Is it possible to upsample/interpolate a picture's quality?

[Deja Q]

E.g. take a 6MP image and make it a 12MP image, retaining the same detail so nothing or little quality is lost during the enlargement?

Some say it can be done. Others say nay.

I saw an awesome pic at the store today. 11x17", the pic was taken with a 3MP camera. I was floored as, apart from a little unsharp mask enhancement, it by and large looked GREAT. (peripheral detail was a bit jaggy, but nothing I'd whine about - that's for sure!!)

[asthmaticeog]

1. It can be done.

Depends on what the output media's going to be, how large and sharp your image is to begin with, and how fussy you are about the results, but yeah, a sufficiently large image can be enlarged without any loss anybody'll notice.

On edit: 6 is certainly big enough. I bump images from my Canon EOS 10D to double-size regularly and put the results on a magazine cover.

[Deja Q]

2. I've a 5MP camera right now but want to make 13x~19 prints...

Even at 11x~16", there's obvious pixelization and it annoys me to no end.

I could spend $400 for an okay P&S 6mp Fuji with crap lens or get a $1500 Fuji DSLR, but with film cameras having a higher resolution than digital (~13MP for 100ISO Reala film), I feel more inclined to wait and use what I've got. (Sony Mavica CD500)

[asthmaticeog]

5. I see how that could be tough.

I'm going from 6mp to 9.5x11 with a dot screen of 85dpi (thus a file resolution of 170-200 or so) - you'd definitely need more information to try what you're talking about doing.

[BlueJazz]

3. This picture was enlarged from a fairly small Pic >>>>>

I used "Smartsaver" by Ulead.

[Angry Girl]

4. There's several ways to do it

Check out this page for some great comparisons:

http://www.americaswonderlands.com/digital_photo_interpolation.htm

We recently used IrfanView's interpolation to blow up a 2.3MB photo that was 3"x4" or something to around 17"x20" for a poster. Worked fine!

Irfanview is free, btw.

[RC]

6. Thank you.

www.americaswonderlands.com is a great site. Learned lots.

[SlackJawedYokel]

7. Extensis makes a plug-in

for Photoshop called "pxl SmartScale" that works pretty good.
I use it to "reclaim" heavily compressed jpgs.

Cletus