I hope I'm in the right place.

I am going to try to create e-cards. The first hurdle, is where I downloaded a picture which was small and when I tried to enlarge it, it just looked like a load of big squares. Is there a way of clarifying, or sharpening or what ever the picture so it looks normal? I believe it has somthing to do with the resolution.

Heres hopeing. Gary.

please have a look at this link gary there is a lot of usefull info on the web site you may not need any of it but it might give you some ideas

http://www.phpdeveloper.org/section/tutorial/34

Ultimately you can never put things in an image when it wasn't there to start with. Depending on the image application you use you may be able to specify different algorithms which may produce better results.

I take it you mean, adjusting the sharpness, and softness, etc, untill I find somthing suitable?
Thanks for your help, i'll keep practicing.

Not nexessarily. It depends on the image manipulation package you use. For example, in Photoshop rather than use the "resize" command, you would want to use "resample". When you choose to resample something you enter the size you want but you can also choose what algortihm you'd like the resampling to use, such as bileniar, cubic etc. etc.

But at the end of the day say you have an image that is 100x100 pixels, then you start off with 10,000 pixels each containing some information about the image. If you increase the resolution to 200x200 pixels then you have to fill 40,000 pixels with information and 30,000 of those weren't there originally. All an algorithm can do is best guess what those 30,000 pixels should contain and some are better for certain types of image than others. Resizing a block graphic for example is a very different proposition from resizing a photo.

BigT, I don't know if you are still looking in on this, but I have been playing about with the graphics and I think I get your drift now. As you say, you can't make somthing out of nothing. (It's common sense rearly when you think of it).

Thanks for your help and explanations.
Gary.