I've been using Topaz Gigapixel and Adobe Super Resolution to enlarge old family photos, but the faces come out looking plastic and distorted. The settings seem fine but something's just off about the features. Am I using the wrong tool or should I tweak the AI settings differently?
Are you feeding these tools photos that are already pretty degraded, or are they relatively clean to start with?
The plastic face issue is usually because AI upscalers can over-smooth skin and over-sharpen features when they're trained on modern, high-quality faces. Old family photos have different texture and grain patterns that confuse the algorithm into "fixing" things that aren't actually broken. Both Topaz and Adobe have face-specific settings - try dialing back any face enhancement or smoothing sliders you've got enabled. Sometimes turning those off completely and letting the general upscaling handle it gives better results, even if it's slightly less polished overall.
Also consider the upscaling factor itself. Going from a tiny 2x3 inch print straight to 20x30 is asking a lot. I had better luck doing incremental upscales - like 2x first, then 2x again - rather than one big jump. And honestly, if the original photo is really degraded, no AI tool is gonna make it look totally natural. Sometimes accepting a bit of softness is better than getting that waxy, pulled face look. You might also experiment with different models within Topaz (they have several) since some handle faces better than others depending on the photo's age and condition.
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