Photoshop: enlarge photos lossless - is that possible?

Photoshop lets you enlarge photos with relatively little loss. So you can create a beautiful poster from small photo templates.

Prepare the image for enlargement

Zooming out is not a problem, but when you enlarge a photo, the result is often blurry and pixelated. We'll show you step by step how to enlarge photos with relatively little loss in Photoshop in our image gallery.

• Before you enlarge the picture, all disturbances must be removed. Up to Photoshop CS2 you do this with "Filter"> "Noise filter"> "Remove interference". In newer versions, instead navigate to "Filters"> "Noise Filters"> "Reduce Noise".

Enlarge photo - choose the right algorithm

When enlarging a photo in Photoshop, the most important thing is that you choose the right algorithm for it.

1. Go to "Image"> "Image Size" to change the size and resolution.
2. In our picture gallery we changed the height and width of the picture. Alternatively, you can zoom in on the pixel dimensions. It is best to switch from "Pixel" to "Percent". To achieve a good result, you should also increase the resolution if necessary. 300 dpi is usually a good choice. Tip: You can achieve the best result if you enlarge the desired size in several steps, for example in 10% steps.
3. The most important part in the setting is the choice of the calculation algorithm. The default is "Bikubisch". However, "Bikubisch smoother" is much better because it calculates the corresponding intermediate pixels with cross-fading.

Now sharpen the edges

Especially with fonts, the enlargement entails blurred edges, the picture looks very soft. You can correct this with a filter.

• Open Filters> Sharpen Filters> Unsharp Mask. You can try out different values ​​in the mask and check the result in the preview. With a large picture format, higher setting values ​​are recommended.
• We will show you the individual steps again in our picture gallery.

Photoshop is a very extensive image editing program with almost unlimited possibilities for your creativity. Our next tutorial will show you how to create 3D objects and animations in Photoshop.

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To prepare the photo for scaling, the glitches must first be removed.

When scaling, you can change the width and height as you like. However, you should also increase the resolution to get a good result.

Finally, you can get more sharpness with the "Unsharp Mask" filter.

The result is a significantly enlarged image that does not look pixelated or out of focus.