keep the colors rght and whatnot.

I'll look into Genuine fractals, isit a free plug in?

 

[defyitall]

Nope, I think it's $160.

 

[Sumatra]

Re: Enlarging photos without losing clarity?

To reiterate what's been said: Genuine Fractals would work.

To a point. Most pictures you see online have quite a bit of compression that will become very obvious when you blow the image up. GF works best when you're running it on a 12-bit (or greater) digital camera image. And it can only enlarge by so much.

One thing to concider though is the viewing distance. If you print a poster, you don't look at it from as close as say an 8x10. You stand back from it a few feet. Because of this you can get away with printing at a lower resolution.

I would also recommend Bruce Fraser's Real World Image Sharpening

 

[defyitall]

Re: Enlarging photos without losing clarity?

Yeah, that;s why i said "would" instead of "will." Just to cover the times when it doesn't work. But we've have great success using it here at Nickelodeon.