Have you ever tried enlarging an image and then it became blur? I tried many years ago but I never found a way to enlarge it without loosing quality. Some people said that it’s impossible and some even suggested to pay and get them done professionally… Here is an example. I want to enlarge my logo to 200% and here is what it looks like after scaling it to 200%.
As you can see, the enlarged image is horrible. I wouldn’t want to use such low quality and blur image on my website. Fortunately, there’s a simple way that I can enlarge images without loosing their quality.
There are actually two different types of image, a vector image and a bitmap image.
A Vector image isn’t an really image at all as you would define it in the traditional sense. Where a standard image you would think of is made up of dots, or pixels, a vector image is a text file made up of a series coordinates and other numbers which defines sets of lines, shapes and curves called vectors. Each of these vectors can then be given extra information such as color, line thickness, infill etc. Because all the information in vector images is simply stored as a set of mathematical numbers, when you modify or resize that image all you’re actually doing changing the properties of the vectors and not trying to stretch or distort anything.
JPG, PNG and GIF are bitmap images and each pixel has it’s own color information which you can see if you zoom right in using a paint program. When you resize a bitmap image, the pixels themselves don’t get stretched but new blank pixels are inserted to increase the size. The paint program then has to make a series of guesses as to what colors to put in those new blank pixels and fill in the gaps. This is why resizing bitmaps can sometimes look quite bad because the guesswork inevitably is never going to be 100% accurate.
The good news is, you can vectorize bitmaps so they can be scaled or enlarged while maintaining quality.
There is a website called Vector Magic which used to offer a free online auto-tracer service to convert bitmap images to vector images. All you need to do is upload your image and they would vectorize it for you. The results are just about the best I have seen for an online service. The bad news is, the service is no longer free which is a real shame, although if you register you get 2 free tokens which counts as 2 free conversions. So if you only have 1 or 2 images to convert, it’s worth a look.
There is a little bit of a workaround if you simply want to resize a logo or simple small image. The idea is to resize the image using the Vector Magic online service, take a screenshot using the Windows Print Screen function (“Prt Scr” on your keyboard) or a screenshot capturing software, and then paste and edit it inside your favorite paint program. While this isn’t ideal and does depend in part on your desktop resolution, it does give you an increased image size without decreasing image quality and with no pixelization.
Once the Vector Magic conversion is complete and you can see the result, press the “Single (1)” button arrowed to switch to single view allowing for a larger viewable area and more space to zoom in and take a screenshot.
Although there are several commercial tools such as Adobe Illustrator, XaraX or Corel Draw, there aren’t many free programs around to easily convert bitmap images to vector images for you. Inkscape is able to work with and convert images to vectors and does a much better job than most of the online converters. To do a conversion download and install Inkscape or run the portable version and load your bitmap into the program.
Press Shift+Alt+B to open the Trace Bitmap window, and then choose Colors or Grey depending on the colors in your image. Untick Smooth and click OK to convert, making sure the image in the main window is selected or it won’t convert. The results are pretty good although still not quite as good as Vector Magic.
There are a couple of limitations when converting from a bitmap image to a vector image. Vector images work best when there are clearly defined edges in the image and there isn’t too much color. Things like logo’s, basic clipart or even cartoon images are things which come out quite well. Bitmaps like photo’s and images without clear edges or with high amounts of detail and different shades of color don’t work well, if at all.
this is an old thread, and i guess it used to be free, to bad it isnt anymore.
its says its free to try, you get 2 free conversions when you sign up on the site, after that its $7.95 per month billed 3 months at a time. so it isnt exactly free forever, but one could use it for a couple photos at least.
vectormagic.com/pricing
Thank you werry much!
I want to enlarge jpg I downloaded of an old, out of print board game. When I try paint programs the text/pictures are blurred. Is there any FREE way to get sharp enlargments?
THIS IS AWESOME!!!
Nice info man! Thanks ^^b
Thank you so much! I wish I would have known about this long ago. So many headaches could have been avoided, lol. I’m off to enlarge some images now. =D
ha. i’ve never known such a great app.
thanks for sharing, man..
the best advice and i manage to solve my 3 days headache. i rate you 100% good
Actually this technique is not good for highly texturred images
THANK YOU SOOO MUCH! You’re a genius and a lifesaver.
thnx
thank you for the information. this is great tool !!!
News are / will be spread out
Люди напишите адрес сайта где это надо делат!ь
Wow, great tip. This will be very useful – presentations for work, digital pictures…
yeah! reshade works even fine for me! (for Anime fans, It can even enlarge any Anime Image!!!) Wahooo!!!
This thing is just for drawings(WMF style)
Porque vocês simplesmente não importam no Ilustrator? Ele transforma em vetor e depois vocês conseguem consertar a merda que fica. Quanto mais simples a imagem, melhor a conversão É ÓBVIO. Transformar uma imagem complexa é possível no Ilustrator, porém ela vai perdendo as caracteristicas de foto e ganhando cara de ilustração. Que dica inúril!
I have tried the other site you mentioned: reshade.com. It works a lot better for photos than vectormagick.
chingawa you could use that ;)
nice post…but not interested in buying
If you want to convert a more complex picture , try to use Adobe Illustrator. Same step , open a picture , then select life trace. The result could be better.
HI – very useful for small graphic type logos.
For those asking for jpeg resizing software (ie photos) I find this Photoshop plugin to be pretty damn good:
Genuine Fractals Print Pro 5
ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=7
Superb Information. Keep it up…!
great information thanks verymuch.
I wonder why people don’t read it out in there minds, it says “VectorMagic” which makes sense in all the way that it handles vector style images and not complex painted drawing.
Vector means line based drawings, everything except vector is a complex piece of painting.
So what ever resizing you do will be “Vectorized” (converted into lines).
In a final rendered vector image “No matter how much you resize the quality won’t loose as long as it is resized using a proper Vector based algorithm”
Likewise for paintings and any other picture the same rule applies.
It\’s good for anything graphically simple, but if you try something more complex (I tried a painting) it turns it into an abstract cartoon like picture losing all definition. I tried a watercolor of a city in India painted by a great artist in the early 19th century, maui-varnashrama.110mb.com/varnashrama-maui.com/album/slides/mathura.html , what the program did was to turn it into something like what you see on a Ren and Stimpy cartoon
I then tried a photo, it came out better then the painting but still is pretty bad, here is the original wwwimage.showbuzz.cbsnews.com/images/2008/02/11/image3819610.jpg and here is the vectorized version img292.imageshack.us/img292/5420/image3819610vectorizedhx6.png
the vector image is not very accurate is it?
the line inside the \”R\” of ur logo appears shortened
nvm, good software, i was just
you know….
Yep that site rocks i use that but thanks for telling.
Oh only if I had known about this few minutes before.
I wouldn’t have placed a blurred one in my page.
Thanks anyways.good job.
haiii
thanks for this usefull infor..
I wonder – has anyone tried doing this with a more complex image? I’ve noticed that I can usually get a pretty decent resized large image through either filters or other gimp/photoshop tricks when its only a few colors. I’ve found a lot more difficulty with more jpeg type images. Thats something I’d love to find a great utility to work with.
Nice! I was gonna get a software to do this, but this looks better.
Thanks Rymond ,,, very useful website
Great article, but just a small FYI… correct grammar should be “losing” not “loosing” quality. Can’t always expect spell checkers to catch malapropisms. :-)
Thanks
I’ll try
Thanx ray very usefull information. I thought it is impossible.
Very usefull info thx raY
Thanks! :D
This is bookmarked. ;)
Thanks for this useful piece of information!
That´s a very great option! Thanks