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How to fix pixelated pictures


How To Fix Pixelated Photos & Pictures

Have you tried zooming in your digital photos to try and get a clearer image, only to have a grainy and blurry photograph as a result? This is called pixelation, and this is what happens when you stretch out your photos so much or try to resize it. It is caused by displaying bitmap graphics at a larger resolution than supported, thus causing individual pixels of an image to be visible. At lower resolutions, this might cause some blurring effects, but if you try to blow a small-enough photo up to a larger size, you’re going to end up with a digitized photo. This can be a bit frustrating, especially when you need a larger version of the photograph.

Luckily, that’s not the end of it. In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can fix pixelated photos so that you don’t end up with a distorted or otherwise low-quality picture. We all love to have perfect photos to share with our friends and followers in social media; and for those who are not into that, keeping lovely and great quality photographs in personal photo albums is a delight.

Why Do My Pictures Look Pixelated?

Before we move onto our guide, let’s take a look at an example to get a better idea of what we’re going to be dealing with.

This lowercase letter A is presented at a size of 256×256. Notice how crisp the lines are – your eyes won’t see any pixels, just curves and straight lines. It doesn’t appear to be blurry or jagged in any way.

Now here’s the same image file, resized to be 1024×1024. Take a look at the difference.
Notice how on every curve you can see rectangular blocks? That’s pixelation. It happens when there is too much display area, and not enough data to create smooth curves. When this happens, images become blurry, distorted, and just overall worse in quality.

Pixelation usually occurs when you try to resize a low-quality image or when viewing a very low-quality image. When you upsize an image too much, it becomes blocky in appearance, with stair-like nature of each curve. This destroys the overall effect of the image you are viewing.

Short of creating a new image of the same object in a higher resolution, there is no way to increase the resolution of an image. However, it is possible to use software tools to improve the image quality so that the pixelated image doesn’t look so bad.

There are a couple of different ways to accomplish this task. You can use an online service to process the image, or you can use Photoshop, Paint.net, or other graphics program to do the same job manually.

In this article, I’ll present a short tutorial on how to improve the appearance of a pixelated image regardless of what tools you have available.

Before we get started, an important note: whenever you edit an image, make sure to make a backup copy of the file and work only on the copy. Leave the original image file intact, so that if things go terribly wrong (remember that things often go terribly wrong), you still have the original image as a fallback.

Fix Pixelated Pictures With an Online Tool

Online tools have the advantage of allowing you to do significant work without having to download any software to your computer. This is great if you are on a work or school machine where you may not be allowed to install new programs, or you may be working on a phone or tablet. There are many online tools that can do image editing and manipulation. I know of two good ones for fixing pixelated pictures and will describe them here: Pixenate and Fotor. Both sites offer a range of free tools that you can use to manipulate images without having to download a specific program. They are ideal for occasional image editing, especially if you need to do it on a mobile device, and both do a pretty good job of fixing pixelated pictures. Both apps work in much the same way.

For example, in Fotor:

  1. Upload your image to the site.
  2. Select ‘Effect’ from the left menu and scroll to Pixellate.
  3. Use the scroll bar to scroll left to minimize pixelation.

That should smooth out pixelation nicely. Fotor also offers a Smoothing tool that can do more, but this is a premium tool. You will either end up with a watermarked image or have to pay. If you want to try out the tool, select Beauty from the left menu and Smoothing then use the sliders to minimize the pixels.

In Pixellate:

  1. Upload your image to the site.
  2. Select the ‘Smooth Photo’ icon from the left menu.

The impact this has on the image depends on the initial image quality but should improve it somewhat.

Fix Pixelated Pictures with Photoshop

If you have a little more time and a lot more money, you can do quite a bit to fix a pixelated image in Photoshop. Photoshop is the undisputed king of image editing programs but requires quite a lot of money to buy. However, this software can do so much to your photos that the cost will definitely be worth it. Despite a fairly steep learning curve with many Photoshop functions, it only takes a second to fix pixelated pictures.

  1. Open your image in Photoshop.
  2. Select ‘Filter’ and ‘Blur’.
  3. Select ‘Gaussian Blur’ and use the slider to find an acceptable level. Select ‘OK.’
  4. Select ‘Filter’ and ‘Sharpen.’
  5. Select ‘Unsharp Mask’ and use the slider to find an acceptable level. Select ‘OK’ once done.
  6. Save the image.

Another approach is to add a layer with soft light to minimize the appearance of the pixels.

  1. Right-click the image and select ‘Layer’ and ‘Create New Layer.’
  2. Select ‘Blending Options’ in the top menu and select ‘Soft Light.’
  3. Select ‘Filters’ and ‘Noise.’
  4. Select ‘Despeckle’ and find a level you’re happy with.
  5. Select ‘Image,’ ‘Adjustments,’ and ‘Brightness/Contrast.’
  6. Adjust both to find an acceptable level.

The first process will do a bit to minimize pixelation and that may be enough. If it isn’t, try the second process as this can help a bit too.

Fix Pixelated Pictures with Paint.NET

If you don’t have Photoshop and can’t justify the expense, Paint.NET or GIMP are viable alternatives. I tend to use Paint.NET as I have used it for years. It isn’t anywhere near as powerful as Photoshop but is free, regularly updated and can perform many basic image editing tasks. Teaching you how to use GIMP is beyond the scope of this article, but Paint.NET is pretty straightforward.

  1. Open your image in Paint.NET.
  2. Select ‘Effects,’ ‘Blur,’ and ‘Gaussian Blur.’
  3. Use the slider to reduce the pixel effect.
  4. Select ‘Effects,’ ‘Photo,’ and ‘Sharpen.’
  5. Use the slider to find an acceptable level.
  6. Save the image.

There is no substitute for taking high-quality pictures but if you don’t have that luxury, there are a few ways to reduce pixels in images. The exact levels to which you make adjustments depends on the image itself. Where you see ‘find a level’ just use the sliders to find a position where pixelation is minimal but the overall impression of the image is maintained.

Fixing Pixelated Photos Through Mobile Apps

Most of us take photos through our smart phones, since it is more convenient and easy to do so. The newest models and versions of smart phones are equipped with excellent cameras that are able to take crisp and clear photos. There are odd moments, though, that we encounter the need to fix blurry and pixelated photographs in our phones. Thankfully, there are a number of photo editing apps that you can download from App Store or Google Play to solve this issue. Here, we have compiled a list of some of the most helpful apps to fix pixelated photos:

  • Adobe Photoshop Express: Photo Editor Collage Maker – This app is free to download, and has amazing features, including the ability to make dark and grainy pictures look great.
  • PIXLR – This mobile photo editing app is very user friendly, whether you are a newbie or a professional photographer. It has all the tools required for you to do amazing and creative edits; and it’s free to download!
  • Sharpen Image – This app was specifically developed to sharpen images. It’s pretty basic, with two forms of sliders – one for adjusting pixel size and the other for sharpening effects.
  • Afterlight – Afterlight lets you edit images in a quick and straightforward way. It allows you to fix blurry photos in a breeze with a variety of tools to help you enhance image quality.

Pixelation can be very annoying to deal with. It doesn’t take much for a great picture to be ruined by poor quality. Fortunately, there are tools and techniques you can use to improve the quality of a pixelated photo.

How to Fix Pixelated Image Online: 4 Easy Steps

To depixelate an image online for free, upload it to our website, letsenhance.io, and click ‘Start processing’. It’s that easy! But we also provide in-depth instructions on how to fix pixelated photos with our AI web app and Photoshop below.

What is pixelation and what causes it?

Images consist of tiny squares called pixels. When pixel density is high enough they fuse into a smooth and clear image. In this case, we don’t see individual squares.

But when the picture is stretched out above its optimal resolution, it becomes blocky with stair-like lines. That’s pixelation.

Pixels become visible when you zoom in on an image

It usually occurs when websites blow out pictures uploaded by users to the required width and height.

Note: Some apps smooth out upscaled images, making them blurry instead of jagged. It depends on the upscaling type.

Blurred vs. pixelated image

The best way to prevent pixelation is to get an original clear image with more megapixels. But if you don’t have one, you can sharpen your pixelated photo with our online app.

How to fix a pixelated image without Photoshop

The only way to effectively deal with pixelation is to use AI-based solutions.

Traditional image editors, like Photoshop, only smooth out the edges a little bit, making a picture look blurry. In turn, AI, trained on millions of images, can genuinely restore the details, putting the missing pixels in place.

We trained our network, Smart Enhance, specifically to fix compression noise and pixelation. In this sense, Smart Enhance stands out even among AI image editing software.

How to depixelate an image online for free

Step 1: Sign in to Let’s Enhance

Sign in to your Let’s Enhance account or go to letsenhance.io/signup and create a new one. You can sign up with your Google, Facebook, or email.

Now, with a free account, you can process up to 10 images.

Step 2: Upload your pixelated pictures

Drag & drop photos you want to depixelate anywhere on the page or select them from your computer / phone. Alternatively, import files from Google Drive or URL.

You can see the output resolution and print size at 300 DPI to the right of the image thumbnail.

Tip: You can upload multiple photos and depixelate them all at once.

Step 3: Click ‘Start processing’

Our default mode, Smart Enhance, will fix your pixelated image without any settings. All you have to do is to click the Start processing button.

Additionally, you can fix the lighting and colors of your image by turning on the Light AI toggle.

Tone enhance mode increases contrast and brightness. Color enhance boosts saturation.

Tip: Adjust the intensity of applied filters by dragging the slider.

Step 4: Download your depixelated photos

Wait till the processing ends. Then click on the image thumbnail to save it to your device.

Now, you have a new beautiful depixaleted image that you can share with friends or use for anything you like.

Image depixelated with Let's Enhance

Note: Output quality depends on the degree of pixelation. It’s always better to have an original high-quality image. But if you don’t have one, our tool is your best bet when you want to unpixelate photos.

How to scale up a low res image and avoid pixelation

Sometimes you got a small picture that looks sharp at 100% scale. If you want to enlarge it you can use Let’s Enhance in the default mode. It will double its size without making it look pixelated.

For a 100 x 100 image, the output would be 200 x 200 pixels.

But you can make your image even bigger.

Select Photo upscale type and choose Custom size. Now, you can make your image up to 16 times larger.

Note: Free users can upscale an image up to 64 MP. This is enough to produce a pretty big 8000 x 8000 picture.

How to fix a pixelated image on iPhone

To depixelate a picture on your phone, upload it to our website, letsenhance.io, and tap the Start processing button in the pop-up.


You don’t have to change any settings. The default mode is perfectly capable of removing pixelation.

You can follow more detailed general instructions from this post. They’re true for both desktop and mobile versions of our website.

Make your pixelated product photos clear

Step up your eCommerce game by improving the quality of your product photos. Depixelate and enlarge your images to provide a more detailed view of the things you sell to your buyers.

Use batch processing to sharpen dozens of pics at once on our website.

Or take advantage of our API to set up an advanced image processing workflow tailored to your website. Set the custom AI upscaling, noise reduction, lighting, and color enhancement to automatically adjust user-generated content to your requirements.

Learn more about how you can use Let’s Enhance for your online marketplace.

High-quality photos make a big difference in the online real estate business. According to a study, rental listings with clear images generate extra $2,348 in annual revenue, on average.

Let’s Enhance automatically removes pixelization and blur from your images, making your listings more appealing to customers.

For the best results use our real estate preset that includes Light AI, depixelation, upscaling, and noise reduction.

To enable this preset, click Presets > Real Estate.

Depixelate zoomed-in and cropped images

Pixelation often occurs when you make a crop of a small region in your photo. In genres like wildlife photography, it’s often the only way to get a close view of an object.

With Let’s Enhance, you can easily fix cropped pixelated images.

Think about it as a lossless optical zoom that you can apply anytime after taking a photo.

How to depixelate pictures in Photoshop

There’s 4 common ways to fix a minor pixelation in Photoshop:

A. Go to Filter > Noise > Despeckle.

Apply it a few times by pressing CTRL + F (Windows) or CMD + F (Mac)

B. Go to Filter > Blur > Smart Blur. Play around with Radius and Threshold sliders till you get the best result.

If you aren't happy with Smart blur results, you can experiment with a Gaussian blur filter. Sometimes it works better.

C. 1. Go to Image > Image Size.

2. Set the resolution to twice the original size.

3. Check the Resample box and apply a Bicubic Smoother enlargement.

Tip: You can combine all 3 methods to make the image smoother.

Keep in mind, Photoshop only slightly smooths your pixelated image. Check how it deals with heavy pixelation compared to Let’s Enhance.

In this case, we used Smart blur and Bicubic Smoother enlargement in Photoshop. Let’s Enhance was in the default mode (Smart Enhance).

FAQ

How do I know if an image is pixelated?

Photos are composed of pixel grids. When the image is upscaled above its original resolution pixels become visible. Picture becomes blocky, curves get triangle edges. You could see shapes like that in the old 8-bit games or modern pixel art.

How to avoid pixelation?
  • When taking photos set your camera to maximum megapixels.
  • When editing photos or uploading them to social media use source files with the highest resolution.
  • If you need to enlarge an image don’t use old upsampling methods like ‘nearest neighbor’. Opt for AI-based upscaling instead.
  • Use vector graphics for simple visuals like logos. You can scale vectors up and down without quality loss. But keep in mind, vectors don’t support precise color detailization. That’s why photos are only in raster format. I.e., they become pixelated when stretched out.

Is blurred the same as pixelated?

Not quite. You get blurry photos when your camera is out of focus or when the image is enlarged with certain upscaling algorithms.

Pixelation occurs when low res photos are enlarged with the basic upscaling method, i.e. ‘nearest neighbor’.

How can I make a blurry picture clear?

The process is the same as for depixelation. Upload your pic to Let's Enhance website and click Start processing. Our default AI upscaling network, Smart Enhance, automatically spots what’s wrong with your images — whether it’s blur, pixelation, or grain — and fixes them.

How AI depixelation works?

AI code is trained to reconstruct missing details on thousands of image pairs. In the beginning, it makes a lot of mistakes, just like humans. But just like humans, it improves with each new iteration. So when AI/ML-based app is delivered to users, it already restores missing pixels with high accuracy.

Depixelate 5 images with Let’s Enhance for free

We hope this guide was helpful and now you know how to fix your pixelated photos. So don’t hesitate to sign up and get your 10 free images to depixelate, upscale, or otherwise improve with our powerful AI technology.

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[Tutorial] How to fix a pixelated image on Windows/Mac/iOS

Last updated October 12, 2022 by Peter Wood

Taking a great picture is never easy. When you get a pixelated image with the correct time and angle, is there a way to fix the pixelated image and save the file? Because digital images are made up of pixels, a pixelated image is the result of poor quality, improper compression, or over-enlargement. With a lack of available pixel information in an image, it is impossible to get a neat image from a pixelated one.

When you know the detailed causes of image pixelation, you can solve the related problem accordingly. This post will show you effective ways to fix pixel image on different gears. Just read the detailed description of the process to get rid of the problem right now.

  • Part 1: 2 easy ways to fix pixelated images with AI
  • Part 2: 2 ways to fix a pixelated image on the web
  • Part 3: How to fix a pixelated image in Photoshop
  • Part 4: How to fix a pixelated image using a smartphone
  • Part 5: A little advice about pixelated images

Part 1: 2 easy ways to fix pixelated images with AI

Method 1: how to fix a pixelated image with AI retouching

If you just need to fix some image noise, sharpen, or remove JPEG artifacts, WidsMob AI Retoucher is an all-in-one AI photo editor for fixing pixelated images. It provides 3 different AI retouching modes to reduce image noise, restore low light files, and remove hazel. It also allows you to adjust the sharpness, color and brightness for an optimal image. In addition, you can also take advantage of the enhancement features and artificial intelligence algorithms for automatic image processing.

1. Restore pixelated images from image noise, low light, and haze pixelation.

2. Manually adjust exposure, saturation, color enhancement, and noise reduction.

3. Improve portraits with skin smoothing, gloss removal, blemish removal, etc.

4. Balance clarity and noise reduction functions to correct pixelated images.