Changing the amount of pixels in an Image in GIMP (or Photoshop) for scaling purposes

Question

I'd like to paint an image from a video game with acrylics on a large piece of mdf board. The image is save on my laptop, is from an early video game system (Sega) and is pixelated. I am trying to resize/scale the image with GIMP so that it will look good when I paint it pixel by pixel blown up on the mdf board. The issue that I keep running into is that my mdf board is 36 in X 24.5 in. The image that I am using is 96 pixels per inch. I can't, nor do I want to paint 96 pixels per inch. I am trying to change the amount of pixels/size of the image so that it is something manageable to paint yet does not look extremely blurry. Is this possible? I've watched a bunch of scaling/resizing youtube videos but still can't figure out how to solve my issue.

I am using GIMP but hoping either a GIMP or PHotoshop person can help me out.

Answer 1

If you want "bigger pixels" to make a small image bigger but still pixellated, use Image>Scale image with "Interpolation: none" in the Quality section. This gives something likes this:

If you have too many pixels, use Filters>Blur>Pixelize to replace a rectangle of pixels by a single rectangle with their average color.

Answer 2

In GIMP when you use Image > Scale Image, set the Interpolation method to "None" when rescaling. This will keep the hard edges of the pixels.

In Photoshop the equivalent when using Image > Image Size, is to set the method to "Nearest Neighbour (hard edges)"

If you want to paint solid pixels on the image, probably best to do it before you rescale. In GIMP and Photoshop use the Pencil Tool to paint hard edged pixels.

I notice the image you posted seems to have more pixels than you probably need. If you rescale the image using these interpolation methods, to half the width and half the height, you will get single solid pixels. This will make it much easier to paint on with the Pencil Tool.

Example in GIMP, scaled down to give single pixels, and painting solid pixels using the Pencil Tool.