7+ Best AI Image Upscaler and Enhancer Tools [in 2023]

Don’t you hate it when you find the perfect image, but its size and resolution are too small?

And if you try to take liberties with the image’s size by stretching it out, pixelation sets in. Unfortunately, that’s one of the realities of being a professional that works with photos and images!

If only there were software tools that could fix these issues. Well, as it turns out, there are!

Once again, artificial intelligence comes to the rescue in the form of image upscaler technology! These tools can increase an image’s resolution by up to eight times its original size.

In this article, we’ll discuss 7+ of the best AI image upscaler and enhancer software tools in 2023. So read until the end to bid farewell to blurry images! 

What is the Best AI Image Upscaler?

If you’re looking for the best AI image upscaling software to enhance and expand your photos, then you’ll want to be sure it offers all the features your project requires. 

Key features to look for in a robust image upscaling software are:

• It can quickly zoom in on details with intelligent algorithms that serve up sharp, high-resolution images.
• Support for common file formats such as JPEG, PNG, and more.
• Automated processes so that you can batch-process large numbers of files.
• Intuitive user interfaces with access to powerful tools like deep learning technology and denoising modes so that you always get the perfect output. 

With the right features, good AI image upscaling software will make it easy to bring old or low-quality photographs back to life in crisp clarity.

1. Topaz Labs Gigapixel AI

Overview  

Topaz Gigapixel AI uses AI technology to upscale images to resolutions of up to 600%. The software’s AI has trained on millions of sample images (courtesy of neural networks) and understands what photorealistic detail looks like. The result is an image resolution enhancement tool that can upscale low-resolution images without losing quality.

This image upscaler can improve compositions that feature fur, feathers, clothing, landscapes, cityscapes, and more. You won’t experience issues with artifacts common with other upscaling methods.

And you can comfortably zoom and crop images knowing that Gigapixel AI can increase the image’s resolution without quality issues cropping up.

Top Features  

• Upscale your photo’s image resolution to up to 600%
• You can zoom and crop images without any issues and imperfections cropping up
• Gigapixel AI can help to enlarge photo sizes for large print displays
• You can use Gigiapixel AI to fix the image quality of excessively pixelated images
• Upscale images without experiencing blocky artifacts
• Enhance and improve a range of textures like fur, feathers, and clothing
• Increase image resolution for blurry low-resolution faces using its Face Recovery AI feature
• You can pay for this software outright ($99.99 lump sum)
• The Topaz Labs image quality bundle is great for AI image editing as well as upscaling!

Pricing  

You can buy Topaz Labs AI Gigapixel outright for $99.99. Or, you can buy the Topaz Image Quality bundle for $199. This bundle includes Gigapizel AI, DeNoise AI, and Sharpen AI!

If, for any reason, you need a refund after purchasing the software, the company has a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Bottom Line  

Gigapixel AI is best for professional photographers, game designers, video editors, and image editing hobbyists. This software is excellent for upscaling images of all kinds and can turn a low-res image into a high-resolution upscaled image without any noticeable issues. 

Just like its AI video upscaling software, Topaz Labs provides the best overall AI image upscaling software for photos as well! I also love that you can buy their whole suite of image tools for one discounted price.

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2. AVC Labs Photo Enhancer AI

Overview  

AVC Labs AI is a feature-packed ai image enhancer and upscaler available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. It can colorize black-and-white images, reduce or eliminate blur, and fix color issues. It also includes a background remover that makes it an excellent tool for creating product shots for e-commerce.

This tool easily reduces noise and grain from images. It has an AI Face Refinement feature that helps you enhance portraits by eliminating blemishes, blending skin tones, and enhancing the subject’s eyes and lips. And its color calibration technology removes the difficulty in controlling an image’s lighting conditions.

Top Features  

• You can use its background remover to clip subjects from their backgrounds
• AVC Labs can colorize black-and-white images, restoring them for posterity
• Its AI Face Refinement tool automatically eliminates skin blemishes and evens out a portrait subject’s skin tone
• Its built-in color calibration technology makes altering an image’s lightning conditions easy
• AVC Lab’s tool is excellent at removing noise and grain from images
• Available for Windows and Mac

Pricing  

AVC Labs has three plans. 

The 1-Month plan costs $19.95 per month. 

The 1-Year plan costs $79.95 a year.

The Lifetime plan costs $159.90 for life.

All plans provide a license for one computer, free updates, 24-hour support, and a 5-day money-back guarantee. You can renew or cancel your subscription to every plan at any time.

Bottom Line  

AVC Labs has a suite of AI photo upscaler tools that make it best for professional photographers and other professionals. Its background remover will aid e-commerce entrepreneurs and graphic designers when designing compositions.

It’s also amazing for upscaling old family photos quickly and easily!

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3. VanceAI Image Upscaler

Overview  

VanceAI Image Upscaler is an AI image enlarger that can blow your images up by up to 800%. It uses a cutting-edge algorithm and artificial intelligence to provide upscaled images that look crisp and detailed. And it can handle batch image processing while safeguarding your data online by deleting it after 24 hours.

This software has multiple applications. You can use it to enhance different image types, including blurred text, anime images, printables, e-commerce product shots, and more. When you enlarge images, its AI will fix the missing pixels during the transition from small to big. And it’ll improve the appearance of images with compression artifacts.

Top Features  

• VanceAI Image Upscaler can enlarge images by up to 800%
• The software handles batch image processing easily 
• When used online, VanceAI Image Upscaler deletes your uploaded images every 24 hours to keep your data safe
• It has multiple applications (printables, e-commerce products, etc.)
• VanceAI fixes lost pixels when enlarging images, ensuring they retain crispness and detail at the new size
• You can download the desktop version free before upgrading to a paid subscription plan

Pricing  

VanceAI provides two options for using its service: via its desktop version and online services.

The desktop version has three plans: a monthly plan that costs $39.99 per month, a yearly plan that costs $99.99 per year, and a lifetime plan that costs $129.99 and lets you pay once for the software.

VanceAI’s online services let you pay to use the software by buying monthly credits. You can buy 100, 200, 500, or 1000 credits. Each option includes a 7-day money-back guarantee, provided you’ve only used 10% of the credits bought.

Bottom Line  

VanceAI Image Upscaler is best for professional photographers, e-commerce entrepreneurs, and anime hobbyists. It excels at enhancing images used for marketing materials and has applications in a diverse range of industries.

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4. icons8

Overview  

icons8 has an AI image upscaler called the Smart Upscaler. You can use it to enhance your photos, particularly portrait shots that come out blurry. The tool’s powerful AI will upscale your image automatically while retaining the original image’s quality. Unlike other image upscaling tools, it isn’t as feature-packed but does a competent job at what it’s meant to do.

Smart Upscaler upscales images to as high as 7680 x 7680 pixels. The tool accepts major image files like JPG, PNG, and WebP. One thing to note is that the free version includes a watermark, which you can get rid of when you upgrade to a paid plan.

Top Features  

• Upscale your images to as high as 7680 x 7680 pixels
• Automatically upscale images while preventing quality loss
• The tool unblurs portrait shots that were captured blurry
• Smart Upscaler has trained on over five million images, allowing it to enhance images without issues accurately
• It supports JPG, PNG, and WebP files, among others
• You can enhance the images on your smartphone with its Mac app

Pricing  

You can subscribe to the icons8 Smart Upscaler monthly or buy a yearly plan.

When you pay monthly, you can improve 100 images monthly for $9 or unlimited images for $99 per month.

When you pay $90 for a yearly subscription, you can improve 100 images monthly. Meanwhile, unlimited images for the year will cost you $990.

Both non-unlimited options support rollover credits, meaning you’ll retain unused credits when you renew your subscription.

Bottom Line  

icon8’s Smart Upscaler is best for hobbyists that want to upscale their portrait photos. This software excels at automatic upscales, having been trained with a dataset consisting of five million images. 

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5. HitPaw Photo Enhancer

Overview  

HitPaw Photo Enhancer is a low-cost downloadable AI image upscaler for improving low-resolution images, restoring old photos, and more. The software is easy to use, letting you improve image quality with a single tap. You can remove noise from images, reduce blurring, colorize black-and-white photos, and sharpen colors.

HitPaw supports the most common image formats, including JPG, PNG, JIFF, and BMP. It’s fully automatic, leveraging powerful AI technology during the image upscaling process to enhance your photos. And it’s capable of processing multiple images at once.

Top Features  

• You can use this easy-to-use software to fix blurry images, remove noise, and more with a single tap
• Thanks to its powerful AI, HitPaw Photo Enhancer is completely automated
• HitPaw supports most major image formats, like JPG, PNG, and JIFF
• HitPaw automates image enhancement into a one-click affair

Pricing  

HitPaw Photo Enhancer is affordable. If you only have a few pictures to upscale, you can try it out for a month for $17.99. A year of upscaling for a Windows operating system is $79.99, and the lifetime version is $99.99 (best value!).

Bottom Line  

HitPaw Photo Enhancer is best for amateur photographers and hobbyists. It also handles bulk photo processing, which is a compelling reason to download this upscaler and enhancer software.

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6. StockPhotos Upscaler

Overview  

StockPhotos Upscaler lets you enhance images up to eight times the quality of the original image. You can use it to sharpen a low-resolution image, remove blurring from a portrait, and restore and improve image quality. It even has a free background remover, excellent for isolating e-commerce products and swapping image subjects into new compositions.

While this software is free, there’s a caveat: you only get three free upscales. Once you exhaust those, you’ll have to switch to one of its paid plans. The plans don’t use a subscription model, meaning you pay a one-time fee every time you need upscales for your projects.

Top Features  

• StockPhotos Upscaler enhances your digital photos up to eight times their original quality
• The software can sharpen images and portraits, remove blurring, and restore image quality
• Its free background remover is excellent for swapping out and isolating image subjects
• The software provides three free upscales for first-time users of its free version
• It uses a one-time payment model, meaning you can pay for the software as and when you need it
• Stock Photos Upscaler supports three enhancement modes: Balanced, Ironed, and DetailPro

Pricing  

StockPhoto’s Upscaler has three plans: 

The free plan provides three free upscales.

The Standard plan costs $7 and provides 20 upscales plus 10 bonus upscales.

The Premium plan costs $15 and provides 100 upscales plus 50 bonus upscales.

Aside from the free plan, all paid plans are a one-time cost, meaning you can buy upscales as necessary. 

Bottom Line  

StockPhotos Upscaler is best for occasional photo-editing hobbyists. Its payment model is excellent for anyone who wants to avoid tying themselves down to a subscription after exhausting the free trial. 

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7. DeepImage AI

Overview  

DeepImage AI provides the tools to enhance and upscale your images. It harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to automatically sharpen images when they’re blown up beyond their original sizes. It also has noise removal and light and color correction features, and all these functions are easy to use.

If you run an e-commerce operation, you’ll appreciate this tool’s built-in background remover. It expertly cuts backgrounds around a subject, isolating the subject for use in other compositions. And DeepImage AI integrates with Google Drive for a more streamlined workflow.

Top Features  

• DeepAI enhances images by leveraging artificial intelligence to amazing effect
• The software is easy to use
• It can correct colors and lightning and remove noise from images
• The tool’s background remover expertly isolates image subjects
• DeepAI integrates with Google Drive, providing a more streamlined workflow
• Its Packshot Pro feature provides fully-automated processing for e-commerce sites after three clicks

Pricing  

DeepImage AI provides three pricing options. You can pay for it via subscription, pay-as-you-go, or arrange custom pricing. 

The subscription plan starts at $9 and provides monthly credits that range between 100 and 5,000.

The pay-as-you-go plan lets you buy credits on a scale ranging between 5 credits (for $1.99) on the low end and 10,000 credits (for $999) on the high end.

Lastly, you can contact the DeepImage AI team to create a custom plan depending on your needs.

Bottom Line  

DeepImage AI has multiple applications and is best for people who work in real estate, e-commerce, digital arts, and more. The software’s integration with Google Drive is a major plus, as it helps to facilitate workflows.

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8. Waifu2x

Overview  

Waifu2x is a dedicated AI anime upscaler that describes itself as a “Single-Image Super-Resolution for Anime-Style Art using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks.” It’s free and lets you enhance images in either PNG or WebP format. And it also supports enhancements of photos.

With Waifu2x, you can upscale your images up to four times their original size without losing quality. The software lets you select the style of image you want to enhance and the level of noise reduction you want. And it limits file sizes to 5 MB. It has little else, but it gets the job done.

Top Features  

• Waifu2x is an excellent anime image upscaler
• It can upscale anime art and photos to 4x their original size
• The software has a simple user interface and even simpler controls 
• Waifu2x can reduce noise and rid images of artifacts
• It’s 100% free (though you can support its server on Patreon)

Pricing  

Waifu2x is a 100% free service. No subscriptions, downloads, or installs. Upload an image, upscale it, and you’re done.

Bottom Line  

Waifu2x is best for casual users or those who want to upscale anime images. Since it’s free, anyone can use it to enhance their images quickly. Its user interface is refreshingly minimalist, and its controls are straightforward and to the point.

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What is AI Image Upscaling?

When you upscale an image, it means you’ve stretched it over a larger display. The digital images you see on your computer are made up of tiny squares called pixels. Every image has a specific number of pixels that stretch its length and width; its pixel count or pixels per inch (PPI). The higher the image’s PPI, the higher its resolution, and vice versa.

Traditionally, when you try to increase the size of small images, you’ll notice that they tend to get blurry and messy. This phenomenon is called pixelation. It happens because the picture doesn’t have enough pixels to compensate for its new larger size. AI upscaling tools fix this problem.

When you use image upscaling software, it harnesses the power of AI that has been trained on millions of images to upscale an image. The AI uses its data pool to enhance photos or upscale image quality by predicting what the image would look like if it were originally a higher resolution. The result is high-quality images in a larger image size.

Common Questions About AI Image Upscaling

What Is the Best AI Upscaling Software?

Topaz Labs Gigapixel AI is the best AI upscaling software you can get today. The tool’s AI is fantastic at handling images with detailed textures like feathers and fur. And it can clean out digital noise with little fanfare. These two qualities are enough reasons to consider getting this AI upscaler.

What Are the Potential Drawbacks of Using AI Image Upscaler?

The main drawback to image upscaling technology is that it opens the door to intellectual property theft. Most photographers upload lower-quality versions of their images to the web to discourage IP theft. However, AI image upscalers do the opposite: they blow up small images without losing quality. As a result, people can use this technology to steal HQ pictures.

Is AI Image Upscaler Suitable for All Types of Images?

It depends on the technology’s specifications. Most image-upscaling software tools have file formats they support, the most common being JPG, PNG, and WebP. In addition, tools that let you upscale images online may have image size limits that preclude your photos from being uploaded to the site. Ensure to test your chosen tool’s limits.

What Is the Difference Between AI Image Upscaler and Traditional Upscaling Methods?

Traditional upscaling involves increasing a low-resolution image’s size by copying the pixels to fill out the missing spaces. However, the result isn’t always adequate, even when supplemental technologies are added to the mix. In contrast, upscaling that involves AI uses predictive technology. The AI draws on past knowledge to predict how a higher-quality version of the image should look.

Final Thoughts on the Best AI Image Upscalers

When you use one of the image upscaler and enhancer software tools listed in the article, you can blow up low-res images without experiencing pixelation. While that feature is worth the admission price for many of these tools, they’re capable of much more than that.

Sharpening images, color correction, and restoring and colorizing old black-and-white photos are some of these tools’ many capabilities. And you can deploy them to shape your business, whether that’s e-commerce, real estate, or everything in between.

Looking for more assistance with images and upscaling technologies? Check out these other articles:

10+ Best AI Art Generator Tools (Reviewed for Creatives)

Topaz Video Enhance AI Review for AI Upscaling

AVCLabs Review for AI Online Video Upscaling