Improving Quality in Low Resolution Images In this tutorial, we’ll look at several tools you can use in PaintShop Pro to improve the quality of your images. We’ll get to know several tools in the Adjust menu that can accomplish tasks such as correcting faded colors, adding brightness and fill light to photos that are too dark, bringing out. This is the projector’s image after adjusting the keystone options. After getting the image focused via any of the methods above, there’s another category of changes you might need to make to improve the projector’s image quality: changes to the image-processing side of the light being projected.
- How To Improve Quality Of Pictures Exported From Iphone
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7 Simple Ways to Improve Picture Quality
Have a large collection of photos that need some improving? Cannot use a favorite image as an avatar because it is too dim or blurred? Now you do not have to possess professional skills to effectively edit your pictures and restore their quality. Get started with PhotoWorks software and see for yourself that adjusting the color scheme or applying stylish effects is easier than you thought. Read this tutorial till the end and you will learn how to enhance a photo and discover lots of secret techniques.
Enhancing the picture quality: before-after
Like the edited picture more than its lifeless original? Then let's fix your photos as well. To get going, download PhotoWorks, then use our photo editing guide to turn your regular images into masterpieces.
Way 1. Correct the Exposure Level
One of the biggest problems every photographer faces is poor lighting that ruins the tone and conceals important details. To make a low quality picture high quality, you’ll need to correct its exposure for a start.
- Use auto enhancement. Auto enhance photos with light and color correction. Thanks to smart image editing algorithms, PhotoWorks detects individual lighting issues of each picture and fixes only them without ruining the parts that don’t need any retouching.
- Adjust exposure for better quality. If needed, move the Exposure slider to the right to make the image lighter or to the left to darken it.
- Modify the chosen photo areas. You can also lighten or darken particular areas using Highlights and Shadows. Drag the Shadows and Blacks sliders to -40 and -21, respectively.
- Take care of white balance. The white balance of the photo is also affected by bad lighting. Let’s put the Temperature slider to 44 and the tones will become much warmer.
Adjusting the exposure of the photo
Looking for a way to enhance and bring back to life the photos from your family archive? Don't know how to restore the old pictures? With PhotoWorks, you can not only enhance your recent images, but fix the old precious photos as well.
Way 2. Adjust the Color Balance
Color correction is just one step of entire photo editing process but it can make all the difference. Take an average shot and make it really pop with the right colors. Here we have decided to make the roof in the background dimmer and less distracting.
- Correct the overall tone.Switch to the Colors tab. Here, you can control the hue (actual colors), saturation (the amount of grey in a color) and luminance (the ratio of white and black) of your photo.
- Work with separate objects. Change the hue of certain objects. Click Saturation and move the Magentas slider to -100 so the roof becomes less prominent.
- Play with Tone Mapping. Adjust the color balance and shed more light on the photo with Tone Mapping. Pick a suitable color tinge and set the Overlay blend mode for the best effect.
Play with the color balance and change the atmosphere of your photo
Way 3. Increase Sharpness
If your photo looks too blurred and obscure, these imperfections seriously affect its quality. The easiest way is to sharpen the blurry photo so all the small elements will be better seen.
- Zoom in to see changes. For a start, let’s zoom in the photo we are working with to control all the changes.
- Start enhancing the picture. Next, switch to the Sharpness tab and set the Amount slider at 95.
- Make the photo look natural. If needed, play with the Radius and Threshold settings to make the effect more natural.
Increase the sharpness settings to highlight small details
![Improve Improve](https://www.e-architect.co.uk/images/jpgs/london/siemens_crystal_london_i200912_e2.jpg)
Way 4. Crop the Photo
Falcon 1 4 5. How to make a great portrait photo out of an unimpressive shot? The secret is to improve its composition. If you could not create a perfect scene while shooting, you can still make pictures look better through cropping.
- Try enhancing images with cropping. Click Tools in the upper toolbar of the program window and choose the Crop tool.
- Pick a suitable aspect ratio. The program will offer seven aspect ratios to choose from, like free, fixed, 1:1 square, 16:9 HD, 3:2 iPhone, etc.
- Set a preferred grid overlay. With the right grid overlay you won’t cut any vital parts of your image. In this case we chose the Rule of Thirds and placed the woman in the photo at the intersection of the lines to create a better composition.
Put the best parts into focus with the Crop tool
While working with the Crop tool, be careful not to make your bad quality photo even worse. Each time you cut away some area of your picture you reduce its resolution. What’s more, if you crop a small image and then try enlarging the edited part, you will end up with a heavily pixelated photo.
Way 5. Apply the Vignette Effect
Artistic effects and masks can also help you improve image quality and give it a stylish look. Here, we’ll highlight the person in the center of the portrait photo by applying a vignette effect. Rounded darkening or lightening will help to guide the viewer’s attention to the woman in the photo.
- Improve picture quality with effects. Move to the Tools tab and click Vignetting.
- Control the vignette amount. In order to darken the image edges, let’s set the Amount slider at -70.
- Manage the vignette size & form. The Roundness and Feather settings will help you control the form of the vignette and soften or harden its edges.
Applying the Vignette effect for a more stylish look
By the way, once you ehnance your picture, you might want to think about having it printed. Or instead you might consider posting it on your social media page. Whichever you choose, you'll need to change the photo's resolution. Learn how to enhance your photo resolution-wise with Photoshop.
Way 6. Retouch Your Image
Most pictures capture ordinary people, not movie stars, and real people can have glare on their faces, wrinkles around eyes, and skin blemishes. If you look closer at the woman in the picture, you will see the skin is baggy below her eyes. These ‘defects’ are almost impossible to conceal while shooting, but they can be erased in post-production.
- Pick the Adjustment Brush tool. Switch to the Retouch tab and use the Adjustment Brush to digitally conceal the eye bags.
- Conceal imperfections on the photo. View the photo at 200% scale and set the size of the Adjustment Brush at 3 to fix only the area below the woman’s eyes.
- Smoothen the edited area. Now drag the Exposure slider to 5 to lighten the shadows under the eyes, and apply the result to save the changes.
Way 7. Remove Unwanted Objects
One more way to fix image quality is to remove unwanted object from photo. It can be a sudden passer-by, a garbage can, or small details you’d rather not show. Here, for example, the grass blade in the foreground is quite distracting.
- Choose the Clone Stamp. While in the program, move to the Tools tab and click on the Clone Stamp.
- Change the brush size. Make the brush a little bit bigger than the grass blade and move the tool along the undesired element.
- Borrow pixels from other area. Copy and paste the pixels from the chosen area to the affected one. The chosen area will be automatically replaced with the skin color.
… Jazz Up Your Improved Photos with Text Captions!
It is common for photographers to sign their works and you can easily do the same! Move to the Captions tab and click Add Text. Type in your name and position it in the image. There is a vast collection of ready-made text styles to choose from, including gothic, funny, calligraphic and graffiti. In Additional settings you can also pick the font you like. Here we have chosen Gabriola to put a caption on a photo since its letters look quite stylish and are big enough to see in the image corner.
Add a personal signature to mark your photo work
Still asking yourself how to enhance your pictures? Watch this video and you’ll discover three simple tricks of photo improvement.
How To Improve Quality Of Pictures Exported From Iphone
How to Enhance Image Quality Online?
As you can see, PhotoWorks is capable of powerful and creative improvement that cannot be achieved with automatic image enhancers. Step-by-step editing will let you fix all the imperfections and accentuate better parts of your photo. After applying stylish effects and adding captivating text captions you’ll surely feel like a pro and get a magazine-like picture. Even if you're looking for old photo restoration software to enhance your old pictures, PhotoWorks will still be a top choice. It's jam-packed with convenient brushes and smart tools.
However, imagine a situation when you need to improve a picture for your social page but don’t have time to master some software or even don’t have a computer to install it on. That’s when online photo editors will come to rescue! Here, we’ve made a list of online image enhancers you may want to try.
- Let’s Enhance
- FotoJet
- Improve Photo
- BeFunky
- PicMonkey
With the help of such photo editors, you’ll be able to boost colors and fix lighting issues, improve the overall composition, get rid of odd objects and conceal skin blemishes, add stylish frames and graphics, apply artistic effects, and sign your creative work with text captions.
Edit or stylize your photos with BeFunky online
Don't want to fiddle with desktop or web-based softwares? Then enhance your pictures right on your mobile phone using an app! We suggest Remini - a quick and easy-to-use photo editing application.
Our advice is, though, not to throw yourself at everything that is online and supposedly free. It may seem extremely easy to add your photo to some online service and improve it in one click, but there are some pitfalls. Some of these web-based photo editors offer limited functions or charge you with a fee once you want to save your edited image. The worst thing, if you lose your Internet connection in the process, all the changes will be undone - what a waste of your time!
Today there are so many photo editing programs and services in the market that every photo lover will surely find the best option for their skills and pocket. You won’t be short of professional-level software for photo enhancement, intuitive image editors suitable for novice photographers, or online services where you can do everything in one click. With such a variety of options, you may still like automatic image editor for its user-friendly interface and powerful editing tools that don’t require long hours to master.
Back in the days of regular old film cameras, people didn’t have the luxury of saving all their pictures onto memory cards and backing them up on a computer. In those days, you had to get the roll of film developed, have the photos printed, and tuck them away safely into photo albums to ensure that the memories captured in each photo could be enjoyed for years to come.
Unfortunately, these printed photos have a limited lifespan because the quality of the photo paper and ink used wasn’t as good as the quality of what we use now. As the years went by, deterioration would set in, leaving us with photo albums and boxes full of old, damaged photos with faded ink, tattered edges, and even some scratches and stains here and there.
Thankfully, restoring an old photo isn’t all that hard. You just have to know how to do it!
7 Steps to Restoring Old Photos in Photoshop
To enhance your old photos, we’ve listed down several steps you should follow. These steps apply to digital photo restoration using the latest version of Adobe Photoshop.
- Digitize your old photo.
- Open the image in Photoshop.
- Crop, straighten, or rotate the image.
- Review your photo for any corrections you want to make.
- Make the necessary adjustments to your image.
- Apply a filter to reduce noise.
- Save the newly restored image.
1. Digitize your old photo
Photo by Victor Burenkov / CC BY 2.0
The first step is to scan the photo to get a digital copy. You can use a regular photo scanner, take a photo using a digital camera, or use a scanner app on your smartphone.
Izotope nectar 3 v3 10. Whichever method you use, make sure that it will yield a large, high-quality copy of the photo to make it easier to work with.
2. Open the image in Photoshop
Next, open the digital image in Photoshop. Then create a second copy of the image. You’ll want to keep an original copy for reference, so you’ll be working on altering the second copy.
How to create a duplicate copy of an image in Photoshop:
- Select a layer in the Layers panel.
- Drag the layer to the Create a New Layer button, or select the Duplicate Layer option from the Layers menu or Layers panel menu.
- If you’ve selected the Duplicate Layer option, give your layer a name, and click OK.
Increase Picture Quality Photoshop
Screenshot from Pixel & Bracket
How To Improve Quality Of A Picture
Screenshot from Pixel & Bracket
Don’t forget to click the eye icon on the left side of your original layer before working on your photo. Selecting the icon hides the layer from the panel.
3. Crop, straighten, or rotate the image
Before you can begin making any adjustments, make sure that you’re working with a clean, properly oriented image.
If there’s any unwanted white space (or any kind of space that shouldn’t be there) around the edges, you can simply crop all of that out.
How to crop your image:
- Click on the Crop icon on the toolbox (on the left side of Photoshop’s default workspace).
- Draw a new cropping area or drag the edges of the crop box to the desired positions.
- Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS) to crop the image.
You can also use the Crop menu to keep your image’s aspect ratios proportional, but only if you’re printing your old photo.
Screenshot from the Adobe Help Center
If the scan of your image is a bit crooked, you can straighten it out using the crop tool.
How to straighten a crooked image:
- Click on the Crop icon, then click the Straighten icon on the toolbar.
- Drag a line along a horizontal or vertical element in the photo.
- Let go of the mouse so that Photoshop can rotate your image and crop its uneven edges.
- Once you are satisfied, press Enter. Photoshop will also remove the excess image if you’ve enabled the Delete Cropped Pixels checkbox.
Screenshot from the Adobe Help Center
How to rotate your image:
How To Increase Quality Of Picture In Gimp
Photoshop CC lets you rotate your image through its Image Rotation setting or the Transform function in the Edit menu.
To rotate your image using the Image Rotation option:
- Click on Image in the taskbar.
- Select Image Rotation.
- Choose your preferred rotation.
To rotate your image using the Edit menu:
- Click on your image to select it.
- Click on the Edit menu, then choose Transform.
- Choose your preferred rotation.
4. Review your photo for any corrections you want to make
Assessing the image you’re working on will help you decide on the adjustments or corrections that you want to make. Your desired changes will depend on your photo’s current condition.
![How To Improve Quality Of Picture How To Improve Quality Of Picture](https://youngsseafood.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Classic_Fish_and_Chips.jpg)
5. Make the necessary adjustments to your image
There are two ways to do this step in Photoshop: adjusting your image’s color and fixing its damaged spots.
Make color correction adjustments.
Old photos are usually faded, but if you want to improve the tone, color, contrast, and overall vibrancy of the photo, Photoshop can do these, too.
If you select Image from the taskbar, you’ll see a drop-down menu that will pretty much give you everything you need for some basic color correction. Under Adjustments, you’ll see three options: Auto Tone, Auto Contrast, and Auto Color. Try these out first and see if these automatic corrections deliver your desired effect. If not, you can do these corrections manually.
It’s a good idea to learn how to read the histogram so that you can make highly accurate adjustments. From there, select Adjustments and use the different functions under this menu option. There are basic adjustments such as Brightness, Contrast, Exposure, and Vibrance, or the slightly more in-depth adjustment tools such as Curves and Levels.
Depending on the condition of your photo, the best thing to do is to play around with these different adjustment tools to get the right tone, color, and contrast.
If your image has a color cast, here are a few steps to follow to correct the effect:
- Highlight your duplicate layer, then click on the adjustment layers icon under the Layers panel.
- Choose Levels from the adjustment layer options.
- To adjust your photo’s RGB (red, green, and blue) levels, click on the dedicated tab. A RGB menu will appear.
- Click on any of the color options, then bring the white and black sliders to the histogram’s upward line.
- Once you’re done adjusting the RGB levels, click on the Layers panel to exit.
- Highlight your duplicate layer and your adjustment layer, then right click on the area and select Merge Layers to combine both layers.
Fix the damaged spots.
This part is where it gets a bit tricky—you’ll definitely need an eye for detail and a whole lot of patience! If there are any scratches, stains, and other unwanted marks on your photo, you can use a few beginner-friendly spot correction Photoshop tools: the Spot Healing Brush, the Patch Tool, and the Clone Stamp.
How to use the Spot Healing Brush:
- Click on the Spot Healing Brush icon (the one that looks like a band-aid) on the toolbox.
- Choose your desired brush size in the options bar.
- Choose between the Proximity Match, Create Texture, or Content-Aware Type options. Any of these options should work for what you’re trying to achieve.
- Select or deselect the Sample All Layers option if you want to sample data from all layers or one active layer.
- Click on the spot you want to fix, or click and drag the brush over imperfections in a larger area.
How to use the Patch Tool:
- Select the Patch Tool.
- Select the area you want to repair by dragging, then select Source in the options bar. You can also select your sample area by dragging and selecting the Destination option.
- Adjust your selection by using the Shift-drag, Alt-drag/Option-drag, or Alt+Shift-drag/Option+Shift-drag combinations.
- Select Transparent if you want to extract a transparent texture from your sample area, or deselect it to put the sample area over the target area.
- Adjust the Diffusion slider.
- Place the pointer inside your selection, then drag it to your sample or patch area.
How to use the Clone Stamp:
- Click on the Clone Stamp icon in the toolbox.
- Adjust the brush size to the corresponding size you want. Use the options bar to set your brush’s blending mode, opacity, and flow.
- Set the Aligned or Sample options for specific pixel alignment and layer sampling.
- Alt+Click or Option+Click a clean spot that you want to “clone.”
- Click or drag the cursor around the damaged area to “paint” over it with the cloned pixels from your sampling point.
Photoshop also features Burn and Dodge tools that you can use to restore image detail. These photo restoration techniques will make areas in your photo lighter or darker, depending on how much you’ve painted.
How to use the Burn Tool or Dodge Tool:
- Select any of these tools.
- Choose a brush tip and set brush options in the options bar.
- Select any of the following Range options: Midtones, Shadows, or Highlights.
- Set your preferred exposure for the Burn tool or Dodge tool.
- Turn your brush into an airbrush by clicking the airbrush icon or selecting the Airbrush option in the Brush panel.
- For less shadow and highlight clipping, select the Protect Tones option.
- Drag the brush over the part that you want to lighten or darken.
When using any of these tools, it’s important to zoom in as close as you can on the spot you want to fix for the most accurate and refined results.
6. Apply a filter to reduce noise
You can’t magically get rid of the dust and scratches with just a press of a button—you’ll have to do it manually. However, you can make that job easier by using Photoshop’s Filter functions to reduce some of that unwanted noise.
Screenshot from Chupacabra Tutorials
How to reduce noise in your image:
- Click on Filter in the taskbar.
- Select the Convert to Smart Filters option.
- Go back to the Filter tab, click on Noise and then select Dust & Scratches.
- Using the pop-up window, slowly increase the Radius pixels and Threshold levels in increments to achieve the desired effect. However, be careful not to overdo it to avoid losing too much detail.
- Click OK.
- Go back to Filter, click on Noise, and then select Reduce Noise.
- Adjust the settings accordingly in the pop-up window, and pay attention to the Preview box to monitor the effect of each adjustment.
7. Save the newly restored image
Once you’re happy with the image, delete the unedited layer (the original reference layer) or right-click the edited layer and select Flatten Image (make sure that your edited layer is on top). After that, just follow the steps below to save your photo.
Screenshot from Ashley’s Photography
- Click File on the taskbar, then select Save As.
- Choose your preferred file format from the Format menu.
- Specify your filename and location.
- Select your preferred saving option in the Save As dialog box.
- Click the Save button to save your newly restored photo.