Upsampling Pictures
Jan 23rd, 2008 by Jon
One of my co-workers yesterday, Henry, messaged me regarding the post about not being able to print 11×14’s, and suggested resampling.
Resampling can be crudely explained by taking one pixel and increasing the space it takes (example: 1 pixel will become 4).
A real world example is taking a picture from a cameraphone, which, when printed, will print an area covering an inch or two, at most. By using upsampling, you can take that image and add enough pixels so it becomes large enough to cover a 4×6.
While resampling images does have its perks, it won’t be able to retain your original quality of the pictures - for example, if you take your basic camera phone and try to upsample those, you’ll have a great time explaining why the edge of a table is so blurry. Most, if not all, upsampling software doesn’t have the intelligence to know what parts are sharp and what parts are soft.
There are lots of resources for learning how to upsample. I’ve included a few here for your benefit: