Looking to improve the quality of your photos? With an AI image upscaler, you can enhance photos and other images for your social media and other platforms.
Image upscalers fix various imperfections, ensuring everything you post online is of the highest quality. As such, they are invaluable for content creators who want to increase their followership but also for businesses seeking to increase engagement from their visuals.
How Do AI Image Upscalers Work?
Modern upscalers rely on artificial intelligence to smoothen out various imperfections. This technology breaks down your photos into parts and polishes each one of them.
With this software, you increase the resolution of your photos, remove noise and background, do magic erasing, edit photos in bulk, and perform other actions. Most of them come with free plans, which are great for testing purposes.
How Can I Use AI Image Upscalers in My Marketing?
There are various situations when you might benefit from AI image upscaler:
- Improve photos from your trips
- Retouch old family photos
- Remove errors and other imperfections
- Boost lighting on photos taken during the night
- Compensate for a bad phone camera, etc
Upscalers are especially valuable for influencers on social media. As these guys take photos all the time, a good portion of their pics will be of low quality. Sometimes, you might take a bad photo due to weather conditions, which you’ll have to polish later on. Occasionally, you want to enhance lighting or improve resolution.
Whatever the case, these tools provide enormous value even if you take a great photo with an advanced camera. They go above and beyond your usual photo editing, relying on AI to smoothen any imperfections in the images.
15 Recommended Free AI Image Upscalers
After going through a bunch of different upscaling tools, I’ve decided to compile the 15 best ones. I mostly focused on software that has a free version. Still, if you intend to utilize AI image upscalers on a regular basis, I suggest you get a paid plan for one of these programs.
1. FreePik
With FreePik, you can easily and quickly improve the quality of your low-resolution images. This nifty upscaling tool works directly from the browser and requires a sign-up to use.
As for its features, you can boost the original image to 2K or 4K resolution. There are also several image styles at your disposal, giving you more control over the image creation process. My favorite thing is that you can change the “imagination” of your pics, instilling a new life into them. Choose a subtle, vivid, or wild appearance to enhance the files.
Given that the online tool relies on AI technology, you also have the option to enter prompts. With these instructions, the software makes additional improvements to the pic.
2. Icons8 Smart Upscaler
Icons8 is a perfect solution for your blurry images. The program improves image resolution within seconds, and I especially like the fact that it has a bulk uploading feature. With this function, you can enhance up to 500 pics simultaneously!
The free version gives you three attempts at AI-powered image upscaling. Unfortunately, each pic comes with a watermark, which makes them fairly useless. As you presume, you have to subscribe to the paid version to have unlimited uses and to remove watermarks.
As for other image upscaling features, you have the option to enhance face details, boost the quality to 4K, and remove the background. There’s also API access, so you can combine this software with your other tools.
3. Fotor
Fotor is a large online platform that offers various image services. With the power of AI upscaling, you can increase the image size of any picture. The software also features a bulk conversion, which is perfect for companies and artists.
To use the free version, you first have to sign up with your Google account. Once the picture is complete, you can compare it with the old version. There’s also an option to zoom in so you can check out small details. Similar to Icons8, Fotor leaves watermarks on its paid images.
I like that this AI image upscaler tool works with other Fotor products. That way, once you’re done removing image noise and other imperfections, you can introduce other improvements, such as removing the background or using a magic eraser. Most of these features are free to use, which is another major perk.
4. CapCut
By using this noise removal service, you can enhance pictures by up to 400%. As such, it is a perfect solution for updating your old photos, removing mistakes, and boosting the visual appearance of low-quality images.
Similar to most other entries on the list, CapCut requires that you log into your Google account or share your email address. The software allows you to choose between qualities ranging from 720p to 4K.
While CapCup might not have the same fancy features as other entries on the list, it has one major advantage over them. Your upscaling images don’t have a watermark, which makes the free version more useful than the previously mentioned programs.
Further Reading: 15 AI Image Enhancers to Improve Your Photos
5. I Love IMG
This simple program will save you a lot of time when improving the image format of your pics. The tool doesn’t have many features, only allowing you to choose between 2K and 4K quality. However, it is rather fast, especially when compared to other software from this category.
I Love IMG is actually an image platform featuring various basic photo editing software. Once you’re done with the normal upscaling, you can proceed to resize the image, crop the image, or introduce other alterations. My only gripe with this tool is that its outputs seem inferior compared to programs with advanced AI upscaling technology.
6. Nero
Nero AI image upscaler is a software that relies on sophisticated algorithms for its outputs. Some of its main features are anime style pictures, face enhancements, business photos, and photograph-quality enhancements. There’s also a bulk feature that saves a lot of time when handing lots of files.
Although the online tool asks for credits when you first start using it, don’t be fooled by this. You can still use the program for free to process several pictures. Once you process the image, you can zoom in and out to see the effect of changes. Based on what I’ve seen during testing, Nero improves your photo resolutions by quite a bit.
7. Media.io
With Media.io, you can introduce various improvements to your photos, removing image noise and blur and enhancing the color palette. The advanced algorithms do a great job of recognizing various imperfections and turning old photos into detailed images. Media.io supports four file formats, including JPG, JPEG, BMP, and PNG format.
Unlike most other entries on the list, this software can improve the file size up to a whopping 8K. To access your photo, you have to log into your Google account, social media, or email. Besides AI-based image upscaling, Media.io also features a sharpener, portrait enhancer, restorer, and color correction features.
Further Reading: 23 Recommended Tools for AI Content Creation
8. Let’sEnhance.io
This AI-powered photo tool helps you increase image size and quality. In fact, the software enhances your files up to 16 times and by 500 megapixels. With the free version, you can improve up to 10 damaged photos and select enhancement type, image size, and resolution.
Unfortunately, I struggled quite a bit during my testing. The company forces you to take additional steps, such as verifying your email, which is almost unheard of in this niche. Nevertheless, I would still recommend that you try this tool in your spare time.
9. Clipdrop
Clipdrop is part of the Jasper platform. The software comes with an API, allowing you to integrate the AI image upscaler tool with other company software. During my testing, I used the free version, which leaves a watermark. Still, I really liked Clipdrop because it has numerous options, including relighting, cropping, generative fill, background eraser, and even people swapping.
Once you upload image, you can select the image quality going from 2x to 16x upgrade. There’s also an option to show intricate details, which makes the actual processing time quite a bit longer. I also love that the free version has an option for batch processing, although it only allows ten photos.
Further Reading: 10 Definitive AI Watermark Remover Tools
10. Vance.ai
An interesting thing about Vance.ai is that it uses several artificial intelligence technologies to improve low-res images. Another thing that makes it stand out from other image enhancers is that it doesn’t work exclusively online; you can download Vance.ai to your PC and improve pics from there.
Like many other programs on the list, Vance.ai adds watermarks to your photos (remove them by spending credits). As for added features, the software can process a batch of images and crop your content. Based on what I saw, the tool is especially great for increasing the original size of an image without losing quality.
Further Reading: AI Content Assistants: 13 Tools to Assist in Your Content Creation
11. Starry AI
Before using Starry AI, you have to leave your personal data, after which you choose the use case. The available options are general use, artist, small business, large company, student, and non-profit. Based on what I’ve seen, these choices don’t have a big impact on the features or outputs.
Besides the image upscaling feature, you can also remove backgrounds from photos, utilize art AI algorithms, and a few other things. The software excels at tackling cartoonish artifacts and anime images. The free version only has 4x upscaling but doesn’t leave a watermark on your pics.
12. Img2Go
The best thing about Img2Go is that it’s rather straightforward. There are several upload image options, which you can adjust before upscaling. For example, you can choose between 2K and 4K-quality images and change the original size. The software supports 11 file formats.
Img2Go does a great job improving the resolution of images. The website also offers other tools that you can use with their online AI image upscaler tool. For example, you can try out cropping, resizing, background removal, and a few other features. My favorite thing about the software is that it’s completely free and doesn’t require registration.
13. Pixelcut
The functionality of Pixelcut varies significantly depending on whether you’re using the free or paid version. With the free plan, you can boost the resolution of images without having any special features at your disposal. However, if you opt for the paid plan, you gain access to advanced AI technology, and you can use the software on various devices.
It’s also worth noting that the basic plan only has 2x photo quality. With the premium version, you can also process batches of images with a single click. The Pixelcut also offers a few other programs, such as a magic eraser and a background processing tool.
Further Reading: Best 15 AI Photo Editors for Your Next Project
14. AiSeeSoft
Like other entries, AiSeeSoft allows you to copy-paste or drop images directly into the browser. Based on my initial testing, the software does a great job of turning regular photos into art image quality. It’s also rather versatile when it comes to supported file formats.
With the free plan, you can upscale image resolution for two files. Each photo comes with a watermark, which you can remove upon registration. Unfortunately, the free version only supports 2x scaling, which is rather disappointing.
15. Cutout.pro
With this nifty online AI image upscaler tool, you can do all sorts of things. Cutout.pro has noise reduction capabilities, freshens your old pics, sharpens resolution, and improves the quality of night images.
When enhancing your files, there’s an option to retain the original quality without major enhancements or to improve the pic with AI. Perhaps the worst thing about Cutout.pro is that it only supports JPG and PNG formats. Furthermore, you have to get premium version for higher quality outputs.
Next Steps
After reading this post, you should have a better understanding of what kind of software is available on the market. My suggestion is to go with programs that have numerous features and can upgrade your images to at least 4K quality. Focus on companies that create various AI solutions, as they usually have the best tech.
Hero Photo by Le Buzz Studio on Unsplash
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