Samsung Adds an Image Upscaling Feature to Its Gallery App

howtogeek.com:

A new upscaling feature is quietly making its way to the Samsung Gallery app. This feature, which requires the latest Photo Editor update, uses AI to increase an image's resolution and clarity. It may be useful when close-cropping a photograph or deciphering an image with illegible text.

Samsung's upscaling technology initially debuted in the Enhance-X photo-editing app. But very few Galaxy owners know about Enhance-X, as it isn't preinstalled on Samsung phones. And, in any case, AI image upscaling is a welcome addition to the Gallery app; it's more convenient than opening a full-blown photo editor.

There's just one oddity—you can only use the upscaling tool after cropping an image. The photos on your Galaxy phone are already high-resolution and don't need to be upscaled until they are cropped, so perhaps this makes sense. It's just an odd hurdle when dealing with images that you've downloaded from the internet or received from family.

This feature was first reported by Mishaal Rahman. He tested the feature on a dull, noisy, highly-compressed image that contained some hardly-legible text. After upscaling the image from 1148x455 to 4468x1868, the text became clearer, and much of the digital noise was erased.

Of course, image upscaling is never a perfect process. An image that's lacking in detail will never look detailed. And, like AI-generated images, AI-upscaled photos tend to have a soft, oily, or smeary quality. Boosting an image's resolution will also increase its file size. Mishaal Rahman's photo started at 184KB but leaped to 1.87MB after upscaling—it takes up ten times more space than it did before.

The Gallery app's upscaling feature requires Photo Editor version 3.4.13.49. Your Galaxy phone should automatically install this update once it's available. That said, the update isn't available to everyone just yet, and Samsung hasn't provided a list of compatible smartphones.

Source: Mishaal Rahman