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pixelated image to be smoothed out I have a bunch of images such as this one that are completely pixelated, and I my friend wants to make large prints to hang in her house. How can I smooth these out so they will not appear pixelated? If I apply anti aliasing, would that be enough? If so, what kind of anti aliasing? Is there a good way to convert these to vector graphics? What level of image quality do people typically need in order for a large print to look good?

To be clear, these images are various resolutions including 800x600 and 960x720. Every pixel takes on one of exactly three colors. There has been no smoothing or averaging in these pictures yet.

Edit: I did a little reading about printing scales. If I want to print this at any reasonable size I will have to get a much higher resolution. So, is there a way to interpolate edges in 2 or 3 color images like this, or do I just have to start over at a higher resolution?

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    This Q&A may be interesting for you: graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/19086/… - G'Mic comes with an online version to try out: gmicol.greyc.fr
    – Takkat
    Aug 13, 2019 at 19:10
  • This is an interesting question, variety of a classic. Some would say "you should not even want this", while others even program tools to just make the best of any source. Have a look at SmillaEnlarger and see if the result is sufficient for your needs.
    – Martin Zaske
    Aug 20, 2019 at 9:51

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Illustrator's Live Trace set to three colours did a reasonable job vectorising this example - if the rest are similar, you can convert all to vector art and be guaranteed good large-format output.

enter image description here

Though in this case I simply exported as a larger .png to make image posting easier here at GD.SE, you should have no trouble with .svg, or .pdf or .eps - whatever your printer prefers!

Hope this helps.

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    I would add, for more complex images Vector Magic does a far superior job of image trace than Illustrator and the controls can be automatic or manual (so you dictate edge smoothing etc). Once the trace is complete it removes surplus points (Illustrator doesn't) making any refinements you want to make in Illustrator much quicker. You have the advantage of solid colour so no reason at all you cannot print these large format - they would look good across a whole apartment wall for example (you can send me the royalties later).
    – Applefanboy
    Aug 16, 2019 at 9:54
  • @Applefanboy - forgive the question off topic (perhaps we could do a chat if you're so inclined) but I'd love to know about the current state of graphics & illustration on Guernsey, me!
    – GerardFalla
    Aug 16, 2019 at 14:48

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