Photoshop Re-Rendering – A seemingly strange request!

[Dave Johnson]

I’ve been using PS for many years and have never heard of “re-rendering” low-rez web graphics to high-rez print graphics, but would love to hear about it if such doubtful magic does exist.

Note that “well-established” does not equal “all-knowing” or even “smart”, for that matter. So, it sounds like your client has two very common client ailments:
[1] They’ve heard a term like “render” before and erroneously apply it where it doesn’t fit to sound like they know what they’re talking about … I’m a video editor and mograph designer, which are the two main areas “rendering” is done and it’s meaning has little to do with magically regenerating media at a higher resolution than that at which it was originally created
[2] They failed to accurately evaluate and express the needs at the onset of the project and misled the designer to believe that the graphics would only ever be needed for web use (typically in effort to save money, which ironically costs them more in the long run). Because this issue is so common, my approach has always been to create everything at the highest resolution it is likely to be needed (regardless of what the client tells me), then dumb it down for lower quality needs.

With that all said, it seems you have 2 options:
[1] recreate all of the graphics at the needed resolution
[2] shell out some cash and take a chance with one of the Photoshop plugins that uses advanced algorithms to scale images with minimal quality loss … I use to own one called Genuine Fractals that, to my surprise, worked pretty well, but that was years ago and I’m not even sure it’s still available and I’m not promising you that it would work sufficiently for your particular needs

In either case, it will cost and I’d definitely bill the client since you shouldn’t have to bear the costs of fixing their mistakes and the only way people accept the right way to do things is when it costs them to continue doing it the wrong way.

[Gauri Sharma]

Thanks Dave!

I am leaning on the chances that this resulted from some level of communication breakdown, too, but will find out for sure soon enough! Thanks again!

[Paul Benson]

Realize I’m coming in a little late here, but if the graphic is fairly monochrome or linear, you could bring it into a vector based program. There is usually a ‘vectorize’ command that essentially does an edge detection and creates a vector graphic. That would allow you to scale to your heart’s content.

Pauley