Colorful, detailed visuals are a quick and easy way to boost your content. They immediately catch viewer attention and help them perceive and remember your brand better. However, images have to be of high quality.
Usually, this isn’t a problem—image stocks offer creators trendy, high-resolution content. Nonetheless, sometimes, you find an image that’s near perfect for your web design, if it weren’t for the quality. Luckily, AI-powered upscaling tools can fix that, improving the visual’s quality within a few seconds. Read further to learn more about the importance of image resolution and popular online enlargement tools.
Why should you change the resolution of your photos?
Increasing the resolution of photos online can help you in different situations. For instance, you might want to upscale a low-quality image because it would fit your content better than the high-quality alternatives. Picture enhancement is also essential for printing and branding. In the first case, the higher the quality, the better the print. In the second case, changing photo resolution will allow you to use that visual in different formats: smaller ones for business cards and bigger ones for brochures or billboard banners.
Image resolution is the level of detail in a visual. The higher this level, the better your picture looks when enlarged. All raster images (photographs and some illustrations) consist of pixels—colored squares positioned in a certain way to form a visual. Resolution is the total number of these pixels and the picture’s parameters like width and height. It is measured in pixels per inch (PPI).
What is a low-resolution photo?
A low-resolution photo has around 72 PPI. Such visuals might look great in their original size, but lose quality when manually enlarged. Simply changing the size of your image doesn’t increase the PPI, it just makes the pixels bigger. That’s why a picture can look pixelated. This means you can distinguish pixels in it.
Low-resolution images are great for web and interface designs. Because they consist of fewer pixels, they are generally lightweight—approximately 500 KB. This means that the website featuring such pictures will load quickly. Buttons made with low-resolution visuals also look good and perform well. The same goes for small social media ads.
However, using low-resolution images in blog posts or social media, in general, can affect the way people receive your content. Poor-quality visuals fail to increase engagement, drive away the audience, and generally don’t perform well on big screens or websites with responsive designs.
What is a high-resolution photo?
A high-resolution photo has at least 300 PPI. The average file size of an image is around 3.5 MB, and its height and width could reach around 3,000 or 4,000 pixels each. One of the quickest ways to identify if your picture is hi-res is to zoom in. If it doesn’t become pixelated, it probably has a high resolution. You can also check the PPI of the downloaded file by right-clicking on it and viewing its properties.
High-resolution photos are suitable for large formats, such as brochures, product catalogs, and outdoor banners. They also fit well in website design, e.g., as a background. Due to high scalability, these images perform well on big screens.
How can you get the highest photo resolution if a visual isn’t hi-res by default? You can edit it using special online tools. While manual image enlargement makes the pixels bigger, AI-powered online tools increase the number of pixels in the file. An in-built artificial intelligence chooses a pixel and predicts how the new ones surrounding it will look. When you improve your photo resolution using this method, the result looks and performs much better than when you manually enlarge the image.
Top 3 upscalers to make high-resolution photos
Tools that edit photos and increase their resolution online are a quick and easy solution for beginner and professional creators. They are simple to master and deliver outstanding results in seconds. However, if you are new to web-based upscalers, there are certain things to consider when choosing the best one:
- Pricing. Some tools are free, and some require you to purchase credits or a subscription to be able to process or download HD images.
- Extra editing options. Most of the tools come with basic editors that allow you to select the level of enhancement (2x, 4x, or 8x). However, some can provide extended editing options, like background blurring, color correcting, sharpening, and even choosing an output format.
- Registration. Some upscalers require you to create a free account to download results, and some allow you to process and save files without registration.
How to boost your photo resolution with the help of online tools:
- Pick a preferred upscaler and register if necessary.
- Upload your image according to the tool’s requirements: some accept only specific picture formats and file sizes.
- Preview the result and edit it if needed.
- Download the upscaled, high-quality version to your device.
- Depositphotos Image Upscaler
Depositphotos Image Upscaler is a free beginner-friendly tool available at depositphotos.com. It works with JPG and JPEG images, and a file size doesn’t exceed 15 MB. This AI-powered tool not only enlarges pictures, but also automatically edits them by eliminating noise, reducing blur, adding sharpness, and brightening colors. To download the results, you have to create a free account. However, you can try uploading an image and register only if you like the final picture and want to save it. Depositphotos Image Upscaler stores your processed files for three hours before deleting them automatically.
- Upscale.Media
Upscale.Media is both an online tool and an app available for iOS and Android. It accepts JPG, JPEG, PNG, and WEBP images with a file resolution no more than 1500x1500px. It offers two enlargement options: normal upscaling to 2X with no editor available and AI upscaling with an editor. The latter option allows you to upscale an image to 2X or 4X and enhance its quality. The tool doesn’t require registration.
- UpscalePics
UpscalePics allows you to upload JPG, JPEG, PNG, or WEBP images with a maximum resolution of 4500x4500px. It has an extended editor in which you can choose a preferred photo resolution (0X–8X), manually set width and height dimensions, select the final file format, set the compression level, and remove JPEG artifacts. The tool allows you to process the first five images for free and without registration. However, they come with a watermark. To delete the watermark and process more pictures, you must register and purchase a subscription.
To sum up
High-resolution visuals are essential for your content and website performance. If a visual you like doesn’t meet the quality requirements, it’s possible to change that quickly and easily. Pick a suitable online image enhancer that meets your needs, upload a picture, and save the HD result.
