Hello everyone,
First I would like to mention that I did searched for an answer to my issue on the forum but only found a thread by Rowby Goren from Jan 4, 2010, who asked a similar pixel resize question regarding to still images in CS4. He was answered to use Photoshop for this kind of task. My issue on the other hand is for handling a video that can only be edited in Premiere. I'm using CS6. My issue is as follows:
I work a lot with pixel art animation in 320x240 resolution. Usually I'm making a 320x240 scene of background and characters and the final result should be a doubled sized. So each pixel is actually 2 times larger. Just like old adventure games from the good old days that most of us remember. It works great with old style games creation engines however when I want to make a video with my pixel art creation in Premiere, I couldn't achieve an exact and clean doubled pixel when resizing the source by 200%. It always gets blurry. Does anyone knows if Premiere has any switch off option for scalling blur?
I have created an image that describes the issue. It's just a simple pixel art image that I picked up on google search. I saved and uploaded it as PNG for best quality, I just hope it won't get compressed after the upload. Any assitance will be appreciated!
Thanks,
Gal Shemesh
1 Correct answer
this is an old unanswered post but appears way up top on the google search engine. I bet I wasn't the only frustrated with this... SO HERE'S THE ANSWER:
Right click on your image layer, Quality < set to Draft. Done, your pixelart remains sharp as if you're using "Nearest Neighbor" in Photoshop or "Point" in Unity.
I really don't know why it's so hidden... Anyhow, don't forget to render in Draft Quality as well when done. Hope this helps someone out there!
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Replies
Hi Jim, how are you doing? Thank you for the reply! But that's not quite correct though.
I've been creating computer games for many years by now and never encountered this issue before. When you scale up a digital image or video, the pixels should save their properties and not 'merge' with each other, but only double their size when scalling up by 200%. Most editing software today do the 'blurry' effect when scalling up or down an image because less and less people are working on pixel art noadays, and the blurry effect looks nice from a few meters away. Old editing tools on the other hand used to handle pixel arts quite well.
Take the Microsoft Paint that can be found in Windows XP for example. It used to handle pixel arts great when scalling up or down an image. But since Vista and OS 7 have arrived, the new Microsoft Paint has been 'improved' and now it does the same 'blurry' issue and can't handle scalling an exact pixel art image anymore. Try it for yourself on both XP and Vista/7 machines and be amazed with the difference. 
I believe that there should be a way to turn off the blurring effect in Premiere for people like me who's work is still based on pixel arts (a feature request perhaps). Just like in Photoshop where you can switch off the 'antializing' feature in order to cut/paint areas in an image, without worring that the blurring effect will merge the pixels around your cut/paint area.
Then again any assistance will be appreciated!
Thanks,
Gal Shemesh
Hi Jim and ComputerNovice25, thank you both for your replies.
I don't know how much you know about old style computer games from the '80s-'90s that were based on pixel art graphics, but it has nothing to do with vector graphic whatsoever. If they were then companies that are making re-makes for those games noadays wouldn't have to handle with all the graphics from almost scratch. They would only had to take the original graphics (if they were vector based I emphasize) and resize them to large resolutions. A good example for that are the old but yet great games 'Monkey Island 1' & 'Monkey Island 2' by LucasArts. The special edition of these games were created with vector tools in order to have much higher graphics resolution to attract the audience, however the original versions were entirely pixel art creation that was drew pixel by pixel.
As far as I know, vector graphics that usually create in Illustrator are based on mathematical calculation that creates an image. Say you draw a line from one point to another, the rest of the pixels between the first and last dots are calculated in such a way that it first makes the final file much smaller in size, but you'll also be able to scale the image up and down without loosing the overall quality of the image. So a character in 200x500 pixels size can be scaled up or down to whatever size you like and the image quality will remain as if you draw the character in the larger/smaller size. And that is due to the amazing vector pixels calculation technology. That can be seen in flash videos/games.
I'm working as I mentioned on pixel art style and therefore the vector technology is not for me. That is why I'm looking for a way to work in clean pixels without the blurry effect in few of the great softwares that lies in the Master Collection suite I purchased from Adobe, which are Premiere and perhaps After Effects. If there isn't any option to handle that then perhaps Adobe should consider a feature request to achieve that in the above tools.
And just for the big idea of what pixel art can be used for, see the image below in 100% and 200% sizes (was taken by google search). No vector tools have been used to create that image. It's a pixel by pixel creation. Click to see in full resolution.
If anyone else hears of a solution for my issue please let me know.
And Jim and ComputerNovice25, thanks again!
All the best,
Gal Shemesh
Thanks Jim, I am aware of the fact that it's a degraded image that doesn't have any antializing effect on it. And that's what I'm trying to achieve in Premiere, although it's currently impossible. Until now I'm doing exactly what you suggested, which is to double the size in Photoshop or other tool that doesn't affect any antializing on the image and then I import it into Premiere. However this also makes a problem when you want to move objects on the screen as the imported images which are doubled size, won't show well on the 1:1 pixel grid when you move them around the screen. So let's say each move on the X axis to the left or right (which represents a move by 1 pixel) should be moved twice in order to meet the doubled sized images pixel grid.
Take a look on the picture I created to see what I mean. I've duplicated the box image and I'm trying to position each box one next to another in a 3d space look. The left boxes is the original image of the 2 boxes, and the right image is the doubled sized image that was created outside of Premiere. Please note that I've the entire screenshot twice larger so you could see the difference. And please ignore the fact that there is no antializing on the right image as I made this simulation in Photoshop so the pixels will be clean to show the problem.
So, if you aware of how a pixel grid looks like, check the left image. The position of the boxes on each other is the way it should be as each pixel from each box keeps the relation of a 1:1 pixel grid. However on the right image I first doubled the original box image to prevent 'blurring' effect when scalling up in Premiere, put it on a 1:1 pixel canvas (where the image has 2:2 pixel grid by now) just like how it will be in Premiere, and tried to position the boxes one next to another. See that there's a confusion between the pixels on the 1:1 grid as they got merged one INTO another without saving the relation of a doubled pixel grid. Where if there was any option to work in doubled sized pixles in Premiere, it would have look like this:
So importing a doubled size images into Premiere like you suggested is way hard to keep tracking the moving objects in the scene, as you must remember to move them twice the times to each direction. Which means that if you want to move an object from one side of the screen to the other side, you'll have to do it frame by frame in a move of 2 pixels by frame, rather then positioning it in one place, make a keyframe, and then go to where the movement should end and place another keyframe.
Hope now my issue is clear.
All the best,
Gal Shemesh
That's completely fine Jim. I believe that if someone who's familiar with 2d animations will pop by this thread, then he or she will be able to understand what I mean and why it's so important feature to have in Premiere or After Effects.
Anyway thanks a lot for trying to help me out man! I appreciate your knowledege and time.
In the meantime I'll stick with my workarounds. But I'll be waiting for more members to participate in this query...
Best regards,
Gal Shemesh
I found a great way that works in Adobe Premiere Pro 2022.
Autokroma has this plugin called Vizual PixelPerfect. You can get it here:
https://www.autokroma.com/blog/Vizual-PixelPerfect-Upscale-Pixel-Art-Nearest-Neighbors-Premiere-Pro
Once installed, go into "Effects -> Video Effects", and now there's "Autokroma -> Vizual PixelPerfect". Apply it to the clip, then in the Effect Controls, choose "Scale" and set it to whatever size (so, 9.00 was used in the example below) and I can change "Interpolation algo", but I've left it at "Nearest".
The result can be seen in this screenshot of the outputted 4K clip. The original footage was an uncompressed 256 x 224 .AVI from EmuHawk, but now it has been scaled up by 9. If you zoom right in with an image editor, you can see it's actually not PERFECT, there's like a pixel-width of distortion at most, maybe I missed a setting, but it's certainly the simplest solution that is good enough for my purposes, and is probably what you're looking for, if you or anyone else is still wondering all these years later.
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