How to upscale an image without losing quality

To upscale an image without losing quality, use an AI upscaler instead of a plain resize. A plain resize only spreads the existing pixels over a bigger area, so edges go soft and JPEG blocks get bigger. An AI upscaler such as Real-ESRGAN has learned what sharp edges and real textures look like, and redraws them at the new size. Our free AI image upscaler does this 2× or 4× in your browser, so the picture is never uploaded. Below: when upscaling helps, which settings to pick, and what it can’t do.

Why a normal resize makes pictures blurry

A 500 × 500 picture has 250,000 pixels. Make it 2000 × 2000 and the computer has to fill 4,000,000 pixels from those 250,000. A normal resize (bilinear, bicubic or Lanczos) guesses each new pixel as a weighted average of its neighbours. Averages are smooth, so every hard edge becomes a soft ramp, and any JPEG blocks or noise in the original are enlarged too.

That is fine for small changes. If you only need a photo 10–30% bigger, or an exact pixel size for a form, a good resize such as our image resizer (it uses Lanczos when enlarging) is quick and honest. For anything 2× or more, you’ll see the softness.

What AI upscaling does differently

An AI upscaler is a neural network trained on millions of pairs of small, damaged pictures and their sharp originals. Given a small picture, it predicts what the sharp version probably looked like: crisp edges, clean lines, believable texture, and far less JPEG blocking. The model we use, Real-ESRGAN, was trained on pictures that were blurred, shrunk, noised and compressed on purpose, so it is good at the kind of damage real photos from chats and old phones have.

How to upscale an image, step by step

1. Start from the best copy you have. The original file from your camera or the sender beats a screenshot of it, and a screenshot beats a photo of a screen. Each extra copy adds blur the AI can’t fully undo.
2. Open the AI image upscaler and choose the picture, drop it on the box, or paste a screenshot with Ctrl+V.
3. Pick the picture type. Photo for camera pictures, products, people and scans. Drawing / anime for cartoons, illustrations, logos and flat graphics.
4. Pick 2× or 4×. 4× turns 600 × 400 into 2400 × 1600. Pick the smallest scale that gives the size you need; 2× of a picture usually looks a touch more natural than 4×.
5. Press Upscale, then compare. Slide across the before-and-after view and tick Actual pixels to inspect edges and faces up close.
6. Download as PNG or JPG. PNG keeps every pixel and any transparency. JPG is much smaller and fine for photos you will share or post.

The first run downloads the AI model, about 4 MB, and your browser keeps it for next time. The work happens on your own graphics chip, tile by tile, which is why a phone takes longer than a laptop.

Photo or anime model: which to use

The two models are tuned for different pictures, and the wrong one is the most common reason a result looks odd:

• Photo keeps skin, fabric, grass and wood looking like texture. Use it for anything taken with a camera, including product shots and scanned prints.
• Drawing / anime makes lines very clean and colours flat. It is excellent for cartoons, game art, logos, icons and screenshots of slides, but it smooths texture away, so real photos can come out looking painted.

Not sure? Run both and keep the one that looks right at Actual pixels. It only takes a minute.

What upscaling can’t do

An honest upscaler sharpens what is in the picture; it does not know what was outside it. So:

• Tiny faces stay soft. A face that is 20 pixels wide in the original can’t become a sharp portrait without inventing someone new. Our tool does not invent faces, which also keeps it safe for ID photos.
• Unreadable text stays unreadable. If you can’t read a number plate or a word in the original, the AI can’t either. It may make blurred letters look crisp, but they could be the wrong letters, so never trust an upscaled picture as evidence.
• Big photos don’t need it. A modern 12-megapixel phone photo is already about 4000 × 3000. Upscaling it further mostly makes a bigger file. Our tool caps the result at 16.7 megapixels (4096 × 4096), the largest picture phone browsers can safely hold.

Good uses for an image upscaler

• An old or small photo you want to print bigger.
• A product photo from a supplier that is too small for your shop. Upscale it, then use remove background for a clean white or transparent background.
• A small logo you only have as a low-resolution PNG, for a slide or a banner (use the Drawing / anime model).
• A photo sent through a chat app that came out compressed and blocky.
• Anime or game screenshots for a wallpaper.

Need the result smaller in file size afterwards, for an upload form or email? Run it through compress image, which can aim for an exact size such as under 500 KB.

Frequently asked questions