Working from a Screenshot?

[Chocolate Cosmos]

The power went out at my house and I was unable to save the original, luckily though, I had saved a screenshot of my progress just before.
Though now, I'm not too sure how lucky it is...

Is there a way to either change the screenshot or something so it's not so pixelated?
I'm using Photoshop Elements 8.

[Jason Ross]

The short answer is no...but for some reason I don't buy your power out. The answer is sefl evident if you actually had been working on anything in Photoshop. You're looking for the "take a low res image from the internet and make it look clean and high res" button.

[Chocolate Cosmos]

You're basically telling me I can't do it?
Or... Can I? x:

I'm new to Photoshop, so I have no clue what that means.

[joeparis]

Hmmm, did you save any of your original psd file? If not, why not?

There are plenty of suggestions if you Google Photoshop/resize/enlarge image, etc. etc. Usually what you lose in pixelation you gain in softness.

[Elwell]

Why were you taking screenshots but not saving?

[Jason Ross]

Why were you taking screenshots but not saving?

Exactly...I don't think anyone would.

[Metsys]

Some tips on safely working on a computer, a place where things will inevitably go wrong:



Purchase and use an APC brand uninterruptable power supply.

This will prevent your computer from turning off when the power goes out. The good ones cost about $200 which will let you use your computer, monitors, and whatever peripherals you need to finish what you were doing and save your work. APC does sell cheaper ones though.

Don't forget to save; use a timer

It's obvious but even I have this problem. When you get into a groove while painting you are only focused on your work, and things like the occasional Ctrl-S will slip your mind. For some reason I don't have this problem with graphic design work, but for illustration I'll often forget until I've been working on something for an hour. My friend uses a timer program that will make a sound every 5 minutes or so to remind him to save his progress. Doing that will make sure you won't forget to save either.

Make incremental backups

Adobe programs are far from perfect, and even if they were you still have to worry about hardware failures that will cause files to become corrupted. Every hour or so save an incremental backup. "painting-1.psd", "painting-2.psd", etc., so if a corruption does happen you don't loose your whole project. It also has the added benefit of being able to undo about a 1000 steps at a time if you want to change something in your painting (this is more useful for graphic design work though).

Use SyncToy or some other backup utility

Hard drives can fail at any time. Have your project files synced every day. You can schedule syncing tasks so you don't have to worry about it. Obviously you'll want to back it up on a separate hard drive, and having an off-site backup (like a removable hard drive) is the best option so you will still have your files in case your computer gets stolen or explodes.



In defense of the OP's question about painting on top of a screenshot, and how some of the people on the forum don't believe that to be a legitimate scenario to be put in, as a freelancer I always send screenshots of my work to my clients so they can see the progress of my work. (I use Zscreen to do that by the way, very handy program, and the directory where the screenshots are saved I have bookmarked so I can quickly drag and drop screenshots into the email.) So yes, if for some reason my only copy of the project was lost, all I would have to work on are screenshots. It's a perfectly believable situation.

So to answer the OP's question, I'm afraid that what you have to do blow the image up to the original size and start painting on top of it. The good news is that it shouldn't take you that long because you already have your general shape and colors in front of you, and you can use the eyedropper tools to match your colors.

In other words, you have a good starting point for a new image, and you'll be able to get to where you were before quicker, than if you had to start over completely from scratch.

[Falchion]

Sure there's a way. It's called blowing it up and putting in the details again. There were details, right?

[Chocolate Cosmos]

Well, I didn't save because I had just started the picture.
So, I guess I could've started over.

And no, there weren't really any details yet, I just had the base lines.

@ Metsys - Thank you so much for your help, I do tend to tkae more screenshots than actually save because I don't intend to loose anything... And saving takes forever on my computer, like 15 min. Is that normal?
I'll see about getting a timer, and I do have an APC power supply, I had just recently moved my computer to my room and didn't move that over.
It's plugged in now though.

[chil3]

Well, I didn't save because I had just started the picture.
So, I guess I could've started over.

And no, there weren't really any details yet, I just had the base lines.

@ Metsys - Thank you so much for your help, I do tend to tkae more screenshots than actually save because I don't intend to loose anything... And saving takes forever on my computer, like 15 min. Is that normal?
I'll see about getting a timer, and I do have an APC power supply, I had just recently moved my computer to my room and didn't move that over.
It's plugged in now though.

no it is not normal saving takes just 1-3 seconds, so obviously it is time for a new computer.