Advice please for photo saved too small

[Jacs14]

When new to photography there is many aspects to learn and not all with taking the shot ... there is stuff to learn with post processing ... and the one BIG error I have done with a lot of my early shots is save too small!!! which on the whole isn't a huge problem, because hopefully as I improve they are shots that although I may still like will see how they could be improved and take again, or luckily they still print up ok. The only real problem is with shots they may not present themself again, and you are still proud of them and would like to post them to different sites ... however they are thumbnails due to being saved wrong and when posted to site don't showcase that great, is there any advice or way to resave them bigger that anyone knows of .... I am still fairly new to all this and as you get to know me better you will learn that my limitations are not only in taking the shot but afterwards as well!!!!
example below

[Lani]

The best thing to do is to never work on your original....either shoot raw and keep the raw file, or if you shoot jpeg, duplicate the images first, so you always have a "digital negative."
If the images you are talking about are only thumbnail size you are limited by the resolution they were saved at as much as the size.

[ameerat42]

Hi Jacs14. For sure, don't work on your originals, as Lani says. I have made the mistake of getting smaller than expected images when forgetting to re-set the image size from small back to large. But you might be able to enhance what you've got in the images with some PP (post-processing).

To a limited extent, programs like Photoshop (which I use) can re-size your images. The key is to do this in small steps, and not too much. The result depends a lot on the original image quality. It is called "re-sampling" in Photoshop. In addition, you can get a plug-in for Photoshop called "Stair Interpolation". There are references to this in this forum (somewhere). It is supposed to be more efficient in enlarging images than the Photoshop algorithms. I have tried it, but not enough to give much advice yet.

But can you supply an image to see what you are talking about, and maybe some of us can try to enhance it. Am...

[Jacs14]

oops! took shot off flickr ... didn't realise it would be removed from here too!!!
this is the shot that I'd like to save bigger if i could!!!

[ricnak]

Not sure on your exact situation but.....

If you still have the memory card/USB stick thing that you originally saved the image to, you could try a download thing called Image Rescue. It was Image Rescue 3 when I used it some years ago.

Google it. It did cost some amount of money, at the time I decided that I would rather have the family holiday shots than try to explain to everyone that I had stuffed up again and deleted everything. I can easily justify the expense as I am sure I will need it again someday!

Good Luck.

[ricktas]

You can shrink a photo, but enlarging it is almost impossible at that size. Once you double the size of it, you are still only going to have a photo that is 260 pixels wide and it is going to look very pixelated.

Unfortunately, you are going to have to put that one down to experience. It is a goner! Never work on your original files, make a copy, as the first step in your work flow, if you shoot in JPG.

I have doubled the size of your photo here just to show you what will happen if you attempt it.

at 300 pixels wide upsizing the photo is starting to show degradation, the second one here is at 600 pixels wide and basically not usable for much at all. There just isnt enough data left in your small file to effectively upsize it again.

[ameerat42]

Jacs14. Must agree with ricktas. I got an identical result after a 4-stage Stair Interp at 150% each time. Didn't post it to save space. Am...

[Jacs14]

thank you very much for taking the time to try .... as you said its all experience!!!
Jacs