10 Best AI Image Enhancers to Improve Quality and Resolution
Looking to enhance your photos by upscaling, denoising, deblurring, and improving old or low-resolution images? Online tools often pose data leak risks and can be slow, while traditional image software may struggle with 4K/8K clarity. This blog rounds up best AI Image Enhancer tools that specialize in:
- AI image upscaling and enhancement to avoid pixelation;
- Repair old photos, recover compressed images, and generate realistic details;
- Restore faces, denoise, deblur, and fix out-of-focus photos.
With hundreds of image enhancement tools on the market, which ones truly deliver the best performance and meet your specific needs?
We spent five days testing leading tools, evaluating their performance across key criteria, and the best pick goes to Aiarty Image Enhancer.
Aiarty Image Enhancer outperforms others in restoring and enhancing images with details. It can batch upscale, denoise, deblur, and restore faces in one go, achieving 8K/16K quality. Perfect for all skill levels.
To keep our review unbiased, we ensure each app is thoroughly tested against benchmark images and specific criteria. In this roundup, the top-ranking apps met 90%-98% of our standards, while others met some of the requirements. Find out how we test.
Deeper Dive: 10 Best AI Image Enhancers
1. Aiarty Image Enhancer
Aiarty Image Enhancer emerges as the new leader in AI image enhancement and upsampling for 8K/16K and higher dimensions, powered by the latest AI models and 6.78 million image training dataset. This image enhancer allows you to batch upscale low-res pictures and improve quality in 1-click.
What's unique, it will generate natural details for better skin, hair, fabric, and other textures.
- Rating: 4/5 by MakeTechEasier
- Platforms: Windows 10 or later, Mac (Apple Silicon/Intel CPU).
- Perceptual output image quality: 9/10
- Supported image formats: JPG, PNG, RAW, DNG, CR3, CR2, CRW, WebP, TIFF and more.
- Pricing: Freemium for occasional use, $85/year for power users.
- Best for: Anyone who wants to enhance and upscale AI art, photos, web images, and digital creations—especially for high-definition detail enhancement and batch tasks.
Download Aiarty Image Enhancer to improve your image quality now!
It works efficiently for AI art, photos and digital images (especially those highly-compressed web images). Whether it is legacy family photos, old DVD still grabs, anime, or images generated by Stable Diffusion, Midjourney, or DALLE, you will find suitable AI models to enhance image quality.
AI-Powered Enhancing Tech in Aiarty:
Aiarty Image Enhancer has cutting-edge AI models to enhance images: More-Detail V3 for AI art and any picture that needs natural details after upscaling; AIGC Smooth V3 for clarity and smoother results and Real Photo V3 for faithful photo restoration, such as pixelated, blurry, soft, and noisy images.
The AI auto-inference feature requires minimal user intervention and can save you hours of work.
Highlighted Features:
- AI upscaling and enhancing images to 2K/4K/8K/16K+. Batch process 3000 images.
- Generate and keep details for skins, hair, eyelashes, fabrics, feather, etc.
- AI Face Restoration feature to fix low-quality, blurry, or stained faces.
- Fix grainy, pixelated images, and compression artifacts (such as mosquito noise and color banding).
- Best for AI art, photos, and web images. Offline mode ensures data security and privacy.
Speed & Hardware Requirements:
No matter you are on an old computer, or a high-end machine, you can run Aiarty Image Enhancer as it is optimized for Nvidia/AMD/Intel/CPU.
- On my potato PC (Intel Core i5-4430 GTX650 8G RAM), for 512x512 to 4096x4096 upscaling with the More-Detail model, it takes 1min21s, which is fast considering we are upscaling by 8X with details.
- For computers with dedicated graphics cards, it can batch process 3000 images per hour, delivering an even faster performance.
Free download Aiarty Image Enhancer for Windows or Mac:
2. Topaz Photo AI
- Platform: Windows 10/11; macOS Big Sur and later; 6GB VRAM, 8-16GB RAM
- Pricing: $199
- Max Resolution: 1x, 2x, 4x or Max
- Perceptual output image quality: 8.5/10
- Best for: Photographers with powerful computers to restore and upscale images
Topaz Photo AI is a popular but pricey AI image enhancer, available as a plugin for Photoshop/Lightroom or a standalone app. It improves image quality with noise reduction and lens correction. The tool detects faces and subjects, though manual selection may be required for undetected areas. Its Autopilot algorithms can address image flaws, but face detection results can be inconsistent.
While it fixes lens distortion and out-of-focus images, it doesn't handle color cast, underexposure, or white balance issues. You'll still need other editing apps. It also upscales low-res images up to 600%, with outputs in DNG, JPEG, PNG, or TIFF.
AI-powered enhancing tech:
- Auto face detection and restoration.
- Autopilot feature to analyze defects in the image.
- AI upscaling for low-res images.
Areas that need improvement:
- Can't fix white balance or color cast issues.
- Slow saving speed for some images in certain versions.
- High price for the features offered.
3. Adobe Photoshop (Firefly)
- Platform: Windows/Mac
- Pricing: $22.99/mo
- Max Resolution: 4X
- Perceptual output image quality: 8.5/10
- Best for: Professional designers and photographers
Photoshop is a professional design and precise editing tool from Adobe Inc. Now powered by Firefly, it has become one of the most popular AI image enhancers among designers, photographers, and advanced hobbyists.
Previously, enhancing images in Photoshop relied on traditional algorithms, which were less efficient. Methods like nearest-neighbor interpolation could introduce jagged edges, while bilinear interpolation often reduces contrast due to its method of averaging pixel color values.
AI-powered enhancing tech:
- Fix blemishes, remove red eyes, and retouch (for skilled hands).
- Generative Fill for photo refinement (Firefly required).
Areas that need improvement:
- The extensive range of features can be overwhelming for beginners.
- It demands significant system resources, causing performance issues on general PCs.
4. ImageUpscaler.com Image Enhancer
- Platform: Online
- Pricing: Free for basic use, paid plans for higher resolution processing
- Max Resolution: 8X
- Perceptual output image quality: 8.5/10
- Best for: Quickly enhancing image quality and restoring details in compressed or low-resolution images
The Image Enhancer from ImageUpscaler.com is an AI-powered tool designed for fast and efficient image enhancement. One of its key advantages is the speed of processing, allowing users to go from website visit to enhanced image output within seconds. The tool improves image quality by sharpening details, reducing noise, and restoring textures, making it useful for compressed images, AI-generated visuals, and low-resolution photos.
It supports JPG, PNG, WebP, BMP. HEIC, PDF formats and runs entirely in the browser, eliminating the need for software installation. Its combination of quick processing and ease of use makes it a practical solution for those who need high-quality enhancements without manual editing.
5. Luminar Neo
- Platform: Windows/Mac
- Pricing: $199 One-Time Purchase (1-Year Generative AI Access), or subscription-based
- Best for: Hobbyist photographers and content creators to enhance photos
- Max Resolution: 6X
- Perceptual output image quality: 9/10
Luminar Neo is a comprehensive photo editing software developed by Skylum, designed for photographers of all levels. It leverages artificial intelligence to simplify complex editing tasks and enhance images with ease.
The Sky AI feature, for instance, allows users to replace the sky in their images with a variety of options, creating a more compelling and dramatic backdrop; the Magic Light AI tool introduces customizable starbursts around point light sources; and the AI masking feature can analyze and auto creates layers for fine tuning and editing.
There are GenErase to remove objects with deep learning, GenExpand to extend the image and change aspect ratio, Upscale AI for 6x upsizing, and Supersharp AI for picture sharpening. Luminar Neo is more like Jack of all trades, but the lack of focus may result in certain feature being less powerful.
While Luminar Neo is versatile, its broad focus can sometimes mean that certain features aren't as robust. For instance, its noise reduction tool occasionally leaves colored blotches on images, especially those with high ISO settings.
AI-powered enhancing tech:
- AI tools for noise reduction, upscaling, and background removal.
- AI-driven layer masking that automatically detects subjects and creates masks.
- AI powered editing scenarios: sky replacement, AI bokeh, AI lighting, etc.
Areas that need improvement:
- Some AI functions, such as the AI Crop Composition tool and Horizon Alignment, make questionable choices and need refinement.
- The Face Enhancer function can produce unnatural-looking results and struggles with smaller background faces.
- The realtime previews do not always accurately reflect Luminar Neo's own renderings.
- The perpetual license is pricey compared to more fully-fledged editing apps.
6. Remini AI Image Enhancer
- Platform: Online/iOS/ Android
- Pricing: $4.99 Lite Weekly, $9.99 Pro Weekly, or separate plans for API integration
- Max Resolution: 2X, 4X, depending on your mobile chips
- Perceptual output image quality: 8/10
- Best for: Beginners looking for on-the-go editing and image enhancement
Remini is a top AI image enhancer, recently ranking high on the App Store. It offers four main improvements: face enhancement, face glow, auto color, and background enhancement, along with old photo restoration.
While it can reconstruct vague shapes in portraits, the results can be hit-or-miss. The latest update allows users to adjust enhancement strength, fixing previous issues of overly strong effects like unnatural facial features.
AI-powered enhancing tech:
- Fix grainy and blurry photos.
- Upscale images and videos.
Areas that need improvement:
- $9.99 weekly subscription is pricey for its features.
- Skin lightening may not suit all users due to ethnicity or personal preferences.
- New models may auto-apply unwanted enhancements.
7. Waifu2X (Online Open-Source)
- Platform: Online
- Pricing: Free, open source
- Max Resolution: 2X, 4X
- Perceptual output image quality: 8/10
- Best for: Fix low-quality anime by upscaling with AI algorithms
Waifu2X is a free online image enhancer specializing in 2X or 4X upscaling. It uses a CNN-based model to upscale images without adding extra details. Originally designed for anime, it also works for photos and digital images. There is a denoise option, but you need to use it cautiously, as it may have counter effects on noise-free images.
As an online service, it is less stable than standalone software, and can have data leak risks. Also, if you need to batch enhance hundreds of images, Waifu2X is not an ideal option.
AI-powered enhancing tech:
- AI upscaling tech inspired by SRCNN (Image Super-Resolution Using Deep Convolutional Networks).
- Noise reduction to fix compression artifacts.
Areas that need improvement:
- It doesn't have more features to enhance the image except AI upscaling, but there is nothing to complain about since it is free.
- It is less capable of upscaling with details and texture being preserved.
8. Krea AI (Online)
- Platform: Online.
- Pricing: $10/$35/$60 per month for 120/600/1800 image enhancement
- Best for: Artists and designers who need creative upscaling instead of a faithful enhancement
- Max Resolution: 1x, 2x, 4x, 8x
- Perceptual output image quality: 8/10
Krea AI is a powerful tool that combines AI image generation, video generation, and image enhancement. It's a great free option for creative upscaling, which uses diffusion-based AI to enhance and add creative details to your images.
For those unfamiliar with creative upscaling, it involves enhancing images by increasing their resolution and adding creative details, like new elements. For example, uploading an image of an armored girl in Krea AI might change her makeup, skin tones, and overall color grading for a more creative look.
You can use prompts to guide the creative upscaling and even negative prompts to specify what you don't want. Krea AI offers various style models like "flat sharp", "strong", "reinterpretation", "oil painting", and "digital art". The chosen model will significantly impact the genre and aesthetics of the final image.
AI-powered enhancing tech:
- Option to adjust AI strength, resemblance, and clarity for creative upscaling.
- Option to use prompts and negative prompts to guide the enhancement.
Areas that need improvement:
- 4K upscaling is not supported in the free plan.
- Since there are many parameters to tweak with, improper value combinations can lead to overfitting.
9. chaiNNer (Open-Source GUI)
- Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux
- Pricing: Free open-source
- Best for: Geeks familiar with node-based image processing workflow
- Max Resolution: 16K/32K
- Perceptual output image quality: 9/10
Strictly speaking, ChaiNNer is not an AI image enhancer model but a GUI that offers node-based enhancing workflows, provided you have installed the corresponding models and dependencies.
You can connect processing steps (known as nodes) for different workflows and tasks. Initially developed as an AI upscaling GUI, ChaiNNer has evolved into a highly versatile and robust program for image processing.
Once you have installed dependencies such as PyTorch (2GB), NCNN, and ONNX, as well as enhancer models, you can start the node-based image upscaling and enhancement in ChaiNNer.
For instance, below are two models for different aims in the workflow. You can also find other open-source AI upscaling models on OpenModelDB and implement them into the ChaiNNer workflow.
For image upscaling: SwinIR-L model at https://github.com/JingyunLiang/SwinIR
For face restoration: CodeFormer model at https://github.com/sczhou/CodeFormer
Note: Since chaiNNer is only a GUI, not the models themselves, we won't list the pros and cons here. The output image quality depends on which model you installed and how you apply it in the workflow.
10. Let's Enhance (Online)
- Platform: Windows/Mac
- Pricing: 1-Year License Giveaway
- Best for: Anyone who wishes to enhance and upscale AI art, photos, web images, digital creations and upscale for printing
- Max Resolution: 16K/32K
- Perceptual output image quality: 8/10
Let's Enhance is a popular online AI image enhancer, especially favored by beginners thanks to its simple, user-friendly interface. It's perfect for those who need to quickly enhance and upscale a few images without any hassle.
The tool comes with built-in models tailored for different types of images and scenarios, such as photos, digital art, smart enhancement, and smart resizing. It maintains the original aspect ratio and can also handle custom sizes, offering flexibility for various needs. One of its standout features is the Light AI enhancer, along with a Tone enhancing utility.
The smart enhancement feature is designed for images that have been downsized or previously downloaded, helping to restore compressed artifacts. However, it's important to note that this model is most effective on slightly distorted images. If your picture has been heavily compressed, don't expect miracles.
AI-powered enhancing tech:
- Light AI, tone AI, upscaler and background remover.
Areas that need improvement:
- For smaller faces that occupy only a tiny portion of the image, this online enhancer often fails to enhance them with sufficient detail.
- The enhanced images sometimes turn out less saturated than the original images.
- The free plan puts a watermark on enhanced images.
Comparisons of the 10 Best AI Image Enhancers
AI-Fill Details refers to the ability to enhance images with realistic details, such as skin, hair, and textures. Aiarty Image Enhancer can better infer and fill in details without artifacts, thanks to its cutting-edge AI models.
How We Picked the Best AI Image Enhancers
We listed the 23 most mentioned AI image enhancers and compared them against the benchmark of four different images: an AI-generated artwork, a photo taken on an iPhone X, a screen grab of anime, and a downloaded image that suffered from platform compression.
During testing, we took notes on the following aspects:
- Output Image Quality: Maximum resolution, perceptual quality, details, and texture preservation.
- Efficiency: Batch support, processing speed, and performance on average computers.
- Sustainability: Is it from a trusted developer/tech company? Will it keep updating and serving users? Is there technical support or communities for peer-to-peer help?
We then handpicked the 10 best AI image enhancers that outshine others in all or most of the above aspects.
External Resources:
- The AI in Photography Revolution: Capturing the Future By Shalwa, September 11, 2024
- Image Restoration by Artificial Intelligence [wiki]
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This post was written by Brenda Peng who is a seasoned editor at Digiarty Software who loves turning ordinary photos into extraordinary works of art. With AI assistance from DeepSeek for brainstorming and drafting, the post is reviewed for accuracy by our expert Abby Poole for her expertise in this field.
