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Graphic assistance
darkmayo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, I have a metric fuckton of designs and images I have created over the years in MS Paint. These images are about 300pixels by 300pixels (or so ) and I need to get them to at least 1000 pixels by 1000 pixels.
I am running into issues with enlarging them with various apps (havent tried photoshop yet)
Of course the image gets larger but the picture just doesnt look the same (blurring artifacts etc)
Can anyone recommend an app that can do this with minimal or no loss of detail. These are .bmp files and likely will be converting to .png or something similar.
I just dont want to have to go over these and clean them up after I resized them.
I am running into issues with enlarging them with various apps (havent tried photoshop yet)
Of course the image gets larger but the picture just doesnt look the same (blurring artifacts etc)
Can anyone recommend an app that can do this with minimal or no loss of detail. These are .bmp files and likely will be converting to .png or something similar.
I just dont want to have to go over these and clean them up after I resized them.
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Enlarging a native 300x300 image to 1000x1000 is going to make it look terrible, and there's nothing you can do to fix that. If they are purely line drawings, you can attempt to vectorize them with Illustrator, even that produces problems if you still want them to be accurate. This is why you either always work with a large file to begin with when working with bitmap or raster graphics, or you do designs like this as a vector with Illustrator or other programs (InkScape is a free one).
Can you post a few images so we can see what you need to enlarge?
basically, you don't have enough info, and while the computer can guess (interpolate) the missing info, its still just that: a guess. some programs may do this better than others, but blowing something up from 300x300 to 1000x1000 or larger is just not going to be good.
you can try doing it in smaller steps (300x300 to 400x400, then to 600x600, then 750x750, etc), as there won't be as big a jump (only filling in a little bit of guesswork each time)
you can try geniune fractals
http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=7
This is as close to magic as you can get. but since the original source is so small, i'm not sure how far you can take it.
That won't work for 300x300 pixel files, because the native size on those is 1 inch square. Either the printout will be tiny and to size, or larger and shitty - and then it's the same problem all over again.
Genuine Fractals probably won't be much better than vanilla Photoshop for these, because it's really made for photographs. It does some wonky stuff when trying to preserve edges on low-res artwork.
Nearest Neighbor interpolation in Photoshop will at least give you an upsize without distortion or blurring, but it's still not going to be pretty. But a sample of the artwork would help.
Small nitpick, but to the best of my knowledge, both PNG and GIF are lossless. GIF has a limit color depth (or bit depth, or whatever), which is why things look shitty with it, but PNG is the bees knees, daddy-o.
Unless I'm missing something obvious. Does BMP do CMYK or something?
To OP: Yup, you're pretty much out of luck. I used to run into similar problems, which is why I never bother with anything less than 300 dpi these days. If space isn't an object (it usually is), then 600 is better. Honestly though, if you're doing logos and designs and shit, you should probably go vector. You never know what crazy sizes people are going to want to print your designs at, and I know in Illustrator (and maybe InkScape, but I have no idea), you're working in CMYK by default, which is a plus unless you're just working on web stuff.
BMP can be lossless in a container (like a TIF), but that's for a 1-bit file, like black linework. 24 color BMP like Paint produces are also, I believe, uncompressed (hence the huge file sizes). GIF is only lossless if you save in the palate you designed the artwork in. If you're working RGB and save to GIF, you lose colors - only a VGA palate will be an even map without selective color mapping.
PNG is pretty sweet, especially since it can do true transparency, not just alpha-stencil.
Yeah, you can make that work. There are other tricks too. My favorite for black linework is to enlarge to 1200dpi, apply some blur, and dump it into 1-bit using 50% threshold. For smooth line drawings, it works very well. Handwriting too. But once color is involved, forget about it.
Just use Image > Image Size, make sure Constrain Proportions and Resample Image are both ticked and that Resample Image is set to 'Nearest Neighbour' (That's the crucial bit). Then pop in your new Pixel dimension and hit ok.
Click here to see the results of this process on your avatar
This might be different for the Windows 7/Vista Paint.
edit: although yeah, preservation of detail is going to be hit and miss depending on how detailed the images are
edit2: there also seem to be some automated "upload your file" type of converter websites, but who knows if they're actually any good
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It would make sense. The blurring is actually a result of pretty sophisticated sampling algorithms that you wouldn't expect to find in a tool as basic as MSPaint. They are extremely useful when resizing natural media images or photography but counterproductive when resizing sharp edge imagery like MSPaint pixel art.
I know for a fact that XP Paint doesn't do it, though.
Ahhh HA!!! That looks like that will totally do the trick. The artwork is the pixely stuff I do in MS Paint. Thanks Szechuan!