How to Resize and Make Images Larger without Losing Quality

Have you ever tried resizing an image to make it larger but instead lost the image quality?

When you try to enlarge an image, it can look blurry and unprofessional. A picture is made up of thousands of pixels, and when you increase its size, those pixels become visible.

As a result, you get a dull and low-quality picture.

In our years of experience with blogging, we have learned that images can make or break your content. If your images look blurry, then this can lower user engagement and hurt your brand.

Fortunately, there are solutions to this problem. You can use advanced image editing software, algorithms that preserve image quality, or online tools designed for resizing images.

In this article, we will show you how to easily resize images to make them larger without losing quality.

Resize make images larger in WordPress

Why Do Images Lose Quality When Enlarged?

A bitmap is the most commonly used image format on the web, and all your JPEG and PNG files are bitmap image files.

A bitmap image is made up of thousands of pixels. If you zoom in, you can actually see those pixels as squares. Each pixel is mapped to a fixed location on the image, hence the name bitmap.

Pixel zoomed preview

Most image editing software shrinks or enlarges these pixels to resize an image. This is why there is no visible quality loss when you resize an image to a smaller size, mainly because those pixels become even less visible.

On the other hand, when you resize an image in WordPress to make it large, these enlarged pixels become more visible, making the image look blurry and pixelated.

Blurred zoomed image preview

The solution is to adjust each enlarged pixel to look like the pixels around it. This method is called Fractal Interpolation or simply Fractals.

Note: Always start with a high-resolution image first. The higher the number of pixels in the original image, the better it will handle enlargement. This is because there’s more detail and data to work with when the image is stretched.

In the following sections, we’ll show you how to resize pictures using the most common image editing software for your WordPress website. You can use the links below to jump to any method with just a click:

  • Method 1: Enlarging Images Using GIMP (Free)
  • Method 2: Enlarging Images Using Irfanview (Free)
  • Method 3: Enlarging Images Using ON1 (Premium)

Ready? Let’s get started.

Method 1: Enlarging Images Using GIMP (Free)

Gimp

GIMP is a free alternative to premium tools like Adobe Photoshop and Affinity Photo. It can be used to enlarge images with minimum quality loss. However, we should warn you that the result will not be as good as Perfect Resize, which we’ll show you in method 3 below.

The first thing you’ll need to do is download and install the free software on your computer. It’s available for both Mac and Windows devices.

After that, you’ll want to open the image you want to resize in Gimp and go to Image » Scale Image.

Click on scale image option

On the pop-up that appears, you can enter the width and height to set your desired dimensions.

Under the ‘Quality’ section, let’s choose ‘Cubic’ as the interpolation method. Once done, go ahead and click the ‘Scale’ button.

Change scale image settings

That’s all; you can now export the enlarged image in different formats, such as PNG, JPEG, WebP, HTML, and more.

Method 2: Enlarging Images Using Irfanview (Free)

IrfanView

Irfanview is a compact photo editing program that’s also free to use. Only available for Windows-based operating systems, it provides a smarter way to resize images and make them larger.

Before getting started with this tool, let’s make sure you’ve installed it on your Windows computer.

Upon installation, simply open your image in Irfanview and go to Image » Resize/Resample.

Resize images in IrfanView

This will bring up the image resize pop-up window. Here, you’ll need to enter your desired image size in the ‘Set new size’ field by defining the width and height.

After that, you can select resample under the ‘Size method’ section. Let’s choose the ‘Lanczos (slowest)’ option from the filter dropdown menu.

Lastly, you’ll want to check the box next to ‘Apply Sharpen After Resample’ and click the ‘OK’ button when you’re done.

Change resize image settings

Irfanview will now resize the image, which you can then save to your computer.

You might notice that free tools don’t do a very good job of resizing an image to make it larger. However, by adjusting sharpness and contrast, you can enlarge images and minimize the quality loss.

That said, you can also use Irfanview’s premium tool to make sure that the image remains sharp and clear when enlarged.

Method 3: Enlarging Images Using ON1 (Premium)

ON1 Resize AI

ON1 Resize AI, or Perfect Resize as it was previously known, is a tool that allows you to resize your images smartly.

The software uses artificial intelligence to help keep your images in high resolution, even when their size increases or you want to zoom the image in on a particular area.

ON1 image resize settings

It’s available as standalone software and as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Capture One, and Apple Photos.

The standalone ON1 Resize AL software is available for $69.99. This software provides advanced tools to enlarge images while maintaining high quality, making it a valuable investment for photographers and graphic designers.

We hope this article has helped you learn how to resize images to make them larger without losing quality. You may also want to see our guide on how to do basic image editing in WordPress and our handpicked list of great WordPress plugins for managing images.

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