AboutDan Loffler Expertise I can help with specific "How To" questions. No Photoshop Elements questions please.
Experience I have been using Photoshop every day in my work as an Art Director and Graphic Artist since 1993 with version 2.5. I am currently employed as a Creative Director in Miami. I have taught computer graphics classes at CompUSA, Computer City. I currently teach a crash course on Photoshop to digital photographers on Digital Photography Corner's Digital Photography Cruises. I have worked as a personal Photoshop tutor for clients as far away as Seoul Korea.
Expert: Dan Loffler Date: 5/8/2008 Subject: too 'pixel-ed'
Question hi
i have an image that i really like but when i enlarge it the pixels make the image very ugly since it's from a game screenshot. is it possible to make the pixels clearer? thanks so much
Answer Hi Star,
The cold hard truth is no. There is nothing you, or anyone else, can do to make a low resolution image into a high resolution image. A pixel is a square box with one color in it. A picture is made up of these pixels. Increasing the image size or resolution just forces the computer to guess what is in between the corners of the boxes. It can look pretty ugly.
So let's say you have a picture of a person and the person's eye is made up of 10 pixels, you will never be able to see the eyelashes on this person.
Here's a few tricks to try.
1. Increase the size in 10% increments and the "cottage cheese" look will not be as bad.
2. Resize the image without resampling by turning off the Resample option in the resize box. This will print bigger but with bigger pixels. I actually prefer to see the pixels on a screenshot.
3. Turn on "Closest Neighbor" under the resmpling menue in the resize box. This will give you a larger file but you will still see the original pixels.
Finally. The type of image has a lot to do with the apparent results of resampling. A picture of a cloud will look great no matter how much resampling. A picture of a dear in the woods will hold up pretty good. But a picture of a car with telephone lines in the background will look bad when resampled. The softer the edges the better it will look. Harder edges wont hold up very good.
