Increasing pixel dimension of character art, restoring sharpness and quality

[akonet83]

Hello guys. a newbie here. I tried looking for this Q&A but wasn't able to find it.

I have a low res image that I'd like to be able to convert to print quality dimensions and ppi. I'm looking for guidance on increasing pixel dimension of a cartoon character. Increasing image size lowers the quality and sharpness of the image, but which methods are commonly used and available in this situation to somewhat bring back the sharpness and definition of this image?

For example, I just looked for random sample online, attached image here.

Thank you!

 

[dv8_fx]

Hi there...

Try changing the Interpolation preference setting from the default Bicubic Automatic to Bicubic Smoother when upscaling an image.

It's not a guarantee but its worth a shot on the image you've posted.

You have to restart PS for changes to take effect.

 

[Tom Mann]

By what factor do u want to increase the pixel dimensions? If is more than 2 or 3x (linear), you will be better served by either redrawing it or tracing it in Illustrator.

T

 

[Tom Mann]

Also, read through this thread, particularly, my last few posts, especially the references in post #12:

http://www.photoshopgurus.com/forum/photoshop-newbies/44662-resizing-pixel-picture.html

T

 

[Tom Mann]

To give you an idea of the limits of up-rez'ing, here's your sample image magnified by 5x linear (ie, 25x in area). I used a relatively complicated procedure involving Topaz Clean, Topaz Simplify, and then BenVista PhotoZoom and included both the full sized, up-rez'ed version as well as a 100% 1 to 1 crop from it. Click on the preview of the full image (below) to view and download it at full resolution.

You can see that even with all this effort, at 5x up-rez'ing, lots of artifacts are becoming quite visible. While some of these artifacts are actually in the original that you posted, quite a few are the direct result of the up-rez'ing procedure.

As I said earlier, 2-3x (in linear dimensions) is about all one can hope for using relatively simple, canned methods (eg, Genuine Fractals). In comparison, the present example is about the best one can do if you are experienced, have a reasonable selection of standard photographic software (but not pixel art specific software), and it's worth the effort for you to spend a significant amount of time trying to up-rez the image versus simply re-drawing the low rez image in vector form, say, using Adobe Illustrator or Corel's equivalent.

HTH,

Tom