picture conversion

[ecookman]

does anyone know of a program that can increase the resolution of a picture without it being distorted??

[jernst]

It depends alot on the type of picture you are trying to increase the resolution of. The only type that will really scale properly are designed for this from the start (usually vector graphics or something similar - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_graphics). That being said I think your best tools are the standard photo/image editing tools - photoshop, gimp etc. However I'm no expert at this type of thing so someone else may have a better answer for you

[ecookman]

woah...that is cool, but what i should have said is increase the PPI (pixles per inch)
so getting something like 640X480 to 1280X1024 as a jpg or bmp

[Dan]

ecookman @ 25th March 2009, 10:21 am wrote:

woah...that is cool, but what i should have said is increase the PPI (pixles per inch)
so getting something like 640X480 to 1280X1024 as a jpg or bmp

Thats only posible on CSI and in the movies :p


If you go from 640X480 to 1280X1024 in a bitmap type image or even worse a comresed bitmap type (jpg) you need to fill in all thoses pixels that are missing to make it bigger. Noramly this is done by making the pixels bigger (well the pixels stay the same size just each one from the 640x480 version is now repsernted by muptial in the larger version) so it looks distored. There are some other types of algortims for doing this that try to make it look more natural but they all have to make up the data based on the smaller version so there is some level of distrotion.

Photoshop is proably the best bet but no one can make a bitmap bigger with out any distrotion at all unless they have other sources of data to use to fill in the spaces.


As jernst mentioned this is not true for vector graphics, but thats not what you have.

[ecookman]

hun....dam i have some really cool pics that are small...dam


edit:



is is possible to change the file format of a jpg to a vector graphic

[BigBear]

They have programs that can build the mising pixels, it checks whats on each side and makes the missings pixels fit the rest of the picture although

I agree it is almost impossible to read a license plate from a picture taken of the whole street.

[ecookman]

"They have programs that can build the mising pixels, it checks whats on each side and makes the missings pixels fit the rest of the picture "

ooh, ill try that...do you know of where i can get one of those

[DemonWasp]

Answers:

1. You can probably change a jpg to a vector graphic, but that won't magically make it scale better. If it did, the programs would probably already do that for you.

2. There are programs that will fill in missing pixels based on patterns in the image. These are using some sort of algorithm to guess at the pixels, based on patterns detected in the image. Though powerful, they can't generate any information that isn't there in the original picture - they just extend an existing pattern.

3. Part of the issue may be in going from 640x480 (4:3) to 1280x1024 (5:4).

[ecookman]

the resolutions were an example...thnx anyway...do you know where i can get the program in no. 2

[Euphoracle]

No, It will always look distorted unless it is a vector graphic. A program that will distort less would be something like Photoshop or Imagemagick using a bicubic algorithm.

[andrew.]

What I think you want is content-aware scaling or resizing. I used to use Liquid Resize, but that's not free anymore. You could try this program, but it looks like it doesn't have a GUI and I've never actually tried it. If you have Photoshop CS4 or even the trial, you can content aware resize from the edit menu.