How to make an image clearer after zooming in?

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Anthony1709

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I was just wondering if anyone knew how to make an image clearer after zooming in. This is because when zooming into an image, the part you zoomed into is all blurred.

Is there any way of making the image that you just zoomed into really clear? As clear as it was before with it zoomed out?

I have tried sharpening it but it makes hardly any difference.

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    If I am on the right track here, I and afraid you can't make it clearer. Pictures that are created to be small, or ones that have low quality or a low number of pixels do not have much clarity. As soon as you zoom in you lose all of the detail, you can only really zoom into high-quality pictures. — wookey
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    Are these photos from a digital camera? Or something you've designed? — Axe
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AX

Axe

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Yeah, with raster images (images made up of pixels), you can't really clean up the quality that much when zooming in. For example here is the Ozzu logo that was a PNG image at 128x128 pixels, and if you zoom in on it you can see that it simply blows up the pixels. There is nothing you can really do to increase the resolution of the image because it's simply a grid with pixels lacking information on what to do to fill in as you zoom in further. So what happens is the image will start to look blocky instead, notice the edges in this image

Small image blown up will look blocky and pixelated:

You need to use vector images (images made up of location points) to be able to really zoom in without losing quality. With vector images since everything is mathematical, you could in theory zoom in forever with perfect quality. Here is an example of how a vector would look as it scales up:

Scaling up a vector results in perfect quality image

Note: this image is actually just a screenshot of a vector scaled up, but you should get the idea.

It's just really not possible with raster images. You can zoom in and clean up some with sharpening or other tweaks, but that is about all you can do.

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BH

b_heyer

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I agree you can't zoom in without losing quality, but no one really explained why so let me attempt.

Basically with Adobe Photoshop, or any other image editing program when you send the command to double the dimensions of the image, it takes every pixel and doubles it.

So basically you could have a red-green, green-red square:

RG
GR

And end up with a much larger square but the same pattern:

RRGG
RRGG
GGRR
GGRR

I am sure most programs will actually take the mean color between the two bordering ones to make up the new pixel.

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    Yeah, photoshop does a pretty good of anti-aliasing and "filling in the gaps" when you enlarge an image to make it appear more of a smooth transition between the colours, rather than just large blocks (at least, it does in 24Bit), but you won't retain the clarity of the smaller image. — Axe
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    Yep, photos are made up of square pixels and there is nothing you can do apart from getting a bigger picture. Obviously unlike photographs, if a picture is made up of vectors then you can zoom in all you like because they are instead made up of mathematical points. — Johan007
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Brian Wozeniak

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Axe's answer is the best way. If you use vector images you will never lose any quality zooming in or resizing the image to be larger.

However, with that said there isn't really any answer here on how to deal with raster images and if you want to improve the quality of those images after zooming in. There are a few things you can do that might help to make an image clearer after zooming in:

  1. Use image editing software: You can use software such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP to adjust the sharpness or clarity of the image.
  2. Use a filter: Some image editing software, such as Photoshop, have filters that can help improve the clarity of an image.
  3. Use the unsharp mask function: This function is available in many image editing software and can help make an image appear clearer by increasing the contrast of the edges in the image.
  4. Try resizing the image: If the image is pixelated after zooming in, you may be able to improve the clarity by resizing the image to a larger size. This will give the image more pixels, which can help make it appear clearer.
  5. Use a higher-quality image: If you are working with a low-quality image, it may not be possible to make it appear completely clear after zooming in. In this case, try finding a higher-quality version of the image to use. For example, maybe find the original source image that was used and then zoom in on that version.
  6. Use AI software to upscale by filling in the missing pixel information as needed for a higher-resolution raster image. I would consider this a last resort measure since AI would be doing its best to interpret and guess where to create additional pixels. If there is a way to use an original image that would be best, but AI can do a great job if you have no other way to proceed.

On that last item regarding utilizing AI, Adobe Photoshop has been making quite a bit of updates to integrate AI into their software. For example, under the Filter Menu, you will find a section called Neural Filters which is where all of the AI-based filters are being placed. One of the filters in this section is called Super Zoom which lets you zoom in on an image and enhance its image details. As time goes on these will likely improve, but again could be useful. Here is what that AI Filter looks like:

Adobe Photoshop's Super Zoom AI Filter

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