Hot take: AI image upscalers are worse than just using a basic bicubic resize

I kept hearing how AI upscalers were the future for restoring old photos. After testing 4 different tools on a 200x300 pixel scan of my grandma's wedding photo, the AI added weird skin texture that looked nothing like her. A simple bicubic interpolation in GIMP kept the natural grain and actually preserved the original feel. Has anyone else noticed AI upscaling adding fake detail instead of just cleaning up what's there?

2 comments

2 Comments

betty1266d ago

Oh yeah, absolutely. I wasted a whole weekend on one of those programs trying to fix a blurry photo of my kids and it gave them these creepy smooth doll faces that looked nothing like real skin. Bicubic all the way for me too, that fake detail just makes things worse.

allen.amy6d ago

Try free software first like GIMP before paying for anything.