Upscayl for Upscaling

We avoid upscaling images, but sometimes it’s necessary.

When we built ozake.com, we spent an enormous amount of time searching for crystal clear background images at high resolutions. Not all of the images we wanted were big enough, so we had to upscale some of them.

We used Photoshop, but Pixelmator Pro produces much better results.

And, Upscayl is a new Mac app that uses AI to create very clean and natural-feeling results.

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Test Images

Here’s the original low-resolution JPG downloaded from the internet:

We’ll test three ways of upscaling the image:

• Photoshop 24 (2023)
• Pixelmator Pro
• Upscayl

Here are the results:

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Conclusions

Pixelmator Pro ($5/month) is far better than Photoshop at upscaling, and it’s extremely fast.

Upscayl consistently produces slightly better results, and it’s free.