Convert Low-Res Graphic to High-Res in Photoshop

this video is gonna be a little interesting today we're gonna take a low-quality graphic and convert that to a high quality graphic in a super easy fun way in Photoshop we definitely will get the sharp edges and the details but there's a warning to it this technique only works with graphics which have not more than two colors so if you have a graphic with one color this will work two colors definitely but more than two it won't for more than two colors there's another method that I've linked up at the end of the tutorial that uses Adobe Illustrator the second warning is that when we begin to recover the details when we try to do that whether it's an image or a graphic we will never be able to recover the details to 100% why is that so because once the detail is lost once the image is blurred or the graphic loses its quality recovering the details would be like inventing the details because it's lost right so how do we do it we actually hide it or fake it so today we gotta fake it so without any further ado let's get started [Music] so he'll be inferred shopping this is actually the high-resolution graphics so if we zoom in by holding the spacebar and the ctrl or command drag the mouse to the right to make it bigger actually zooming in it's all sharp everything is spot-on it looks great we will try to achieve the same with the lower quality of the same image so this is just for reference okay so let's press ctrl or command 0 to fit the canvas to the screen so that's another tip all right let's move to example number 1 where we have it in just one color now this is for those examples where we just have one color and a transparent background so what to do when you have a transparent background just add a white background here's how to do it click on the adjustment layer icon and solid color and choose one AIDS and hit OK and put it behind the transparent layer as simple as that or what you can do let's delete this just make sure the layers selected then go to layer new background from layer it automatically adds a white background to it does making it a background layer however let me warn you on something if you plan to do this make sure the background color is white if it's black the story's gotta be different so let's go back ctrl alt Z command option Z and if the background color is black have a look if I do the same layer new background from layer it goes black so make sure it is white or if your graphic is white make sure it's black just do the opposite when you have white and black and you get the idea okay so if it's not black and white we'll discuss what to do in second example but for this example let's discuss black and white so make sure your background color is white now let's zoom in and have a look at the edges so if we zoom in let's have a look the edges are pretty jagged and it would be foolish on my part trying to recover the edges in this document without making any changes so even if I create a new layer and try to repaint the edges with black color so let's make the brush a little smaller like that and if we try to paint it this is not gonna work why because this document is small have a look at this this document is just 250 by 240 pixels that's very very small so if you cannot see the dimensions right over here click on this small arrow and choose document dimensions that way you will be able to see them let's zoom out a little bit and first of all increase the document dimensions so let's delete this levy don't need that anymore go to image image size so let's increase it to some high quality let's choose mm width and make sure this is checked what this does is that it maintains the aspect ratio so make sure this clip is clicked on not clicked off clicked on okay and then change it to mm or whatever value you choose make sure it's a high number 4,000 high-quality hits okay it's pretty fine but still the edges have become smooth it's not straight enough it doesn't look good enough so here's what I would suggest you to do blur it out simply blur it up now you can do this in the same layer but what I'm gonna do I'm gonna create one new layer so that you can see that before and after it's not necessary at all press ctrl or command J to make a copy of it okay then go to filter blur and Gaussian blur now blow it to the point where the edges becomes smooth and seamless so let's decrease the value of the radius all the way to 0.1 and then gradually start increasing it and have a look it's pretty jagged so let's click on this to have a look at the preview and let's increase it gradually yep that's looking pretty good not awesome I guess I would stay with 4.9 let's go 5.5 let's see how that number does yeah that's pretty smooth 5.4 let's go 5.4 it's okay now what we gotta do we gonna add some contrast to it you might ask why well let's zoom and let me show it to you why so have a look at the edge the edge the kind of the pixels which are closer to the background they are light gray the pixels which are closer to the stroke they are dark grey what if we make the light gray pixels completely white and the dark gray pixels completely black wouldn't that become sharp which means that we are making the bright areas which are moderately bright brighter and we are making the dark areas darker so as you can see if we just point out let's create a new layer let me just explain that to you let's choose something Green and okay so these pixels right over here they are light like they're very light and they're closer to white so if we make it completely bright they will show an edge just like this right so these areas will go completely white now these are closer to blacks so this will go completely black and then the edge will be more defined so let's delete this layer just for demo all right so let's create a curves adjustment and now there are tons of ways of increasing contrast in Photoshop you can use levels if you want curves if you want whichever is your favorite so I'm going to add in the use curves so click on the adjustment layer icon and choose curves now what we gonna do we gonna take the slider from the right to the left it makes the brights brighter see the edge that I was talking about now once you're satisfied with that edge bring the left slider to the right just like that and there you go there you go let's zoom out and have a look at this have a look at it I think it's very thick so you need to adjust it accordingly so you need to push it to the right or push it to the left if you think it's too thick to thin that's totally your choice okay so I'm going to go ahead and stop with this one and let's have a look at the before and after so here we have the after here we have the before completely jagged this is completely sharp and yes we have lost detail over here so this is the before we have lost a little detail over here you have also lost some details here but then again once you get it it's very smooth it's very sharp and as I had already warned you before we will never be able to recover the details to a hundred percent we can fake it we can hide it all right now this was very low quality so if you look at the original image it is two eight seven four by two seven five two pixels it's very high resolution and we made it to 14 to 250 right to 15 to 240 whatever that was very low quality and we got that back so this is the original one and this is what we recovered from a ten times lower resolution still usable right but this is an extreme example what if it was not that much damage you would have recovered most of it so let's make it smaller by pressing ctrl or command T making sure that the back there is unlocked and then make it smaller and if you make it smaller okay and make it big again you've eventually what lose quality hit entrant see you have lost a little quality not that much but we have jagged edges in this case it's gonna be very easy so if you go to filter blur Gaussian blur now not that much just stop at the point where everything looks smoother that's the word okay yeah five point two that's pretty okay it's okay and then simply add a contrast adjustment layer click on the adjustment layer and choose curves not contrast my bad curves and we will increase the contrast so do the same thing as you can see this does a much better job why because that was not very damaged now let's move to example number two where people talk about what to do when you have a colored image and not black and white so this is colored image suppose you have something like this now this is extremely low resolution assuming this is completely low resolution so how do we recover that first of all let's convert this into black and white how do we do that press control-shift you command shift you if you are using a Mac and that desaturates the image control shift you we can recolor it later and just for safety let's go back let's do this on a new layer ctrl or command J and then do it ctrl shift you command shift you okay now simply do the same thing blow it and increase the contrast do not worry about the white background or the black graphic do not worry about that because eventually it's gonna get white and black right because we will increase the contrast anyway so let's blur it let's zoom it and then blur it filter blur and Gaussian blur but before we blur it are we doing a mistake what mistake are we doing we cannot we would be fool if we try to increase the quality in this document because this document is what 250 800 240 pixels very small first we need to increase the dimensions of the document go to image and then image size now in this case too let's put two thousand and before you hit OK it's very essential that you look at the preview so if you look at the preview it adds a fake sharpness around the edge and that looks pretty ugly so let's try other methods bicubic sharper no that's not working let's choose bilinear if he choose bilinear it keeps it intact okay it's okay for the most part that's fine let's zoom in' or press ctrl or command zero to fit the canvas to the screen that's pretty good now let's blow it out how do we blur it out go to filter blur Gaussian blur let's look at a preview from this section and just simply increase the radius 5.8 or let's take a sample from this area now this is completely destroyed image we won't be able to get all the details here but we will try to get the most that we can alright it's okay and then let's try to increase the contrast so click on that just let say icon and choose curves do the same thing from the right that's really good from the lift now that's the most that we can recover from this it's it's bad I do understand that it's pretty bad but that's the most is this was a very low quality image so we will try that's the most that we can do unfortunately alright so you see where this fails this is failing to do now if you have a higher resolution image that would be fine and how do we recolor it that's actually very simple create a new merged layer or a stamp visible layer by holding ctrl alt shift e command option shift e if you're using a Mac that makes a merged layer of everything that you see in the canvas right now so simply go to select and then color range and select this black color that's fine or you can also choose shadows and make a selection of this so you can choose the range and the fuzziness is actually the softness and hits okay now it makes a selection of the black area all you need to do now is click while the selection is still on click on the adjustment layer icon and choose solid color and choose whatever color there was and hit OK now you don't need this anymore delete this you don't even need all of this so you can delete all this and create one more solid color adjustment layer with the background color which was yellow in that case so you can also sample that if you want to you can turn that off you can turn this back on double click on it and you can sample the right color whatever it was it's okay double click on it sample the yellow color it's okay and then turn this back on and delete all of these layers and you get the idea so that's how we transform a Lauren's graphic to a high res graphic in Photoshop and that is fake I gotta admit that now there happens to be an amazing program that goes by the name of adobe illustrator which does a much better job at this even if you have more than two colors it gives you the option to determine the number of colors are there corners in the image all those bunch of sliders which really help you convert those raster images into vector now vector is a kind of animation which is not based upon pixels it's based on mathematical formulas which means that if you have a vector graphic no matter how big you make it or how small you make it and you make it big again it never gets pixelated it never loses quality so I have a video on converting raster images to vector check out that video if you have an image with more than two colors or you want to do a much better job and you want to learn Adobe Illustrator just as a recap what we just did first of all make sure it's black and white number one number two make sure that the background and the graphic is on one layer okay then before you try to increase the quality it's always essential to increase the document size the document dimension why is that essential it could be foolish because the decrease document size only has that many pixels limited so we need to increase it and then simply add a curves adjustment layer or a levels adjustment layer meet the brights brighter and the dark starter and you're pretty much good to go and if you have to recolor it you can make a selection of the black area or the white area and then create solid color adjustment layers or even fill it so that's pretty much it for this video I hope this video helped you if it did make sure to give us a like and also don't forget to subscribe and not just fine ring the bell so that you my friend don't miss a thing I'll see you guys my next one till then stay tuned and make sure that you keep creating [Music] you

Channel: PiXimperfect

Views: 2,006,570

Keywords: low to high quality, low resolution to high resolution, graphic, vector, illustrator, increase photo size, depixelate, enlarge image, recover details, adobe photoshop, piximperfect, unmesh dinda

Id: eZXT2mMr-IU

Length: 14min 34sec (874 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 20 2018