Q&A: How Do I Resize Small Pictures for Large Prints?

Is there any way in Paint Shop Pro 8 or any other software to retain the sharpness and definition of my picture as I increase it in size? What seems to happen after a certain number of size increases is that the image breaks into little squares, which destroys the original.

--Selwyn Dovey, Cape Town, South Africa

That's a good question, Selwyn. A lot of us have "small" digital pictures--images that measure just 640 by 480 pixels, for instance--that we'd love to print at larger sizes. So is there any way to increase the size of a small image and print it at 8 by 10 inches?

Unfortunately, the answer is generally no. Digital images are composed of pixels. Each pixel is a dot of color that represents the smallest bit of information in a picture. When you enlarge a photo, you enlarge the individual pixels. And a picture composed of big pixels is blurry and splotchy.

I know that we see digital enlargement all the time on TV. Each week on Alias, for instance, CIA operative Jack Bristow manages to take a satellite photo and enhance it until you can clearly read the name tag stitched on the subject's shirt. In real life, though, that kind of digital trickery is just not possible.

That said, there are a few programs available that can do this sort of thing on a very limited scale. Extensis Pxl SmartScale, for instance, uses some really complex mathematics to let you print pictures at far larger sizes than would be possible based on the number of pixels in the original photo. However, the quality of your result depends upon starting with a sharp, high-quality original photo. And the program costs around $200, as the PC World Product Finder reveals.