Blowing up a really low res photo (The Pale Blue Dot)

[SiD the Turtle]

Hi chaps. I'd love to blow up a print of The Pale Blue Dot but being an image taken from an old space probe billions of miles from Earth, its original resolution is very low.

Any thoughts on getting this blown up? Will it look terrible?

 

[SDK^]

Will it look terrible?

Yes
Given the original image is very poor and the full resolution is 453×614 pixels then anything larger than the image size on your screen is going to be worthless.

 

[asim18]

It would be better to just digitally "remake" it using photoshop.

 

[Stupot_]

Probably won't work.... but might look ok as a grainy abstract. You could scale it up to poster size and crop it to A4 to see how it prints.

How about this? Different spacecraft but I think it's a cool image http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_plaque

 

[Rroff]

As there is nothing to the image except color noise I can't really see what you can do with it :S

 

[Amp34]

It would be better to just digitally "remake" it using photoshop.

That was my initial though as well.

I'd have thought you could just stick that image in PS/Illustrator and trace it in vector form?

 

[Adrianr]

That was my initial though as well.

I'd have thought you could just stick that image in PS/Illustrator and trace it in vector form?

Just make it from scratch. It's not a complicated image. It's a black background, a few blurred coloured lines, the tiniest blue dot you've ever seen and a shed load of noise dumped on top. Make a version A3 @ 300dpi and it'll print happily to anything you like.

Edit: 10 minutes Not perfect but unless you're hanging it next to the original I presume you won't notice the subtleties. If you want the full res tiff I can Dropbox or Yousendit over (Or the PSD if you feel like editing in bits yourself). I didn't know how bright it should be as that wiki photo looks mega washed out, I presume the original has a lot more contrast. I have been editing this on a black screen too (if you're looking at it with bright high contrast elements surrounding it it will appear much darker).

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Cheers chaps, I was wondering that because it doesn't really contain any 'elements' such as people, buildings etc, I might be able to get away with blowing it up, that it might not look too bad.

...

Cheers for that Adrianr, could you send me the PSD? I'll have a play and a bit of a tweak. The original is in fact quite washed out because the camera of the probe was pretty much pointing at the sun when the picture was taken!

 

[Adrianr]

Just dropped a message to your trust. Get back to me with your email and I'l send it over.

 

[SiD the Turtle]

Ta matey, just sent you a mail.

 

[R B Customs]

Sorry to totally hijack this, but is there any chance you could send a .psd / tiff my way Adrian? I love this image and would love to have it printed too.

Thanks.

 

[Adrianr]

Yeah 'course I can. Drop me a mail to my trust and ill sort out a download for you.

 

[Patrick Moss]

Dear Adrian,

I am coming at his about 6 years too late.

However...

Would it be possible to have a copy of the high res pale blue dot "replica" image that you created? I would be most grateful.

Thank you.

 

[Hyburnate]

You may wish to set up your trust and give them an email.

 

[Adrianr]

Well that is a funny coincidence, I barely post here any more, not sure why I decided to give Photography a check today! Odd story but I was contacted by an Australian MP after the same file for a big print to go in his office. Perhaps I should just make it available somewhere.

Unfortunately the computer the file is on had a bit of a tizzy just this past week, think it may be the PSU but I haven't had chance to fix it yet. (If anyone is based in central/north london and can lend me one for diagnostics btw that would be a great help!). As soon as I've got it sorted I will drag it out.