Upscaling and cleanup

Upscaling adds resolution. It does not add information that was never there, and knowing the difference saves a lot of disappointment.

Steps

1. Start from the best version you have, not a compressed copy.
2. Upscale, then view at 100 percent rather than fit-to-screen.
3. Check faces, text and fine repeating patterns first.
4. If a region got worse, inpaint that region rather than redoing the upscale.

What upscaling can and cannot do

It can make soft edges crisp and turn a small clean image into a large clean one. It cannot recover detail that compression destroyed, and it tends to invent plausible texture where there was none.

What to watch for

Text is the first thing to break. If the image has small type, check it, and expect to replace it rather than upscale it.