It's easy to upscale images in Midjourney, but there is a limit to how much you can increase the resolution. If you want to upscale an image further, you will have to use a different application.
I've already written a quick guide on how to upscale images in Midjourney. If you haven't read it yet and don't know how to increase the resolution of images you generate in Midjourney, I recommend that you check it out.
Today, I'm going to talk about a different way to upscale images. It involves an application called Upscayl, which has become widely popular among the Midjourney community because it provides excellent results.
The best part about Upscayl is that it's a completely free, open source app. It's available for MacOS, Linux, and Windows. You can download the application on the official Upscayl website. At the time of writing this article, the app has been downloaded more than a million times.
How to Use Upscayl?
Upscayl is an AI image upscaler that's easy to use. The interface is really clean and simple. There are four steps that you need to complete in order to upscale an image in this application.
- The first step is selecting the AI-generated image you want to upscale.
- The second step involves selecting the type of upscaling you want done.
- The third step is to set the output folder.
- The fourth step involves simply pressing a button to start the upscaling process.
You can tell from these easy-to-follow steps that the whole process of upscaling AI-generated images using Upscayl is about as simple as it gets. There are also some advanced options available that you can play with, which I'll talk about later on in this article.
One of the main issues with upscaling images in Midjourney is that each time you do it, some details in the image will be significantly altered or erased. It would take much more computing power to upscale every single detail in an image, which is why the upscaler in Midjourney often erases details.
The main reason why you should use Upscayl is because it does a much better job of turning a low-resolution image into a high-quality one. I'll show you an example.
This is an image that I generated in Midjourney for one of my previous articles. It looks good, but if I zoom in (check out the image below) you can see that the resolution isn't that great. I'm not saying it's very bad, but it can definitely be improved.
This particular image was upscaled only once. It has a width of 1456 pixels and a height of 816 pixels. It's important to know the limitations of upscaling images in Midjourney. Here is a table that will help you understand how much you can upscale directly in Midjourney.
Upscayl enables you to get much better results. I followed the four steps I wrote about earlier in the article to upscale the image. Here is what the upscaled version looks like now (open the image in a new tab to see it in higher resolution).
The details look amazing when I zoom in. If I were selling AI-generated art or simply wanted to hang a picture on my wall, it would only make sense to do it if the image was upscaled to this level.
The resolution for this is much higher. The width is 5824 pixels, while the height is 3264 pixels. That's quite impressive. You can compare the raw version of the image with the upscaled one side by side within the Upscayl interface.
The original image here is on the left, while the upscaled version is on the right. You can see how the algorithm does its trick and makes the overall image better. Look at the colors in the rainbow. They are more vibrant in the upscaled version.
Advanced Options in Upscayl
When you open the application, you will notice an advanced options tab in the bottom left corner. Despite its name, you won't see too many options when you open this tab. You'll be able to choose the output format and the theme of the application.
What I would consider the real advanced options in Upscayl are the ones you can select as a part of step 2 in the upscaling process. This is where you can choose which upscaler algorithm you want to use.
You can choose between four distinct algorithms, including:
- Real-ESRGAN
- Remacri
- Ultramix balanced
- UltraSharp
There are two more options you can choose here. One is for digital art only, and the other is used to put the main focus on sharpening an image.
I recommend that you experiment with all of these available options to figure out which algorithm works best for your AI-generated images.
There is also a box that you can tick beneath these options, which doubles the upscaling. However, this option doesn't always work properly, especially if the image you inserted already has a high resolution.
If I were to use the Double Upscayl feature on the image I upscaled in this article, the resolution would be 11648x6528 pixels instead of 5824x3264 pixels.
Final Thoughts
Upscayl is a free, open-source AI image upscaler that you can start using today. It features an incredibly clean and straightforward interface, as well as a powerful algorithm that can significantly upscale an image in seconds.
This application is among the most popular choices for upscaling AI-generated images within the Midjourney community. Numbers don't lie; you can easily see how popular Upscayl is by looking at how many times it's been downloaded.
There are also some advanced options in the application, such as choosing the output format of upscaled images. You can currently choose one of the three available formats - PNG, JPG, and WEBP.
Users are also able to choose which upscaler algorithm they want to use, but the most popular option currently is the Real-ESRGAN algorithm.
