Enhancing blurry images

[tardy lance]

Hey folks, I've got this grid of images I'm working with as assets for a card game I'm developing (this image is AI generated). I find they look a little blurry, but every effect I try doesn't seem to help make them look more....smooth? (If you open the image in your browser, you'll see what I mean. The thumbnail looks pretty good by itself.) I'm not going to pretend to know the terminology behind art technique. Does anyone have any suggestions, or do I just need to generate an image in a different aspect ratio to get a higher resolution...or something? Is this something that should be done in another program? Thank you for any tips!

[dense badger]

You could try multiple things but none are guaranteed. It's because the result will be Photoshop having to make do with the lack of information.
So there are two things: Are they blurry because they are too small?
In that case you could try the enhnace function in Adobe Camera Raw. It will upscale the image and add pixels. Aagain, it can be a hit and miss, particularly on such small images
If they are blurry because they are the right size but created that way?
you can try sharpening them: My best advice is again Adobe Camera Raw, with a combination of the detail sliders (Dehaze and Clarity) and a bit of sharpening as well

again, not ideal since you are trying to enhance something that is poor quality instead of having a good quality output from the get go

Usually these kind of icons are created using a vector tool (say, Illustrator) which produces illustrations that are sharp by default (unlike those produced by a raster program such as photoshop, or those Gen AI platforms)

One thing you could do, but you would need illustrator, is to vectorise them using the auto trace function: You'll need a decent enough size and possibly quite a bit of trial and error, but IMHO it's worth the time spent, as then you'll have sharp, neat, artwork that can be enlarged without ever loosing quality.

[tardy lance]

I'll give all of the above a try, thank you very much!

[unborn citrus]

Gave +1 Creative Carma to @dense badger (current: #8 - 790)

[fathom carbon]

What did you use to make them? Could you not have 'upscaled' it in the same software?

[tardy lance]

I used Midjourney. The original prompt was for a grid of images, so the image above actually is the upscaled version.

[fathom carbon]

oh jeez. That's a shame.

I tried adding YOUR image into firefly

and asked it for a similar thing, using your image in both uploads:

[tardy lance]

hmm. Those came out looking pretty good. I'll have to add that to the book of tricks. Thanks for the heads up!