Always thought those AI image upscalers were a scam until I ran one on a pixel art piece from 2012

3 comments

3 Comments

There's this really interesting test I saw where someone ran old 90s game sprites through one of those upscalers and it actually kept the pixel art feel while smoothing out the jaggies. I was totally skeptical too because most of them just blur everything into a weird oil painting mess. But the ones trained specifically on pixel art are a whole different animal apparently. Makes me want to dig up my old Starcraft screenshots and see what happens.

rayc381mo ago

Man that oil painting look is exactly why Ive been burned on upscalers before. Hard pass on making my nostalgia look like a bad Photoshop filter. But you got me curious with this pixel art specific one thing. What model or tool was it even? Most of those AI upscaler names blur together for me. If it can actually clean up the dithering on old 90s sprites without wrecking them then maybe its worth a look.

mason_knight1mo ago

Heard @rayc38 mention the same oil painting nightmare, but this pixel art stuff sounds different.