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Improve Image Quality using AI

Science & Technology

Step 1: Article in Markdown Syntax

Introduction

Hey there, it's Jeremy from AI Expedition. In today's article, I'll show you how you can enhance the quality of your images using AI for free, without any limits on the number of images, and without needing to subscribe to any product or service. All you'll need is a Google account, which I'm sure almost everyone has. If you use Gmail or the Google Play Store on your phone, then you already have a Google account.

Is Enhancement Possible?

You've probably all seen those TV shows where they seem to zoom into an image and enhance it over and over until they can spot something like a license plate number or maybe even someone's face, and they use that to catch the bad guy. But is this even possible?

Understanding Pixels

Images contain only a finite number of pixels. If you try to double the width and height of your image, you would need four times the number of pixels. That's because it's two times for the width and then two times again for the height. So where are those extra pixel values supposed to come from?

When you enlarge an image, it usually just spaces out the original pixel values and does some kind of averaging to fill in the missing values. But if you've ever tried this, you'll notice that your enlarged image looks kind of blurry.

Image Super Resolution

To get better results, people have come up with a field of study called image super resolution, and today I'll show you how you can use two of the most well-known AI techniques for image super resolution called SResNet and SRGAN. These techniques effectively work by sending an image to an AI model and then asking it to hallucinate the details of the image while upscaling it.

The key point here is that the AI models are hallucinating the details to make the image look clearer. This is probably not what you want to do if you're trying to catch a criminal on CSI Miami because, after zooming in multiple times, the AI model could generate a face that looks completely different from the original bad guy. While it may not be good enough to catch bad guys, we can certainly use it to enhance the quality of our own personal images. Let's take a look at how we can do that.

Using The Code

I've written some code that's publicly available on my GitHub repository. Don't be afraid if you have absolutely no coding experience; you don't need it to make use of this project. I've made it as simple as possible so that anyone can use it.

  1. You just open up the link to my code available on GitHub.
  2. When you scroll down, you'll see the image comparisons after running it through SResNet and SRGAN.
  3. Under 'Usage', you'll see a button that says "Open in Colab". Click that to run these AI models on Google’s hardware without needing to install anything.
  4. If prompted, sign into your Google account.
  5. Uncomment the specific lines in the Colab notebook to allow it to run on Google's hardware, then run the cells.
  6. Upload your images through the input folder in Google Colab.
  7. Wait while the code processes and enhances your images.
  8. Download the results from the output folder. If you want all images, you can download the generated zip file.

The code used in this process involves downloading necessary files, importing required libraries, initializing models with pre-trained weights, processing images, and storing the enhanced images.

Conclusion

If you're interested in understanding how these models work, follow my GitHub and my future updates. To learn more about AI, visit my website aixpedition.com. If you have any suggestions for AI models you'd like to see, leave a comment on my video.

Thanks for reading!

Step 2: Keywords Section

Introduction

Step 3: FAQ Section

Introduction

Q: Do I need any coding experience to enhance images using this method? A: No, the process has been simplified so that anyone can use it without any coding experience.

Q: Is it possible to catch criminals using this technique like they do in TV shows? A: No, these AI models hallucinate details and can generate images that look different from the original, making it unreliable for identifying criminals.

Q: Are there any limits on the number of images I can enhance? A: No, you can enhance as many images as you'd like for free.

Q: What are the models used for image enhancement in this tutorial? A: The models used are SResNet and SRGAN.

Q: Do I need to install any software to use this method? A: No, this method runs on Google’s hardware using Google Colab, so you don’t need to install anything.

Q: How do I know if the code is safe to run? A: The code is publicly available for inspection, and it does not contain any malicious parts. However, always be cautious with running public code.