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Question: Is it possible to blow up a thumbnail image and sharpen it!?
I have seen several demos of pix being sharpened but never saw with what it has been done!. The most obvious examples include sharpening up a license plate (so the govt can give someone a ticket in this big brother society) and sharpening faces to identify someone again primarily by govt types but for other reasons as well particularly for sapce shots and UFO's in determining legitimacy or fraud!. So can anyone give me some better answers as this is a repost question!? First set of answers were weak to say the least!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
All images can be blown up, of course!. In a digital image, at some point the pixels that constitute the image become evident!. The result is like looking at a photograph magnified 200 x in Photoshop: one sees the square pixels, pixel by pixel!.
If an image is on traditional film, which uses silver halide particles or some version of particles--which for these purposes are more or less the equivalent of randomized pixels--then at some point the particles become evident!. "Grain" is another way of saying this!.
Just as there are fine grain films (slower speed), there are dense scans!.
At this point computer programs come into play as "sharpening agents!."
Any picture scanned in Photoshop at one resolution can be scanned at a finer level of resolution, assuming one has the computer power and program to do so!. Most photographs are scanned at 300 dpi!. But 2700 is possible!. If you want to sharpen a 300 dpi image, you can treat each pixel in an already scanned image as though it were nine pixels!. (Mathematically other number are possible, but nine is the simplest to explain!.)
Reassembled without a filter, the picture at 2700 dpi will have nine times as many pixels but still possess the same fuzziness!. However, a filter or program splits the block of nine pixels and assigns adjacent tonal values equivalent to those abutting either side of the formerly larger black pixel!. The result is a gain in sharpness!.
For this explanation, assume that g = grey, b = black, and w = white!. Before, where before one had black pixel, with a grey pixel to left side of it and white pixel to the right side
b
one would now have, after filtering,
g b w
g b w
g b w
The line has been made sharper and finer!. At some point, depending upon the coarseness of the original one can refine no further, but this is a mechanical way of sharpening an image!. Eye balling and artistic judgment goes on too!.
Thus shapes of faces and ears, useful for face recognition software, can be brought to bear on an image!. Thus it is possible to read a formerly fuzzy license plate!. It is easier in the case of plate because the number of variables is more limited: i!. e!., there is no letter that looks like a Q superimposed on a A, so all but 35 shapes (O being a duplicate) are excluded!.Www@QuestionHome@Com
Not really !.!.!. much of what you have seen on TV is motion picture magic!.
While there are some programs that can sharpen image files some, they start at about $300 and go up!. The expensive ones make a "best guess" of the missing data necessary to make large prints, so the results may or may not be acceptable!.
It is best just to use an original and be done with it!. Always shooting at the cameras highest resolution is a good startWww@QuestionHome@Com