From low to high resolution photo

[MediumSolid]

What steps would one need to take in order to increase the resolution and quality of a low resolution photo? I have been searching on Youtube for a tutorial on Affinity for some time now, but unfortunately all I've been able to see so far are some tutorials for Photoshop. Any help would come in handy.

 

This is the image that I would like to have its size increased while still getting high quality image in the end if possible.

 

[jer]

Sorry, it doesn't work that way. It works the other direction: Reasonably successful to throw away pixels to get to a lower resolution, not generally successful to add pixels to increase resolution.

 

Depending on a lot of details, like what content and how much more res & size do you want, you can sometimes increase the resolution in stages of 10% or less, the lesser the better. The method of resolution change you use can be a factor also (again due to what content is in the image). In your case, you have a lot of detail in small areas as opposed to a landscape with a lot of sky area. The computer attempts to take a pixel and add pixels of the same color/tone/shade around it to get your image larger. You can see how this won't work well in areas of a lot of detail.

 

Perhaps some members who are expert photogs & developers can offer you some help.

[gdenby]

Beyond what @jer said about up-sampling, that image can not scale up well. It has many compression artifacts. My guess is that it was turned into a low quality .jpg, and then somehow resized. If you zoom in, you will see all sorts of squarish blotches at every edge. Very noisy, and a procedure that will smooth those away will also smooth away the fine text, which is at about the same scale.

 

If you want to try upscaling, avoid any .jpg. Try to start from an image that has been sampled at 600 ppi/dpi, which is twice what the average human eye can see clearly.

[MediumSolid]

Ok, somehow I've managed to do this on my own.

 

I'm just gonna write step of instructions for the community.

 

1. Document ---> Resize Document...

•  Change from current DPI to 400
•  Make sure Affinity has adjusted the resolution according to the increase in DPI
•  Resample: Lanczos 3 Non-Separable

2. Layer ---> New Adjustment Layer ---> Levels Adjustment Layer

•  White Level around 93%
•  Black level stays changed

3. Layer ---> New Live Filter Layer ---> Denoise Filter

•  Everything maxed out without enabling extreme option.

 

Is this the best method? Most certainly not. I'm only a beginner in this image editing software debacle just so you know.

Have a lot of details been lost during this process? Hell yes! But you be the judge Image. I can't upload an image for now on this forum for some reason.

 

P.S.

 

I don't guarantee that this method works for all images nor that it is the most reliable and quality preservation technique out there.

Edit: But what I could say is that if you would repeat the whole process on the image again and downsize the image to your original intent I guess you should end up with a better quality image overall.

[StuartRc]

Hi Medium Solid

 

Just a suggestion..and it may not be what you are looking for... you could try running it through 

 

http://waifu2x.udp.jp/

 

I tried it with your sample...at 2x (exported as Jpeg ) from Affinity Designer first..reduces the artifacts significantly but still might not give you the resolution you require

[MediumSolid]

Thanks, Stuart_R

 

This is even better than my method. The result is amazing.

[StuartRc]

You are welcome..A similar request was made in the forum some time ago...and I came across it... :) with the help of Google of course!

[liakos]

On 6/7/2017 at 11:08 PM, StuartRc said:

Hi Medium Solid

 

Just a suggestion..and it may not be what you are looking for... you could try running it through 

 

http://waifu2x.udp.jp/

 

I tried it with your sample...at 2x (exported as Jpeg ) from Affinity Designer first..reduces the artifacts significantly but still might not give you the resolution you require

https://github.com/lltcggie/waifu2x-caffe/releases

here you can download a binary with gui for windows (right click the .zip link and  save link as, the .exe is in the zipped folder

[souacz]

You can try Topaz Gigapixel AI with combination of Topaz Sharpen Ai. There are 30-days trial versions to download on their website.

[StuartRc]

12 minutes ago, liakos said:

https://github.com/lltcggie/waifu2x-caffe/releases

here you can download a binary with gui for windows (right click the .zip link and  save link as, the .exe is in the zipped folder

Interesting I will check it out!

[StuartRc]

5 minutes ago, souacz said:

You can try Topaz Gigapixel AI with combination of Topaz Sharpen Ai. There are 30-days trial versions to download on their website.

Thanks!...results look impressive...

[souacz]

You're welcome.