How to Increase the Resolution of a Picture Without Getting a Rough Look?

How to increase the resolution of a picture?
Sometimes I had drawings that were too low quality, I went over the pixels and made them whatever color they closest resemble. This yields a “rough look.
How can I do it without that “rough look”?

Ideally you would need the drawing in a vector format. That is, the drawings were composed of geometrical objects — circles, rectangles, lines, and Bézier curves. A vector drawing can be scaled to any resolution without resulting in a rough look. These images are usually created by software programs like Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, or Affinity Designer.

Thus to “increase” the resolution of a drawing, the best bet would be to get the original vector-format file. Alternatively get the original application to export the image into an application-neutral vector format file like SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), PDF (Portable Document Format) or PS (PostScript). From there the image can be rendered as just about any resolution without yielding that “rough look” (also known as pixelation).

It’s great when you can have images at any resolution. These would look great on retina displays, as a desktop wallpaper, or even printed into real-life wallpaper in your room.

However if you can’t get your hands on the original vector image, you can use BiggerPicture to increase the resolution of a picture.

Follow these steps to enhance the resolution of line-art drawings using BiggerPicture.

BiggerPicture image enhancement - Wikimedia Sisters

  1. Open the source image in BiggerPicture.
  2. Specify the Target Size either using through
    1. Multiples – round-number multiples of the width and height.
    2. Pixels – enter exact pixel width or height.
    3. Printable  – enter real-world image width or height (in inches or centimeters) as well as the target print resolution.
  3. Choose the Style option as Artwork (since this is a line-drawing).
  4. Choose Noise Reduction as None if the original is not a JPG image (which is more likely for line-drawing).

The following illustration shows the difference between enhancing images using BiggerPicture and a regular application. The image on the left was up-sampled using Preview whereas the one on the right was enhanced using BiggerPicture.

Preview vs BiggerPicture Image Enhancement

What are you waiting for? Make images at any resolution, get BiggerPicture now.


Subscribe

Get articles like this sent to your inbox as soon as they are published.

* indicates required

Unsubscribe any time and we won't share your details with third parties.

Tags: , , , , ,