I have it in mind to get some custom photo mural wallpaper printed up. The trouble is, I only have a mobile phone photo which, while decent enough at its taken resolution, will become a bit “paint by numbers” once it’s blown up to 2m x 2.4m at a printable resolution. For reference, I’m looking at approximately 4x resize.
So I’ve been sampling a few free AI image enlargers and so far, nothing has done anything better than Paint Shop Pro 9 “Smart Resize” (circa 2004, so 20-year-old software).
Reading around, Topaz Gigapixel get some love, but it’s $100.
Does anyone have any recommendations in this department? Windows or online, unless you fancy doing me a favour with your Mac.
Only if you knew( I knew rather ) what I was doing,
I did have a mess around with it & is really good more aimed for those who want to resize for prints etc - that said when I did use it, it was good for images with quality loss as it put the life back in them so to Spk ……
I have Photoshop on my Mac and could help out. Never used AI on photos but there are some regular (non-evil?) techniques that can help with enlarging, such as using bicubic smoothing in the settings. One method that we used to use in the print industry was to enlarge twice as much as needed, use a noise reducing filter, such as ‘Dust & Scratches’ and then scale back down to the final size, followed by the Unsharp Mask filter.
The quality of the end result will depend on the photo: hard large lines can become blurred, small noisy detail (shingle) can become lost. That said, 4x enlargement should be ok.
I did install Gigapixel (what a beast) and I quite like the “Low Res” model results. It looses all the jpeg artefacts and I think would work quite well as an “art” piece:
For what it’s worth, “Recover” and “Redefine”, while taking considerably longer to preview and making my PC sweat a little, didn’t really offer much visual improvement.
And for those who didn’t ask, it’s Loen in Norway, taken from Hoven, at the top of the Skylift.
Thanks. That’s a little “artefacty”. By which I mean there are halos around the darker areas and sketchy lines within some of the lighter areas. I prefer the admittedly less realistic but smoother look of the default Low res rendering I tried.
@Jinxter, I’d consider it a personal kindness if you could do me a full 4x rendering in the default “Low res” mode as shown above. If you Direct Message me some details, I’d happily fund a pint or a coffee as a token of my appreciation.
Not a problem, I’ll do it later this afternoon when I have a minute. I don’t seem to be able to DM you, not sure if it’s me missing something or that I’m not a paid member but if you can dm me an email address I’ll send it across by email or wetransfer depending on size, I’m not sure if there is a limit on upload size on the site?
HAHAHA PMSL ! 
By which I mean there are halos around the darker areas and sketchy lines within some of the lighter areas. I prefer the admittedly less realistic but smoother look of the default Low res rendering I tried.