Enlarging a small jpg

I've got a few images that were reduced to a fairly small size and I'd like to see if I could make them a bit larger. Any of you PS gurus have any tips/methods to enlarge them to a decent size? I've tried with Genuine Fractals at work, but even with some minor touch-ups the images were just so-so. Probably more so due to my inexperience with the plugin, but I digress. Any advice? Thanks for your time!

you really can't take a small low res image and enlarge it and make it look good. You just can't. I've been trying since 1997. It's the pixels that screw you up.

Much agreed with ATNO. It's just the nature of raster images. If you're saying, "Can I take a 640 x 480 and make it 800 x 600?", I'd say, "Yeah, sure." But there are distinct limits and you'll never get back to a pure image, never.

Sorry for my less than optimistic outlook, but I've just not ever seen this done well. It's always second rate, marginal at best.

Yep. vector images on the other hand are another story. They will work at any res

I think about how long it takes for CGI wizards like Pixar to generate what they do today, which even though is close is still distinguishable from the real thing, and can't help but wonder if the type of photo-fractal AI required to enlarge images with any sort of quality will even happen in our lifetime.

Yeah if Genuine Fractals had problems with the images your probably out of luck since its much better than PS on its own. I've found that final upres quality depends heavily on the file type. Something like a psd or tiff that's lossless compression will upres much better than a jpeg because the image data hasn't been removed.

Thanks to all for the input. I did get a little better with genuine fractals last night and managed to take a 350x234 to a printable 5x7, but it wasn't fun. I think I was probably pushing the limits of my capabilities with the app, too.

Back to the drawing board with me.