Question for Photoshop Experts

[brianhamner]

I'm showing my ignorance and laziness here, I suppose with enough detective work I could find out the answer to this simple question, but I figured some of you could help me sort through the crap. My boss gives me a photo which is like 200x200 pixels, 72dpi obviously picked off the internet somewhere.
He wants me to clean it up, to print on our banner machine. To call it blurry and low res will have to suffice. He wants of course to be able to make out the individual grains of salt in the container in the background. (slight exaggeration)
I told him its not possible, but I want to know what everyone else thinks.
Dont get wrapped up in the example, I just basically want to know, can you make something of low res into something clear; add clarity to the picture.
Heres what Ive run into:
Sharpening: if I keep sharpening it starts making little hotspots around the area, but clarity is not affected that much
changing the DPI: just makes it bigger and more pixelated.

So am I right, is it impossible? Or is there a way to do this?

[Flake]

If he wants it bigger than a business card it's going to look crappy.

It's pretty much impossible to scale a tiny pixel image unless you trace it with vectors which will then scale to any size.

Sit him down and explain to him that the computer software they have in Bladerunner, CSI and that Will Smith movie is fictional.

[Elwell]

Yes, it's impossible. There are proprietary plug-ins that supposedly have better interpolation algorithms than what's built into Photoshop, but there simply isn't enough information in an image that size to enlarge it at all and not have it look crappy.

[Seedling]

Your boss is so ignorant that it hurts. :-)

[jrr]

have you told your boss about magic? perhaps using the dark arts will work. aside from that, it's impossible.

[Jason Rainville]

Impossible. Depending...

Keep the pic at regular size, up the contrast and place it within a larger layout. Same thing happened to a friend of mine and he came up with that creative solution. Might/might not work depending on what it is/design needed.

Good luck :\

EDIT: when altering the pixels, hitting 'resample' WILL allow PS to interpolate and make up some pixels. Technically the resolution will be higher (and not pixelated) but everything gets blurry. Something to try for fun I guess...

[dose]

Depending on the actual image, an alternative is to bring it into illustrator and use LiveTrace to turn it into vector art.

[Mungus]

tell him to take his own hi-res picture, and stop stealing shit off the internet, -