Expert: Glen Demers - 6/28/2010

Question
I started tinkering with a program called 'paintbrush' about a year ago and managed to come up with quite a few images that I and many others think very successful.  Unfortunately, not knowing what I was doing especially at the beginning, I just started drawing without giving any thought to pixel range.  Most of the images I've produced are only about 700X1000 pixels.  Which means that while they appear fine on screen, any attempts to enlarge or print them produce an unacceptable degree of stepladdering.  MY QUESTION IS THIS:  is there a program out there, perhaps in the Adobe Photoshop family, that can read such images and intelligently fill in the blanks, so to speak, creating images with greater pixillation and thus more  capable of being enlarged, printed, etc.?  If this question is outside your particular area of expertise, I apologize.

Answer
Hi Richard,

In Photoshop or Elements, you can enlarge your image size. For best results choose bicubic interpolation. This will sample the color of neighboring pixels and color the new pixels to transition smoothly. For example, if there is a new pixel between a black and white pixel it will be 50% black or grey. Results are also better if you enlarge in several small steps as opposed to enlarging to full size all at once, but there is not much you can do to really increase resolution and make the high resolution image as crisp as a high res original.

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 inexpensive scanners and high resolution cameras these products are no longer in as much demand as they used to be.

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

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