Hot take: Those AI art upscalers actually work pretty well

I was dead set against them for months, figured it was all hype. But after trying Topaz Gigapixel on a 300 DPI scan from a 2004 tablet drawing, I was surprised how much detail it pulled back. The fabric texture on the jacket actually looked like I originally painted it. Has anyone else found a specific tool that changed their mind on something like this?

3 comments

3 Comments

taylor6681mo agoTop Commenter

Buddy ran his grandma's old photos through one, crazy how clear faces got.

bens811mo ago

Crazy how clear faces got" really hits home for me. I've seen those old family photos where everyone looks like they're made of mashed potatoes, just blobs with no detail. It's wild what these restoration tools can do now, bringing back the actual person behind all that grain and fuzz. Must have been something special for your buddy to see his grandma's face clear as day after all these years. Kind of makes you wonder how many lost details are sitting in shoeboxes in attics everywhere.

laura_black3110d ago

Actually it's not "crazy how clear faces got" exactly, it's more like the AI makes up details that look believable but aren't always real. I read an article from MIT last year where they showed these tools can invent wrinkles or eye shapes your grandma never had, because the algorithm fills in missing data based on what it thinks a face should look like. So those clear photos might actually be fake, not restored. Still cool to see but kind of messed up if you're trying to preserve history.