July 31, 2026
Pixel glow-up or plastic surgery?
I 4x'd a 367x479 stamp-sized photo through 8 upscaling models
A tiny passport pic became an AI beauty pageant — and commenters roasted every face
TLDR: A developer tested eight image enhancers on a tiny passport photo to expose how messy real-world results can be. Commenters were split between skepticism and roast mode, with many saying the faces looked fake, plasticky, and not nearly as magical as the marketing promises.
One developer took a stamp-sized passport photo and blew it up four times through eight image enhancers, basically saying: enough with the glossy promo shots, let’s see what happens when these tools face a truly cursed test. The result? A parade of faces that, according to the article, often came out waxy, overly smooth, oddly pale, or just plain weird. The author says many paid image-enhancing websites sell a fantasy, while regular people can now do this kind of editing on their own computers without handing over photos or monthly fees.
But the real fireworks came from the comments. The author opened with a double disclaimer, admitting the test was "borderline unfair" and also revealing the app being promoted was their own. That instantly gave the whole thing a spicy “review-or-ad?” vibe. Some readers were skeptical: one argued that a human face is actually the easiest thing for these systems to fake, because people will accept a believable-looking face even if it’s not true to the original. Another flatly said they didn’t buy the winner’s supposed superiority when viewing the zoomed-in mobile version, though the full-size images looked better.
And then came the funniest drag of all: one commenter asked if all these upscaled faces look like they belong in a video game or were made of smooth plastic. Honestly, that became the thread’s unofficial verdict. Less “photo restoration miracle,” more “uncanny valley passport booth.”
Key Points
- •The article is part of the author's “Proof Series,” which compares the author's tool, Enlarger, with alternative AI upscalers.
- •The benchmark uses a 367x479 passport-style image cropped from the author's own photo and enlarges it 4x to 1468x1916 pixels.
- •Upscayl was selected for testing because it is downloadable and accessible for readers to verify with the same source image.
- •The article reviews several Upscayl models—Standard, Lite, High Fidelity, and Remacri—and describes their output on the same small facial image.
- •The author states that the comparison is intentionally difficult for all models and is not intended as a hit piece against Upscayl.