13 Tips to Fix Bad Quality Photos

Photos are one of the most powerful ways to stimulate visual learning. They create pathways for artists and creative thinkers to explore new avenues using incredible pictures. Nonetheless, the picture quality is equally essential as the subject, photo angle, lighting, and other elements. Irrespective of the best available equipment, the photo quality often gets affected due to intensity, uneven lighting, contrast, resolution, geometry, color fidelity, and wrong judgment of the subject.

To achieve the best picture quality, correct use of exposure, lighting, post-processing techniques, and tools; are all critical. Inappropriate image size, color accuracy, compression, and digital noise, are some other common reasons impacting picture quality. So, instead of blaming your camera or lens for a low-resolution image, follow some pro tips shared in this article to fix the bad-quality pictures.

Technical Hitches Causing Bad Photo Quality

Before jumping on the ways to improve photo quality, understand the possible reasons behind various flaws in your image and learn how to rectify them.

Image Resizing or Resampling

Resizing is one of the most common reasons that impact photo quality. If you forcefully enlarge, edit, or resize a photo, it will render into a low-quality, highly pixelated, or distorted image. So, always use the correct aspect ratio to produce a high-quality image. Be wary of the aspect ratio, which is the width and height of the photograph, customarily defined in 16:9, 4:3, and 1:1.

Sharpness

Indeed, all photographers are cautious of image sharpness, but not many realize that the notion is quite subjective. Sharpness is a combination of resolution (size in pixels) and acutance (contrast of a photo) that impacts quality. Often people try to increase sharpness to achieve an extremely-detailed image but end up compromising the image quality.

Poor Printing

Poor print quality is yet another reason for downgraded photo output. Although, in the digital age, people don’t prefer printing their pictures frequently. Nonetheless, cheap printers are equally responsible for ruining picture quality, causing your photos to look blurry or grainy.

Unwanted Noise

Lack of light may result in unwanted noise in the photograph, making it look grainy and obscuring details. Noise may also affect photo quality, due to which you may notice tiny, dark blotches in your shots.

Compressed Image

People often compress an image for the web by grouping or removing certain elements from the photograph. The move helps reduce its size and weight but certainly affects picture quality.

Besides, sometimes photo editing mistakes also degrade the picture quality. Check out the 10 Most Common Photo Editing Mistakes to address such flaws.

13 Tips to Fix Bad Quality Pictures

Now that you are aware of the reasons liable for causing bad photo quality, here are some easy solutions to fix bad quality pictures:

• Try Photoshop: Use Adobe tool to make necessary adjustments and fix the damage in the digital photographs. It helps you improve almost any aspect of a bad-quality picture. The tool offers many options and utilities to fix, improve, and enhance poor-quality images. You can enhance the image quality using filters, color correctors, fillers, background erasers, and spot cleaning options. Moreover, by experimenting with Super Resolution and Resampling, you can elevate your photo quality.

• Use Noise Reduction Tools: Nowadays, many AI techniques are available for noise reduction. You can use them to decrease or eliminate noise from your digital or scanned photographs. Advanced tools like Topaz Denoise AI, DXO PureRAW 2, Skylum Luminar AI, and Noise Ninja are some professional tools that are a bit expensive but worth the investment. You can also try plug-ins like ‘Noiseware’ for Photoshop for surprising outcomes. The only drawback of such advanced techniques is the slow processing time.

• Try Paint.NET: People quite often misjudge the power of this free tool. Nevertheless, it’s a great alternative for lifting the image quality. The Windows-compatible photo editor has a customizable interface and editable layers to achieve multi-level photo editing and correction. It has many useful functions for photo correction without sacrificing image quality.

• Practice ‘Lossless’ Compression: Out of the two most commonly used compressions —lossless and lossy- use the former (PNG or TIFF format) because it helps reduce the picture’s weight without affecting its quality. In contrast, lossy compression is weighty. RAW is technically a lossless format, but remains uncompressed, while JPEG is an in-camera compression format that demands the deletion of some elements to reduce the weight of the image. Read our post on How to Compress Images without Affecting Quality for more details.

• Use GIMP Freeware: GNU Image Manipulation Program or GIMP is a cross-platform image editor that gives you the liberty to revamp an old, faded picture. GIMP can address dampness, cracks, or spots in the same color scheme. Moreover, it eliminates the scruffiness of old or faded photographs. The freeware is quite similar to Adobe Photoshop but compatible with Linux, macOS, Windows, and other operating systems. Further, it is available without any hidden fees, trials, or subscriptions.

• Take Hands-on Experience of Lightroom: Yet another Adobe tool at your disposal with photo management and editing abilities. You can simply import, organize, and manage all the images that need a facelift from a single dashboard. Lightroom is a free application for mobile and tablets that gives the liberty to perform basic photo editing functions on locally stored pictures. The only drawback of this tool is that it can corrupt RAW format images after editing if you try to copy or import them to an external hard drive.

• Use Corel PaintShop Pro: The tool is known for taking underwater and drone photography to a new height. Nonetheless, it can also make seamless modifications and creative improvements with a custom set of tools in your digital photographs. You can easily learn professional-grade RAW photo editing with PaintShop Pro and take control of an extremely big collection of photographs with Corel AfterShot 3. Its batch processing option saves a lot of time on enhancing thousands of images at once.

• Experiment with Photo Filters: The growing rage of photo influencers has fueled the need for quick fixes, and photo filters are the most sought-after solution. Nothing can beat this swift solution that can improve the quality of images saved on your smartphones or tablets. From Google-owned Snapseed app to a plethora of options offered by VSCO and Priime to correct, clean, or enhance any picture on your smartphone or digital devices. Filters can add a special effect to your photograph.

• Use Retouch Removal Tools: Sometimes, a tiny flaw like a garbage bin or a stain on the subject ruins a perfect shot. Using AI-Driven tools, you can effectively retouch such slightly flawed images and target specific areas. Retouch4.me, ImagenAI, autoenhance.ai, and PhotoWorks are some esteemed tools available in this category.

• Upscale with AI Photo Enhancers: These are tools meant to give a facelift to images with grim quality issues due to a beam of light obscuring the subject’s face or some other picture quality issue. The advanced technology of machine learning and artificial intelligence promises to upgrade photo quality without decreasing resolution. It can turn a blurry image into a proficient photograph taken by a skilled professional. Try AI photo enhancing tools like Let’s Enhance, DeepImage, Icons8 Upscaler, Upscaleics, and Vance AI.

• Use Photo Repair Tool: If all of the methods listed above fail, it’s a sign your photographs are corrupt, and you are in desperate need of a professional tool to repair them. Stellar Repair for Photo is professional-grade software to fix multiple photos.

Be it a JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF, BMP, or even a RAW format image, Stellar Photo Repair can repair any file format, even invalid file structures, and make them readable. You can simultaneously repair multiple images with it. The tool makes the whole photo recovery process as easy as a beginner can also repair corrupt RAW images with it.

In a Nutshell

To capture a shot worth a million dollars, professional photographers use a set of tools and the right camera. Similarly, to improve the quality of an old, faded, blurred, pixelated, or grainy image, you also need a set of tools that can enhance picture quality. There are many easy ways to fix bad-quality photos. All you need is the right permutation and combination that is impossible without experimenting with the right tips and tools for photo repair. However, do not ignore the possibility of your picture turning corrupt. Instead of discarding a photograph for being corrupt, use Stellar Photo Repair to fix it.

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About The Author

Niharika Verma

Niharika Verma is a tech-focused writer with a strong broadcast and digital media background. She has more than 8 years of experience in Information Technology, Data Management, and SaaS products & services. As a Senior Content Specialist at Stellar, Niharika suggests the best options to fix data recovery issues on Windows and Mac devices. She aspires to be an expert in data protection techniques to help her digital audience facing distinct iOS and Android related troubles.