Upscayl
Free app that enlarges photos using AI models, for rescuing small or soft images.
Our verdict
Upscayl is the free answer to the enlarging part of Topaz Photo AI. You point it at a small or soft photo, pick a model, and it produces a bigger version with more detail invented in. Everything happens on your own machine, so nothing is uploaded and there is no subscription.
It is narrower than Topaz. Topaz Photo AI bundles enlarging, sharpening, noise removal and face recovery into one pass. Upscayl only enlarges. For noise and sharpening you would use darktable or RawTherapee alongside it.
Quality varies with the source. Landscapes and textures usually come out well. Faces can go slightly plastic, so look closely at full size before you commit to a print.
What's good
- Free, and runs on your own computer with no upload and no account
- Several models to choose from, including one aimed at photos and one at drawings
- Batch mode for a folder of images
What to know first
- Enlarging only. It does not sharpen, denoise or remove blur the way Topaz Photo AI does
- Wants a reasonably modern graphics card, and is slow without one
- Results on faces can look waxy, so check before you print
- The download is large because the AI models ship with it
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (AGPL-3.0)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak), AppImage download
Windows apps it can replace
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