Choosing the right scale factor
- 2× — When the image looks decent but needs to be slightly larger. Example: 1500px wide photo needed at 3000px for a banner.
- 4× — The most commonly used scale. Good for old photos, product images, and profile pictures that need to go from web resolution to print resolution.
- 8× — For extreme cases: postage-stamp sized images, thumbnails, or very degraded low-resolution sources. Only available with Real-ESRGAN.
Choosing the right model
- Real-ESRGAN: Use for photos, screenshots, illustrations, anime, logos, or any case where fidelity to the original is more important than adding creative detail.
- Clarity Upscaler: Use for portraits, landscape photography, product photos, or artistic images where you want the AI to actively improve texture quality — hair detail, skin texture, natural surfaces.
Settings guide for Clarity Upscaler
- Creativity 0.3–0.4, Resemblance 0.7–0.9: Conservative enhancement. Output stays very close to original, gently sharpened.
- Creativity 0.35, Resemblance 0.6 (defaults): Best all-purpose setting for most photos.
- Creativity 0.5–0.6, Resemblance 0.5: Stronger enhancement. Good for old or damaged photos.
- Creativity 0.7+, Resemblance 0.3–0.4: Aggressive. The AI generates significant new detail. Use only when source is very low quality.
Tips by image type
- Old/damaged photos: Clarity Upscaler at creativity 0.5, resemblance 0.55. Or Real-ESRGAN with face enhance ON.
- Product photos: Real-ESRGAN 4× for clean, artifact-free results. Clarity 4× for richer texture on fabric, wood, leather.
- Screenshots: Real-ESRGAN 2× or 4×. Never Clarity — it will hallucinate detail in UI elements.
- Portraits: Clarity 4× with creativity 0.35, resemblance 0.7. Enable face enhance if using Real-ESRGAN.
- Illustrations/anime: Real-ESRGAN 4×. Clean, no unwanted texture addition.
- Landscape photography: Clarity 4× at creativity 0.4. Rock, water, foliage become dramatically sharper.
File preparation tips
- Remove JPEG compression first if possible — save as PNG before uploading to avoid double-compression artifacts.
- Crop to the region of interest if upscaling just one part of a large image.
- Images over 4000px on the longest side may take longer to process. Consider resizing before uploading for 8× upscales.