How To Make A Picture Bigger

There are a whole handful of reasons why you may wish to change a small picture into a bigger picture — like the upload requirements or because you’re preparing to print it.

If you’ve never done it, we at Skylum are here to help!

Let’s Consider Bitmap Images

The name Bitmap is given to this extension because it contains thousands of pixels which are located at a fixed position. If you try zooming in on the picture, you’ll notice small squares or grid lines on it. These are pixels — they are hidden and make up a picture. Once you try to enlarge a smaller picture, these pixels begin to become visible and thus the picture starts to look distorted and pixelated.

The Correct Way to Make A Picture Bigger

The pixels in a picture are oriented in balanced proportions. So, the correct way to make it bigger is to carefully match the properties of adjacent pixels once you enlarge it. This phenomenon is called Fractals and it preserves image quality to a great extent (though it requires specialized photo editors if you do not want image quality to be sacrificed). 

Using Softwares to Make A Picture Bigger

When you’re faced with the task of enlarging a smaller photo, keep in mind that several image editing tools do come with image resizing capabilities.

You can try a software like Skylum’s Luminar to make your small photos, larger, and also to put some amazing finishing touches on your shots.

Here’s How to Use It:

First, upload the picture.

Next, press the keyboard shortcut “Shift-Command-E’. This will bring up the export menu which will prompt you to sharpen or resize the image.

Click on resize. It will bring up several other options of adding extra effects such as original, long edge, short edge etc. You may choose one of these or set your desired size for your pictures and then, enlarge them.

Click save, and that’s that! 

Perfect Resize is another software that can do the job for you. It comes as an independent software as well as a plugin for Photoshop. Try it on a 30 day trial basis to see if it fits your needs.

How to Use It: After installing the software, click on File menu > Automate and then select Perfect Resize option. This will open the image in the Perfect Resize application. Here, you can enter your desired dimensions and save the new file.

GIMP is another editing software that has the ability to make a picture bigger without degrading its quality.

How to Use It: Open the image you want to resize in Gimp. Simply go to Image » Scale Image. Enter your desired dimensions. Under the Quality section choose Sinc (Lanczos3) as Interpolation method and click on the Scale Image button.

Conclusion

If you want to tackle the task or enlarging your photo without sacrificing the quality of the picture, give one of these mentioned softwares a try. You can also opt for online apps and paint, though the quality will not be as high.