How can I retain sharpness while enlarging a graphic?

OL
Posted By
O_Lisa
Mar 12, 2008
Views
472
Replies
12
Status
Closed
I am no expert at Photoshop. I greatly appreciate your help. I apologize if this has been addressed somewhere before, but I am having trouble locating anything helpful.

Can you please tell me how I can retain sharpness while enlarging a graphic. I’m doubling the size of a graphic and it’s getting really fuzzy. I tried the sharpen filters, but they just make it more boxy. Please tell me there’s another way.

Thanks again for your help!
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Bob Levine
Mar 12, 2008
Increasing size decreases quality. There’s just so many pixels to go around and you can’t simply create more.

Bob
P
Phosphor
Mar 12, 2008
Can you tell us a bit more? What’s the graphic for? What resolution? What are the pixel dimensions?
I
ID._Awe
Mar 12, 2008
Lisa: You can decrease the softness by stepping, instead of enlarging it once, enlarge it slightly several times. There was an action for this.
JJ
John_Joslin
Mar 12, 2008
I haven’t got evidence but it has been stated that the latest Bicubic Smoother resizing algorithm in CS3 does a better job than stepping.
P
Phosphor
Mar 12, 2008
Or…

It may be that you don’t need to resample at all, depending on what it is you are doing.
OL
O_Lisa
Mar 13, 2008
The graphic is for a flyer. It is currently at 200 pixel res and 3.935" x 2.785" or 787 x 557 pixels. I am enlarging it to 6.25" x 4.5". It’s a single color graphic.

I tried stepping the enlargement and using the bicubic smoother while doing that. It still came out very fuzzy.

Any other suggestions?

I understand that it may not be possible, but I’m just trying not to give up yet.
P
Phosphor
Mar 13, 2008
Just not enough pixels there.

Is it a simple enough graphic that it could be vectorized? <http://vectormagic.com/>

EDIT: Oh crap! They’re charging for it now! Oh well…
I
ID._Awe
Mar 13, 2008
using bicubic smoother would make it ‘fuzzy’ because it would soften the pixels.
JJ
John_Joslin
Mar 13, 2008
What about this then:

<http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/7303/smootherwy9.jpg>
BO
Burton_Ogden
Mar 13, 2008
O Lisa,

One solution would be Genuine Fractals 5
<http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=2>

Another solution would be PhotoZoom Pro 2
< http://www.benvista.com/main/content/content.php?page=ourpro ducts&section=photozoompro_1>

I use both Genuine Fractals and PhotoZoom Pro because each has its strong points. You might want to experiment with their demos to see which you like better.

— Burton —
OL
O_Lisa
Mar 14, 2008
Thank you all. I’m going to try what you’ve suggested and I’ll let you know the outcome.
OL
O_Lisa
Mar 21, 2008
Thanks Burton!
I was able to use the PhotoZoom. It worked perfectly.
I appreciate everyone’s help!

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