We know very well that the information lost during a compression process (as in the case of mp3 and jpeg formats) cannot be recovered, and that we cannot invent pixels out of nowhere... but it can be attempted, and with the right tools, the result can be more than satisfactory. With that in mind, if you have an image that is too small and you want to make it larger without generating additional artifacts, you should try the online tool Waifu2x.
How to Improve the Quality of Your Photos
The web has not been merciful when it comes to mocking certain series in which one or more of the main characters zoom in on images obtained from a security camera and achieve a level of detail... well, impossible. The favorite targets have been CSI (in all its variants) and NCIS, probably because they take their enhancements to ridiculous extremes, all to support a script. In real life, when you try to enlarge an image or increase its size, it loses quality. I imagine someone will shout “Vectors!” as an exception, and from a technical point of view they would be right, but in general we are chained to the tyranny of pixels. Now, if we really need to make that image larger and there are no copies with higher resolution, what alternatives do we have?
Before looking for image editors, there is an online option called Waifu2x. The tool has certain limitations, such as the maximum image size to process (five megabytes), the resolution for noise removal (3,000 by 3,000) and the resolution for upscaling (1,500 by 1,500), but if the right conditions are met, its work is excellent. The upscaling parameters are two, 1.6x and 2x, while it offers low, medium, high, or very high noise reduction. If the plan is to double the size of an image, Waifu2x does not recommend using noise reduction, as it could introduce additional jpeg artifacts.
The code of Waifu2x is available on GitHub, and anyone interested can study how it works, or why not, create new modes and apply optimizations. From what we have seen so far, Waifu2x is not as strong when it comes to removing noise and artifacts, but its upscaling surpasses even that of standalone applications with several years on the market. Of course, the goal of Waifu2x is not to replace classic editors, by any means. It is just another resource to improve the quality and size of our photos.
