De-Pixeling?

[Jdeadevil]

Does anyone know how I can lessen the pixely effect on this nice picture of Master Roshi? (Oh and how cool is that? MS Paint automatically chooses Jpeg in Vista) I have Paint Shop Pro X2, Photoshop CS3 (I think) and the GIMP. (PSPX2 and PS are on Free Trial, incase anyone thinks I'm being a criminal.)

[Merlock]

Resize it (downwards) until it's of suitable quality.

[Jdeadevil]

I meant without rezising it, I want to make a wallpaper ya see :/

[Merlock]

Resizing is the only way to get a reasonable quality image and a wallpaper requires good resolution in the first place. You can blur or mask that image all you want but it won't gain enough quality to be a wallpaper. The only chance would be to trace the image. Tracing the image sketch and then recreating it with all the colours, shading, etc., which goes beyond design and into drawing/illustration.

[Jdeadevil]

That's a good idea Merlock, thank you very much for the idea. ^_^ It will be fun, I'll probably do it on Thursday in Art when I go to college. I might just copy Slayer's idea and use a computer drawing program to colour it in or draw over me lines, but I'll add it to another layer and then delete the layer with my traced image in, so it will look like a computer sketch or something. But as for the drawing in the first place: I'll do that manually with paper and pencil with some black paper. I don't know what it's called but it's an easy tracing method, and then I'll ask someone to scan it, I don't know about wallpaper sizes though. But when I've finished it I'll post it in the Artists' Corner, maybie I'll post it in this thread, or make another thread to make it stand out. I don't know but I'll show it to you specially as a reward for giving me the idea.

[Marvo]

Obviously you guys have no knowledge of how to use Photoshop properly! Here you go man

[Jdeadevil]

Oh that is so my wallpaper. Thanks Marvo! And, question - How did you losen the pixel effect?

[Marvo]

I can give you the PSD No wait, I can't. Only 19,5KB PSDs are allowed O.o Anyway, I made copy of the orignal picture (ctrl+J on layer). Then, I took the original, selected the tree behind the black woman, inversed selection, and made a lense flare (Filter - Render - Lens Flare) and then inversed selection again and made the tree into a silhouette, by making it black/dark (ctrl+U, adjust the brightness). Then I took layer I copied earlier, and threw some motion blur on it, that fit with the direction of the lens flare. I set this layer to be in multiply mode. Next, I selected Roshi's hat, copied it into a new layer (ctrl+J), gave it a green glow, made a copy of the layer and gave it a blue glow. Both of these layers where set to blend in multiply mode. Second last, I took the bottom layer, made a copy, put it on top and inverted it (ctrl+I), then put it in multiply mode. Lastly, I took the bottom layer, and gave it a 1,00 or 2,00 blur. That's what I recall anyway.

[Jdeadevil]

Wow - That sounds like hard work. I might have to try that out following that post. What's a PSD? Edit - Photshop Documentation? That's a guess.

[Marvo]

It's a Photoshop document. It saves every layer, so that when you open the file in Photoshop, you see all the layers, the modes in which they are blended, however not the history. The files use a lot of space though. The PSD for this particular picture takes up 9MB, with about 7 different layers (2 not used in the final picture), that each are to be saved in the best format possible. Takes up a lot of space

[Jdeadevil]

So do the layers on their own cure the pixels?

[Marvo]

I beg you pardon me?

[Jdeadevil]

Sorry, just ignore me. (No don't ignore me, I mean just the post above you)

[Merlock]

...you're going to use that as a wallpaper? Or even...as anything? That scares me to the depths of my soul...you mutilated an image to no end. I mean, obviously I could have done what you did but you blurred and darkened it...making it...not the image it was...but a completely different, useless version that looks like it has dirt splattered over it. o.o Seriously, that's...a joke, right?

[Marvo]

Yes.

[Merlock]

Then why did you two just exchange half a dozen apparently serious enthusiastic posts after it? >.<

[Marvo]

He asked

[Cyclic13]

It's called Dithering...

[wasup]

rofl merlock... i agree, i was like "lens flare wtf?"

[Marvo]

Lens flare fixes everything. Same with motion blur. Everybody knows that >=(

[CoLd BlooDed]

Hahahaha, looks like someone spilled ink all over it. Even funnier that JD actually wanted to use that.

[Jdeadevil]

Yeah I tried motion blur yesterday, it wokrs. But I don't know about Lends Flare. Is that just a Photoshop thing?

[Jdeadevil]

Hahahaha, looks like someone spilled ink all over it. Even funnier that JD actually wanted to use that. Ok, I'm gonna need to know how many other people are just going to stupidly go "Funny how JD wanted to use it, what a stupid cunt". Because I'm kind of reading the same thing here!

[ninja9578]

So you know jpeg is not the recommended format for almost anything and I'm not sure why Vista wants you to use it. PNG is a lossless image (same quality as a BMP) and is usually about the same size as a well compressed jpeg. This is just me, but what I would do is to shrink it down to whatever the original size was (looks like it'd be a factor of 4?) and then rescale it back up using bicubic interpolation. MS Paint has absolutely now interpolation, which is why you get the staircasing effect that you see there.

[Marvo]

Rememeber though, Jdead, if everything fails, random is always there to safe you!