How can i enlarge a photo taken with a camera that only has about 3 or 4 megapixels?

Question

I've taken this really great shot that I'd like to enlarge. It was taken with an older digital camera that only has 3 or 4 megapixels to it....I'm pretty sure judging by the clarity that I could get an 8X10 out of it but not any bigger. Is there a way of enlarging it another way? Like scanning and enlarging it or something of that nature? Or taking an original 4X6 or whatever to a professional to get them to enlarge it?

Any help would be great :)

Answer 1

you don't want to take it any lower than about a resolution of 280.  300 is preferred.  

You might be able to print it 8x10, add wide gallery style white matt and that will get it in a larger frame to give it more presence and take up more wall space.

Answer 2

I think you can enlarge it to 9 to 12 megapixels without too much loss of details by using this website (it's some new technology that got a lot of attention in Japana, the max it allows is quadruple your megapixel count per picture):

http://www.imagiris.com

Answer 3

You're screwed. I think the best you can go is about 5x7.

For a clear photo you need 90,000 pixels per square inch. So for 8x10,  80 square inches, you would need 7.2 megapixels

It's a downside of the old digital cameras (or manually lower the size on a camera with higher capability to save room on the disk).

Answer 4

What kind of digital camera is it? You can enlarge 3 or 4 MP files fairly big (certainly to 11x17 to 13x19 range) if the original file was pristine. If you already see the file breaking up at 8x10, you might not have good enough quality to start with.

There are many different ways of upsampling a file. I usually just straight-shoot it and use Photoshop's "Bicubic smoother" interpolation, but you can try something call "stair interpolation." In stair interpolation, you resize the image 10% at a time, the theory being that smaller, incremental resamples produce a better quality final image than one large jump. I've included one link below, but you can google it for much more info.

Another popular interpolation method is a commercial program called Genuine Fractals.

After you upsample your image, you need to sharpen it to maximize its quality. A file run through something like Genuine Fractals will not need as much sharpening as just running through Photoshop's Bicubic Smoother algorithm. However, both will require some amount of sharpening for maximum quality.

Also, you can simply decrease the dpi of your printed image and get larger prints that way, at the expense of having less dense printed information. Generally, don't print at lower than 200dpi if you can avoid it. 150 dpi is pretty much the max you can push it. 300 dpi (or oven 240) tends to be the standard.

Answer 5

I was able to get perfectly sharp prints with a 3 MP camera (Panasonic SD-5000).

Hopefully it was well exposed and in focus.  

Answer 6

Unfortunetly you can not enlarge if to a very large size. If it was about 10-12 mps however you would be able to. But with even a 4 megapixel camera enlarging it too large would just make the image fuzzy. Sorry :(

Answer 7

Steve is right, you can still probably enlarge your photos are such a resolution. As long as the image is in nice focus, and so forth, you should be able to print the picture, up to an 8 by 10, i wouldn't go larger though. first of all, just try to print the photo at that size, and see how it comes out, if it does, it'll all be fine. However, if it doesn't, you can save it to flickr, open it up as a big file, and the save it to your memory card, and then print it, i've done this before, and the results were really nice.

the photo should be clear, and in focus.

Answer 8

Actually you can get a fairly large print out of this IF the photo was taken at the camera's highest resolution and least compression. My first digital was a Nikon 990, 3.3 MP.... and that was considered high at the time! With a good upsize program such as Ben Vista Photo Zoom Pro or Genuine Fractals, you can get to about a max of 16 x 20. It will not be perfect, but when viewed at the distance which is typical of a photo of this size, it looks pretty good.

Many pro labs use what is called RIPs software in the very high end laser printers. They can often take a very small MP photo and do wonders with it on enlargements.

Printing a small photo, then trying to scan and enlarge that will look horrible. Always best to work with the orginal file.

I would say you can get a really good 11 x 14 if done correctly.

steve