Clear a pixelated image in four steps
- Open the pixelated picture. A screenshot of a thumbnail, an enlarged icon, a heavily compressed photo. It is decoded in this tab.
- Read what was found. Block scaling with the block size, JPEG blocking, a deliberate mosaic, or nothing blocky at all — in one sentence above the picture.
- Choose the size. Back to the size it arrived at, the native grid itself, or twice the native grid. For JPEG blocking, set the de-block strength.
- Save, or keep the original. The repaired picture is saved with a receipt naming the block size and the method. The original is one button away.
Three kinds of “pixelated”
A picture blown up with nearest-neighbour sampling turns every pixel into a square. Those squares still hold everything the small picture had, so they can be read back one square to one pixel and enlarged again with a filter that draws smooth curves instead of steps. That is all this page does to a block-scaled picture: no texture is invented.
| Block scaling | Read back to the native grid, then enlarged with Lanczos-3. |
|---|---|
| JPEG blocking | Seams on the 8 × 8 grid softened where both sides are flat. |
| Mosaic | Refused: each block is the average of detail that is gone. |
| Soft, not blocky | Nothing to do here; use the deblur or sharpen tool instead. |
When this will not help
- Deliberate mosaic or pixelation used to hide a face, a number plate or text. The detail was averaged away and cannot be rebuilt, here or anywhere.
- A tiny picture enlarged many times: the native grid may be only a few dozen pixels across, and smooth is not the same as detailed.
- A photo that is soft rather than blocky. That needs a deblur or a sharpen, not a de-block.
Soft rather than blocky? Try the deblur workspace or sharpen an image. Why mosaic is different damage: blur, pixelation and mosaic.
Questions
Can this unpixelate a censored face or number plate?
No. Mosaic replaces each block with the average of what was inside it, so the detail is gone. This page detects a mosaic patch inside an otherwise sharp photo and refuses it, with no “try anyway” button. Any tool that claims to restore it is drawing a guess.
What does “native grid” mean?
When a small picture is enlarged with nearest-neighbour sampling, each original pixel becomes a square of p × p identical pixels. The native grid is the small picture those squares came from — one pixel per square. This page reads it back by averaging the middle of each square.
Why does the result look smoother rather than more detailed?
Because no detail is invented. Lanczos-3 draws the smoothest curve through the pixels the picture really has. A smooth edge is closer to what the scene looked like than a staircase, but it is not new information.
What happens to JPEG blocks?
Compression leaves faint seams every eight pixels. The de-block filter softens a step across a seam only when it is small and both sides are flat; anything larger is a real edge and is left alone. The strength slider scales the thresholds.
When won't this work?
On deliberate mosaic, on a picture so small that its native grid holds almost nothing, and on a photo that is soft rather than blocky. In the last case the page says it found nothing blocky and points to the deblur tool.
Is the picture uploaded?
No. It is read and repaired in this browser tab, and the save is written from the tab.
Related
- Unblur a screenshotDiagnose soft capture, block scaling and motion before a reconstruction pass.
- Blurry image to HDDeblur first, then enlarge 2× or 4× without inventing texture.
- Sharpen an imageFor soft rather than smeared photos: unsharp mask with a halo limiter.
- Blur, pixelation and mosaic are not the same damageTell a reversible-looking smear from block replacement and deliberate mosaic censorship.
