Expert: Glen Demers - 7/29/2009

Question
Hi

I did recover my formatted photographs by data recovery s/w but many of them you can only view for a second in thumbnail view as they lost their actual size now some of them are in Kb size
my think is that as we can see pics in thumbnails so there should be a way to make them right and large size with good quality pixels
so if you can tell me how to correct them then please tell me and if you don't know then too please tell me about people who handles this kind of problem


thanks


Answer
Hi Vish,

The bad news is that if you can only recover the thumbnails of you pictures, then there is no software to replace them to full quality. There were several applications on the market that helped make extreme enlargements look better, but once the detail is lost on an image, it can't be replaced - you can only smooth out the jaggies.

That said, you can look into software solutions like Extensis Smartscale, Alien Skin Blow-up or Lizardtech Genuine Fractals. There may be others on the market or these may not be available. With the availability of cheap scanners and high resolution cameras these products are no longer in as much demand as they used to be.

An old trick I've used is to create an action in Photoshop that enlarges an image about 5% and assign a function key to this action. You can then keep hitting the key to incrementally enlarge the image. The results are better than enlarging all in one step, but again, there are limits, you cannot add detail.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

For more Photoshop tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/photoshop.htm