Small & fuzzy photos

[overfifty]

Good morning all. I don't usually have a problem creating patterns from reasonably clear, larger photos. However smaller, pixilated photos leave me frustrated as the end result is laughable. Any suggestions? Thank you, Barry.

[dirtrider73068]

Those are poor resolution pictures, either need to get better smaller pictures or try to increase the resolution.

[overfifty]

Hi Gary. Very often that's not an option. I've seen some really good results on this blog from inferior photos, and was hoping Inkscape, or GIMP offered a solution (I've tried the [scale] function in Gimp).  Either that, or achieve a level of proficiency that's a long way down the road. Cheers, Barry.

[daveo]

Barry
This does not always work and when it does its not that good but
using windows pic resizer try sizing upwards slightly, say from small to medium, it wont give you any better resolution but some times it offers a little more clarity
Dave

[overfifty]

In Paint?

[daveo]

In Paint?

Barry no not in paint
the resizer I use is an add on for windows,  once installed you dont need to use any other programme.
You simply go to were the file is stored, right click on that file, and from the drop down box select "resize"
this will offer you an options box, you can then choose Small, Medium or Large. select one of those options and OK.
and a copy of the resized picture will instantly be there a the side of the original
A utility well worth having. I have included a link to the version for XP if you are using another version then you will find that by using the web site search bar
Dave

http://download.cnet.com/Image-Resizer-Powertoy-for-Windows-XP/3000-18487_4-10905400.html

[EIEIO]

Even a clear picture, if it is small, will have a lot of jaggies in it and make it hard to render into a cuttable pattern. And sometimes I've run into high resolution images that would not convert until I reduced their size. Don't know why, but it's true.

If the case is a small image with jaggies, I use Inkscape to increase the picture size. The bigger image will have the jaggies kind of blurred, but smoother.

For blurry images, I usually use one of the edge detector filters in GIMP. Artistic/Cartoon is a good one, but there are a bunch of them.
For pictures that a too bright I use the Cartoon filter. Note that can add a lot of "freckles" so you may need to increase the value of Options/Suppress Speckles on the Trace Bitmap dialog in Inkscape.

For pictures that are washed out after Artistic/Photocopy, I go back to the original and increase Brightness and Contrast to about 50, and add edge detection.

As a last resort, open the image in Inkscape as Linked while it is still open in GIMP. If the Inkscape Trace Bitmap is not giving enough detail, go back to GIMP and trace some lines on the image with the pencil tool (e.g., outline the nose or around an ear etc.) then Save. The changes will show up in Inkscape and you can retry the Trace Bitmap. But don't overdo it - more detail does not always make a better image.

[tvman44]

Try Inkscape and trace to bitmap then enlarge, Should get much better results.

[overfifty]

Thank you very much one and all. Again, Happy St. Patty's day.