quality of a web pic...how do i enlarge it for print?

[joko]

my mate has found a small pic on the net of a lightening storm and he want to use it for a background for a shot of his band...

(he just wants to make a poster advertising a gig, not for any album etc, so hes not too worried about copyright at this stage as its one off and local)

but how can he make the image which is 45kb and seemingly about 5 inches long, suitable for printing at A3...?

is there a way to enhance the quality?

thanks

[joko]

yeh didnt think so...he seems to think there is some way...

[AlBags]

Yep ... You can't polish a turd.
Find a nice BIG image to start with .. then reduce, not resize up :)

[Buenchico]

There's simply not enough data in the image file to get anything remotely like a reasonable image. The image can be made larger, with interpolation being used to 'fill the gaps', but it would be far from ideal.

To give it a try, he'll need something like Irfanview. (It's free and deserves a place on everyone's PC):
http://www.irfanview.com/
Open the image in Irfanview, then go to Image > Resize/Resample ans select one of the larger options in the right-hand panel. Then a bit of experimentation might be needed, using some of other options from the 'Image' menu (such as 'Enhance Colours'). Then go to File > Save As to save the image with a new file name. (I'd normally recommend ensuring that the file type is set to JPG but it might be worth trying BMP, to avoid data loss in the compression).

It would be far easier though, to do a Google Image search for 'lightening' and then select the 'large' filter from the left-hand side.There are hundreds of stunning images available.

Chris

[ABerrant]

You could also search Google Images for 'lightning' ;)

[Buenchico]

Yes, correct spelling might help, ABerrant!
;-)

(In my defence, I copied Joko's spelling and Google Images doesn't seem to mind the error anyway!)