How to Unpixelate an Image in Photoshop

Unblurfy · Published 2026-11-02

A pixelated image has blocky squares instead of smooth detail. That usually happens when a small picture is enlarged, or when a JPEG is compressed too hard. You can improve it in Photoshop or GIMP, but you cannot get back detail that was never there. Here is how to get the best result by hand.

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One important limit first: if someone applied a mosaic filter to hide something, the original detail is gone. No tool, in Photoshop or anywhere else, can bring it back reliably.

Photoshop: enlarge without making it blocky

1. Open the image and choose Image, Image Size.
2. Set the new width and height.
3. In Resample, choose Preserve Details 2.0. This is built for enlarging and keeps edges smoother than Bicubic.
4. Move the Reduce Noise slider up a little to hide blocky noise.
5. Click OK.

Photoshop: remove JPEG blocks

1. Choose Filter, Noise, Reduce Noise.
2. Tick Remove JPEG Artifact.
3. Raise Strength and Reduce Color Noise a little, and keep Preserve Details high so the picture does not turn waxy.
4. Click OK.

Photoshop: sharpen lightly at the end

Choose Filter, Sharpen, Smart Sharpen, and use a small Amount and Radius. Sharpening too much brings the blocks back. Always check at 100 percent zoom.

If you have Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom, you can also try Enhance and choose Super Resolution, which doubles the resolution using a trained model.

GIMP: scale with a better interpolation

1. Choose Image, Scale Image.
2. Set the new size, and open Quality.
3. Under Interpolation, choose NoHalo or LoHalo. They produce smoother edges than the default.
4. Click Scale.
5. Choose Filters, Enhance, Sharpen (Unsharp Mask) and apply a small amount.

When manual editing is not enough

These steps smooth blocky edges, but they do not invent detail. For a very small or heavily pixelated picture, the results are usually soft. An AI tool rebuilds detail instead of only smoothing, and takes about 30 seconds. Try our free unpixelate tool. If you were searching for a depixelizer, it is the same tool as the depixelate image page.

Want to enlarge a picture without the blocky look? See how to fix pixelated photos.

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