# How do you make a pixelated image more clear and crisp?



## kurt28 (Dec 27, 2010)

How do you take an image that is kind of pixelated and make it more clear and crisp for printing. I'm using Corel Draw, but the process is probably similiar in other programs as well. So I want to hear from anyone who might be able to help. 

It is an image that I got off the web, and many of them are pixelated unfortuntately.


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## dot-tone (Jun 19, 2008)

Well, you had me eager to help until the part about taking an image off the web. Can you clarify if you had recieved permission to use that image? Did you ask? Just checking as it can be pretty annoying to have to explain to the owner of the image as to why you are using an image that someone's else owns and you are profiting from. Sounds harsh, but that is the business we are in. Half of your business is selling art. Maybe more so. How many of your customers buy blanks from you? They are mostly buying art or what you can put on it. That might be just simple type. For art, you either pay for what you need ( to use in your sales that you profit from), pay someone to create it or use clip art. If you paid for it, you wouldn't need to ask your original question. Try it. Contact the owner. Sometimes they will sell you the rights to use it for chump change. Maybe 20 bucks. Maybe they just want a line of credit as the creator.

Ok. Now on to real question. If you have to use crappy supplied art, then try taking it into photoshop, do a Gaussian blurr and then try to adjust curves or contrast as well as sharpen image to bring it back. With this method, all you are doing is aiding in getting rid of the pixelation. It will look better. You said you were going back into Cotel but didn't clarify if you needed raster art or vector art.


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## selanac (Jan 8, 2007)

Good for you Dot-Tone Dan. We normally have our customers supply the Artwork. Many of them are so confused about it. 

I have one customer that goes online somewhere to have a guy in Egypt make it for her. I've heard many people say they go to Freelance, eLance, Fiverr etc., to have artwork done. 

We've been going back and forth for about 4 days now, cause she doesn't want to pay me to fix it before screen printing. I told her I need a Solid Black Image to make the screen we're doing. It keeps coming back transparent. Oh well, if they're not going to use a great Artist like yourself, they're going to keep getting poor quality art that they can't explain things too.


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## Celtic (Feb 19, 2008)

dot-tone said:


> Well, you had me eager to help until the part about taking an image off the web. Can you clarify if you had recieved permission to use that image? Did you ask? Just checking as it can be pretty annoying to have to explain to the owner of the image as to why you are using an image that someone's else owns and you are profiting from. Sounds harsh, but that is the business we are in. Half of your business is selling art. Maybe more so. How many of your customers buy blanks from you? They are mostly buying art or what you can put on it. That might be just simple type. For art, you either pay for what you need ( to use in your sales that you profit from), pay someone to create it or use clip art. If you paid for it, you wouldn't need to ask your original question. Try it. Contact the owner. Sometimes they will sell you the rights to use it for chump change. Maybe 20 bucks. Maybe they just want a line of credit as the creator.
> 
> Ok. Now on to real question. If you have to use crappy supplied art, then try taking it into photoshop, do a Gaussian blurr and then try to adjust curves or contrast as well as sharpen image to bring it back. With this method, all you are doing is aiding in getting rid of the pixelation. It will look better. You said you were going back into Cotel but didn't clarify if you needed raster art or vector art.


 
Exactly! 
Taking images off the internet is not a free for all.
Not to mention that lots of images are purposely low dpi. for that very reason. 
I myself, have gone after those trying to infringe on my copyrighted artwork.....and won.


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## kurt28 (Dec 27, 2010)

I am new to screen printing, and right now I'm just making t-shirts for myself. If I get to the point were I want to sell them, I wouldn't do so with images off the web unless I had permission first. I guess I should have made that clear. 

That being said, does anybody else have any other tips on how to clear up a pixelated image? Or maybe even how to tell an images dpi? I've heard that it's best to work with images that have a dpi of at least 150 all the way up to 300, but I'm not sure how you tell what the dpi is?


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## dot-tone (Jun 19, 2008)

What program are you running in? If photoshop, open the file ad go to the top menu bar, go to FILE and get info. You can also go to IMAGE and image size.

For pronto g a raster image, yes, a minimum of 150 I would say, and a good standard is 300. Those are to be that size at ( actual pro t size). Taking a jpg at let's say 3" wide at 72ppi standard and adding pixels to make 300 does not improve quality and especially doesn't if enlarging that image.

This is why we aim to start with original art. Max print size and 150- 300 ppi is your starting point. Everything else is added work and skill.


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## SouthwestSP (Sep 21, 2012)

If you want to blow up a small image that isn't pixelated to begin with, enlarge it on your printer/copier.....you'll just get a larger image without pixelation.


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## sben763 (May 17, 2009)

Even for personal use its not right. In Corel raster images preview are very poor. Open in a free program like inkscape. If it still pixelated looking cleaning up is not something your gonna do with a few clicks in 30 min even for a expert. There are plenty of free vector and raster images available for personal and commercial use. If you google search you will find some or search here on the forums it has been discussed many of times. I would ditch the idea of using web formatted images as it is a waste of time and you better off learning where to get artwork that you can actually use and learn the other aspects of the business

Images are not purposely put ont the Internet @ 72 dpi to stop usage. They are put on there for page loading so it doesn't take 5 min for a page to load.


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## DigitalMayhem (Aug 4, 2007)

*Re: Re: How do you make a pixelated image more clear and crisp?*



kurt28 said:


> I am new to screen printing, and right now I'm just making t-shirts for myself. If I get to the point were I want to sell them, I wouldn't do so with images off the web unless I had permission first. I guess I should have made that clear.
> 
> That being said, does anybody else have any other tips on how to clear up a pixelated image? Or maybe even how to tell an images dpi? I've heard that it's best to work with images that have a dpi of at least 150 all the way up to 300, but I'm not sure how you tell what the dpi is?


So, in your mind, its ok to steal as long as your not selling the booty?

Sent from my LTEvo.


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## Wheeler (Apr 15, 2007)

1. Import in to Coreldraw and use the Dropdown/resample button.

2. Import into Coreldraw use edit bitmap and resample in corel photpaint/ then use the guassian blur tool/Save back to corel.


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## ErisedDesigns (Apr 18, 2013)

I won't beat the topic into the bush, but, as everyone else has said, stealing is bad. Even if it's for personal use. If you're looking for free images, do a search for public domain images or check out PDClipart.org - Public Domain Clip Art - they have a ton of images, quite a few of which are fairly close to printable.

Now, onto the question you asked 

Is the image that you're using a small image that you are enlarging and is pixelating because of the enlargement process? If that's the case, my advice is to grab Adobe Illustrator (I believe you can get a 30 day trial for free still), place the image into a new document, and do an image trace. I won't go into a full set of instructions here, as there are plenty already on the web, but suffice it to say that this will enable you to enlarge the image without a drastic loss of quality.

I don't know if Corel Draw offers the Image Trace functionality, since I haven't touched a Corel product in half a decade or more, but if it does you may be able to accomplish the same thing.


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## dazzabling (Sep 21, 2011)

Email me [email protected] I have Corel so just send the .cdr format is fine.

I will let you if Corel can trace it or not.


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