How To Fix Pixelated Photos & Pictures

Jamie Read more October 7, 2020

Have you tried zooming in your digital photos to try and get a clearer image, only to have a grainy and blurry photograph as a result? This is called pixelation, and this is what happens when you stretch out your photos so much or try to resize it. It is caused by displaying bitmap graphics at a larger resolution than supported, thus causing individual pixels of an image to be visible. At lower resolutions, this might cause some blurring effects, but if you try to blow a small-enough photo up to a larger size, you’re going to end up with a digitized photo. This can be a bit frustrating, especially when you need a larger version of the photograph.

Luckily, that’s not the end of it. In this article, we’ll take a look at how you can fix pixelated photos so that you don’t end up with a distorted or otherwise low-quality picture. We all love to have perfect photos to share with our friends and followers in social media; and for those who are not into that, keeping lovely and great quality photographs in personal photo albums is a delight.

Why Do My Pictures Look Pixelated?

Before we move onto our guide, let’s take a look at an example to get a better idea of what we’re going to be dealing with.

This lowercase letter A is presented at a size of 256×256. Notice how crisp the lines are – your eyes won’t see any pixels, just curves and straight lines. It doesn’t appear to be blurry or jagged in any way.

Now here’s the same image file, resized to be 1024×1024. Take a look at the difference.
Notice how on every curve you can see rectangular blocks? That’s pixelation. It happens when there is too much display area, and not enough data to create smooth curves. When this happens, images become blurry, distorted, and just overall worse in quality.

Pixelation usually occurs when you try to resize a low-quality image or when viewing a very low-quality image. When you upsize an image too much, it becomes blocky in appearance, with stair-like nature of each curve. This destroys the overall effect of the image you are viewing.

Short of creating a new image of the same object in a higher resolution, there is no way to increase the resolution of an image. However, it is possible to use software tools to improve the image quality so that the pixelated image doesn’t look so bad.

There are a couple of different ways to accomplish this task. You can use an online service to process the image, or you can use Photoshop, Paint.net, or other graphics program to do the same job manually.

In this article, I’ll present a short tutorial on how to improve the appearance of a pixelated image regardless of what tools you have available.

Before we get started, an important note: whenever you edit an image, make sure to make a backup copy of the file and work only on the copy. Leave the original image file intact, so that if things go terribly wrong (remember that things often go terribly wrong), you still have the original image as a fallback.

Fix Pixelated Pictures With an Online Tool

Online tools have the advantage of allowing you to do significant work without having to download any software to your computer. This is great if you are on a work or school machine where you may not be allowed to install new programs, or you may be working on a phone or tablet. There are many online tools that can do image editing and manipulation. I know of two good ones for fixing pixelated pictures and will describe them here: Pixenate and Fotor. Both sites offer a range of free tools that you can use to manipulate images without having to download a specific program. They are ideal for occasional image editing, especially if you need to do it on a mobile device, and both do a pretty good job of fixing pixelated pictures. Both apps work in much the same way.

For example, in Fotor:

Upload your image to the site.
Select ‘Effect’ from the left menu and scroll to Pixellate.
Use the scroll bar to scroll left to minimize pixelation.

That should smooth out pixelation nicely. Fotor also offers a Smoothing tool that can do more, but this is a premium tool. You will either end up with a watermarked image or have to pay. If you want to try out the tool, select Beauty from the left menu and Smoothing then use the sliders to minimize the pixels.

In Pixellate:

Upload your image to the site.
Select the ‘Smooth Photo’ icon from the left menu.

The impact this has on the image depends on the initial image quality but should improve it somewhat.

Fix Pixelated Pictures with Photoshop

If you have a little more time and a lot more money, you can do quite a bit to fix a pixelated image in Photoshop. Photoshop is the undisputed king of image editing programs but requires quite a lot of money to buy. However, this software can do so much to your photos that the cost will definitely be worth it. Despite a fairly steep learning curve with many Photoshop functions, it only takes a second to fix pixelated pictures.

Open your image in Photoshop.
Select ‘Filter’ and ‘Blur’.
Select ‘Gaussian Blur’ and use the slider to find an acceptable level. Select ‘OK.’
Select ‘Filter’ and ‘Sharpen.’
Select ‘Unsharp Mask’ and use the slider to find an acceptable level. Select ‘OK’ once done.
Save the image.

Another approach is to add a layer with soft light to minimize the appearance of the pixels.

Right-click the image and select ‘Layer’ and ‘Create New Layer.’
Select ‘Blending Options’ in the top menu and select ‘Soft Light.’
Select ‘Filters’ and ‘Noise.’
Select ‘Despeckle’ and find a level you’re happy with.
Select ‘Image,’ ‘Adjustments,’ and ‘Brightness/Contrast.’
Adjust both to find an acceptable level.

The first process will do a bit to minimize pixelation and that may be enough. If it isn’t, try the second process as this can help a bit too.

Fix Pixelated Pictures with Paint.NET

If you don’t have Photoshop and can’t justify the expense, Paint.NET or GIMP are viable alternatives. I tend to use Paint.NET as I have used it for years. It isn’t anywhere near as powerful as Photoshop but is free, regularly updated and can perform many basic image editing tasks. Teaching you how to use GIMP is beyond the scope of this article, but Paint.NET is pretty straightforward.

Open your image in Paint.NET.
Select ‘Effects,’ ‘Blur,’ and ‘Gaussian Blur.’
Use the slider to reduce the pixel effect.
Select ‘Effects,’ ‘Photo,’ and ‘Sharpen.’
Use the slider to find an acceptable level.
Save the image.

There is no substitute for taking high-quality pictures but if you don’t have that luxury, there are a few ways to reduce pixels in images. The exact levels to which you make adjustments depends on the image itself. Where you see ‘find a level’ just use the sliders to find a position where pixelation is minimal but the overall impression of the image is maintained.

Fixing Pixelated Photos Through Mobile Apps

Most of us take photos through our smart phones, since it is more convenient and easy to do so. The newest models and versions of smart phones are equipped with excellent cameras that are able to take crisp and clear photos. There are odd moments, though, that we encounter the need to fix blurry and pixelated photographs in our phones. Thankfully, there are a number of photo editing apps that you can download from App Store or Google Play to solve this issue. Here, we have compiled a list of some of the most helpful apps to fix pixelated photos:

Adobe Photoshop Express: Photo Editor Collage Maker – This app is free to download, and has amazing features, including the ability to make dark and grainy pictures look great.
PIXLR – This mobile photo editing app is very user friendly, whether you are a newbie or a professional photographer. It has all the tools required for you to do amazing and creative edits; and it’s free to download!
Sharpen Image – This app was specifically developed to sharpen images. It’s pretty basic, with two forms of sliders – one for adjusting pixel size and the other for sharpening effects.
Afterlight – Afterlight lets you edit images in a quick and straightforward way. It allows you to fix blurry photos in a breeze with a variety of tools to help you enhance image quality.

Pixelation can be very annoying to deal with. It doesn’t take much for a great picture to be ruined by poor quality. Fortunately, there are tools and techniques you can use to improve the quality of a pixelated photo.