Upscale your image resolution 2x using Neural Networks.

In the age of internet images and graphics have an unparalleled engagement rate. A good image has the power to communicate with a large audience within seconds and has the potential to get viral instantly.

When it comes to user experience a crisp good quality image is something which ensures maximum engagement than a lousy low-resolution image.

But, what if you don’t have a high-resolution image.?

Recently I stumbled upon this website “waifu2x” which can scale up your image resolution up to 2x.

Behind the curtains

Waifu 2x uses Deep convolution neural networks to produce a super-resolution image from a low-resolution image.

The program is written in high-level, multi-paradigm, lightweight ‘Lua‘ programming language.

The idea of waifu2x is inspired by ‘Super Resolution Convolution Neural Network’ research paper

Summary of the Convolution Network :

1. Patch extraction and representation: this operation extracts (overlapping) patches from the lowresolution image Y and represents each patch as a high-dimensional vector. These vectors comprise a set of feature maps, of which the number equals to the dimensionality of the vectors.
2. Non-linear mapping: this operation nonlinearly maps each high-dimensional vector onto another high-dimensional vector. Each mapped vector is conceptually the representation of a high-resolution patch. These vectors comprise another set of feature maps.
3. Reconstruction: this operation aggregates the above high-resolution patch-wise representations to generate the final high-resolution image. This image is expected to be similar to the ground truth X.

To know more about Super resoluton Deep sense AI has a great article covering Super resolution

How To use waifu2x?

1. Go the waifu2x website :
2. Upload your picture or paste a image url.
3. choose the style artwork if you have some graphic/illustration or photo if you have a camera clicked photograph.
4. Chose a noise reduction level or use the default ‘medium’ option. I suggest start with the default and try the other option if you didnt got the desired output.
5. Chose upscale parameter 1.6x or 2x.
6. Clear the ‘I am not a robot captcha’
7. Click on download

Waifu2x Results:

*Images below might not be on 1:1 scale, download individual image to compare.

Small Images:

Medium Images:

*The original image is blurred.

Overall the program works pretty well and can be used to upscale images.

Limitation:

• Image must be less than 5MB.
• Image should be less than 3000×300.