Increasing Image Resolution without losing too much quality

Sometimes, designers need a certain image in a larger format. This becomes a problem when the source file has a smaller resolution than the desired size or if the original image - which is large, is lost.

Sure, you can always resize the image. But not all programs are capable of doing that without losing too much image quality. Some may even make the image look worse.

The amount of information in an image is limited. It is even more limited by its format and how much it was compressed. This becomes a problem when you want it to resize to about 500% of the original resolution.

Try it in adobe photoshop. You'll see what I mean. The image will get a lot of artifacts and pixelation. This sometimes gets worse depending on how compressed the image was.

All hope is not lost! There are programs that specialize in resizing images and maintain most, if not all, of their quality.

One of such programs is Genuine Fractals. It uses fractal algorithm to "guess" the missing information in your image to resize it to a larger image. But it's not free.

If you are looking for a free resizer, you might want to try Reshade. So far, it's the best free resizer I have used. There will still be some “weirdness” if you zoom in but it is better than having jagged pixilated edges.

NOTE: Always save your images in the highest resolution possible to avoid losing image quality. You'll never know when you'll need a larger resolution.