Best Free Image Upscaler?

[dusty stu]

generally speaking,
if you AI upscale an image,
then resize the resolution back down to the original,
is it better "quality" afterword?

 

[MissFortune]

is it better "quality" afterword?

Yes and no.

You'll have a bigger image, and likely a bit more clarity, but you'll likely notice a softer looks to the image and likely a lot of residual sharpening effects (overly white, harsh lines, loss of detail, etc.).

For example, here's some 512x512 AI art:

Here's the same one upscaled to 2048x2048:

And then downscaled back to the original size:


As you can see, all downscaling the AI-upscaled version does is make a smaller version of that upscaled version. But at the same time, you will keep some of the inherent benefits of upscaling.