Magic Upsample
From NWN2Wiki
This is a technique designed for taking a low resolution file with an obvious texture from the bitmap grid, or one with jpeg artifacts and making it so it can work in a higher resolution without people realizing how bad it was. This technique is designed to destroy the grid or artifacts from being low resolution, and at the same time restoring the photo to look like a normal photo. There are better techniques, but this is fairly easy and quick, and even those with little experience can get good results with it.
Even with this technique it is necessary to start with the image that has gone through the least generations of edits. Each resizing or transformation is a generation, and with lossy format files like jpegs, each time it is saved and opened is a generation.
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[edit] Original
This is the original photo, a very zoomed in shot of a face, not really recognizeable. And the only damage is really the fact that the grid of actual pixels is visible.
[edit] Resample
I go to Image Size, and select the image size i wish it to be at, 600 dpi gives me the size i want. Remember the dpi is unimportant unless the image is at 100% which is very seldom, so focus on the Pixel Dimensions and file size at the top.
[edit] Make Layers
Duplicate layers. Always keep the original photo safe, and work in layers. ( Go to "Layer" and select "Duplicate Layer..." )
[edit] Blur
Select the layer you duplicated, and Filters -> Blur it until the grid patterns disappear and pull back a little bit. The idea is to reduce how much you see them.
[edit] Unsharp Mask
Duplicate this layer that has been blurred and select Filters -> Sharpen. The "Amount" you do to taste, while the ratio and threshold are based on the DPI of the image. The rule is DPI/72 but in images like this i tend to go above that a bit. Generally you want to enhance the shapes involved to exaggerate the differences in colors. This helps restore the original photo while also hiding the grid pattern even further. Sharpen is the opposite of blurring is why this works.
[edit] Set the layer settings
Now for the final and most important step. Go to the layers paletter and change the settings for the two layers you added. The first layer you blurred set it to about 80% transparency, this layer removes most of the grid pattern that is the problem in the image but is obviously blurred.
The second layer change it to Multiply, and set it's opacity really low to 20%. This actually gives the image some of it's original punch.
You can adjust percentages to taste, but the idea is to keep as much detail as you can, while ensuring the original issues in the photo being low resolution are obscured. The pixelation still visible for example can be reduced by raising the blur layer to 90%, but generally this goes too far and really it is better to go in and edit pixels at this point ( above the mouth for example ).
