Inspiring

Answered

How do I upscale an image from 600 x1004 pixels to 1600 x 2560 pixels?

Forum|Forum|21 days ago
September 13, 2026
10 replies
121 views

Hello again.

I’m working on getting back to the other questions I’ve started, but meanwhile I’m also trying to get this ebook out on Draft 2 Digital.

The ebook cover looked fine when I uploaded it to Amazon, but now that I’ve got it on Draft 2 Digtial it is scaled wrong.

Google says the original image is 600 x1004 pixels and that that is the problem. Is there a way to upscale it using InDesign?

I’ve adjusted the layout to be 1600 x2560 which is the dimensions I want, but when I place the image and fit it to the frame it appears I’m stretching it instead of upscaling it.

Is there a way to fix this?

Correct answer Randy Hagan

As a practical matter, you cannot add resolution to a placed image with InDesign. Scaling it in InDesign doesn’t add pixels; it stays the same number of pixels. It just distributes them across a larger amount of real estate, lowering the effective resolution of your rescaled image and greatly reducing its reproduction quality. You can’t change that within InDesign per se, but perhaps within Photoshop. You will, of course, have to have Photoshop installed on your system for this to work. If you have the Creative Cloud subscription, Photoshop is another free Adobe program included in the subscription.

Select your placed image within your InDesign document. With the image selected, right-click on it and select Edit Original. This should open your pixel image in Adobe Photoshop. Then choose the Image>Image Size menu command.

First, ensure that the little chain illustration to the left of your 600 and 1004 Width: and Height: edit boxes shows a linked chain in a gray box. That Constrains Proportions, and lets you scale your image without distorting it. If the chain is not inbound a gray box, click on it to change it that way.
Next, change the 600 pixel dimension to 1600. With the Constrain Proportions option selected, you’ll notice that your other dimension automatically changes too: from 1004 to 2677 pixels. Click the OK button.
That’s more than the 2560 pixels you desired, so you’ll either have to crop the longer dimension down to 2560 in Photoshop after you add the pixels (harder), or crop the image frame within InDesign (easier) to fit the exact size you want the image to be.
Save the Photoshop file and close it, return to InDesign. If you need to, open the Links panel (Window>Links menu command) and select the Update Links button at the lower right of the Links panel, the one with the two arrows in a circle. Adjust the image frame for your new, larger placed graphic to suit your needs.

Be advised that you’re increasing the size of your current pixel image a lot. Maybe so much that the graphic doesn’t look as good as it did before. You’re asking Photoshop and InDesign to do a lot to make this upscaling of your image happen. Adobe software can make that mechanically possible, but it may or may not make your graphic look better as a result. But you’ll never know until you try.

Good luck,

Randy

C

CatherineMullinsAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you everyone. I just ended up buying a larger version of the file and it is working fine. Expensive, but working fine. Thank you for all the help!

J E L

Community Expert

@CatherineMullins, if you still need help, you can send me the image file, and I’ll use Photoshop to upscale it for you for free.

J

Jovial_goddess95b7

Participant

InDesign only changes the placed size; it doesn’t add pixels. To avoid distortion, upscale the 600×1004 cover proportionally to about 1600×2677, then crop it to 1600×2560—or extend/recompose the background if you can’t lose content.

BiggerImage.app is free, requires no account, and processes the image locally in your browser, so it’s worth trying for that resize. Inspect the result at 100%, especially the type and linework: upscaling adds pixels but cannot recover detail that wasn’t present in the original. If those elements remain rough, use a higher-resolution source or recreate them.

Randy Hagan

Correct answer

Community Expert

As a practical matter, you cannot add resolution to a placed image with InDesign. Scaling it in InDesign doesn’t add pixels; it stays the same number of pixels. It just distributes them across a larger amount of real estate, lowering the effective resolution of your rescaled image and greatly reducing its reproduction quality. You can’t change that within InDesign per se, but perhaps within Photoshop. You will, of course, have to have Photoshop installed on your system for this to work. If you have the Creative Cloud subscription, Photoshop is another free Adobe program included in the subscription.

Select your placed image within your InDesign document. With the image selected, right-click on it and select Edit Original. This should open your pixel image in Adobe Photoshop. Then choose the Image>Image Size menu command.

First, ensure that the little chain illustration to the left of your 600 and 1004 Width: and Height: edit boxes shows a linked chain in a gray box. That Constrains Proportions, and lets you scale your image without distorting it. If the chain is not inbound a gray box, click on it to change it that way.
Next, change the 600 pixel dimension to 1600. With the Constrain Proportions option selected, you’ll notice that your other dimension automatically changes too: from 1004 to 2677 pixels. Click the OK button.
That’s more than the 2560 pixels you desired, so you’ll either have to crop the longer dimension down to 2560 in Photoshop after you add the pixels (harder), or crop the image frame within InDesign (easier) to fit the exact size you want the image to be.
Save the Photoshop file and close it, return to InDesign. If you need to, open the Links panel (Window>Links menu command) and select the Update Links button at the lower right of the Links panel, the one with the two arrows in a circle. Adjust the image frame for your new, larger placed graphic to suit your needs.

Be advised that you’re increasing the size of your current pixel image a lot. Maybe so much that the graphic doesn’t look as good as it did before. You’re asking Photoshop and InDesign to do a lot to make this upscaling of your image happen. Adobe software can make that mechanically possible, but it may or may not make your graphic look better as a result. But you’ll never know until you try.

Good luck,

Randy

C

CatherineMullinsAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you. This is very helpful. Unfortunately, I am a starving author and as such haven’t been able to afford PhotoShop yet (it’s on my list of programs to acquire). But at least I know now InDesign isn’t the tool for what I need here.

leo.r

Community Expert

when I place the image and fit it to the frame it appears I’m stretching it instead of upscaling it.

Can you please elaborate on what you mean? Does it mean that the image becomes lo-res (pixelated) when you enlarge it?

In this case, the pixel dimensions that you mention are relatively irrelevant.

What’s the image resolution?

If it’s a low-res image (say, 72 ppi) that you enlarge in InDesign by about 2.5 times, then its resolution becomes too low and it looks bad.

You can open the image in Photoshop and upscale it using the Image Size dialog by increasing its resolution, but the quality of results will depend on the original image as well as some other factors. There are also other commercial (and, possibly, free) tools that can upscale image resolution, but you won’t know if the results are satisfactory until you try.

Can you select the image in InDesign and post a screenshot of the Link Info section of the Links panel.

C

CatherineMullinsAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my inquiry. Here is the screenshot I believe you suggested.

And like I said above, as a starving artist, I haven’t been able to afford PhotoShop yet, though I hope to some time in the future. Do you have a recommendation for a free program that might do the trick. I’ve tried to work with Pxlr and one other before for other projects and had varrying degrees of success. Don’t know which is the best for upscaling.

leo.r

Community Expert

Yes, you’re enlarging this image a lot. Its effective resolution is 20ppi, which is below anything acceptable as I’m sure you know anyway

Here are search results for “free or affordable online image upscaling tools for one-time use”:
https://www.google.com/search?q=free+or+affordable+online+image+upscaling+tools+for+one-time+use&oq=free+or+affordable+online+image+upscaling+tools+for+one-time+use&gs_lcrp=EgRlZGdlKgYIABBFGDkyBggAEEUYOdIBCTI5NjU0ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&source=chrome.ob&ie=UTF-8

You can explore them and see if any of them help. I don’t believe there’s any particular tool that’s “best for upscaling”. You won’t know the results until you try and they may greatly vary between different images.

Also, for the particular image you show, there are maybe other creative solutions. Converting it to lineart (monochrome) or even vectorizing could be successful. Or not. Maybe more experienced image retouchers can offer additional non-trivial suggestions. You may even want to post your question in the Photoshop forum (even though you don’t own Photoshop), or another forum dedicated specifically to image retouching. Because, indeed, this issue in its core has nothing to do with InDesign.

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