FreeScaler For Mac

Image upscaling has become easily accessible, with tons of free, web-based tools, but also vastly more complex paid apps. AI models are getting quite advanced as well, making for far more accurate results when lots of new pixels need to be generated to increase resolution.

FreeScaler is a free, open-source application designed to present you with a simple, intuitive desktop GUI for upscaling your images. It is suitable for artwork and photos, using two open-source tools as the backend: Real-ESRGAN and RealSR. It offers fairly limited customization, but it’s very easy to use.

Upscaling is complicated work, as the app needs to figure out how to fill in new pixels that are created when the resolution is increased. AI models analyze countless other images to better identify content and more accurately “color in” the newly-generated pixels.

FreeScaler includes models for anime, drawings, photos, and image sharpening. While the anime model allows you to choose between 2x, 3x, or 4x, the scale is locked to 4x for other all the other ones. You can also enable test-time augmentation, which reduces artifacts while increasing processing time.

To upscale images, you can just drop them in the main UI, select your preferred model, and click Upscale. You can also load multiple images at once and process them in one go. When the job is done, you can move a divider to compare the original and upscaled image.

The fact that upscaling is locked to 4x for most models will limit this app’s use cases, and there is also no way to customize noise reduction and sharpening. Also, it would help if you were able to zoom in when comparing the results in order to better analyze details.

If you don’t want to use a web-based tool, which will require you to upload your images, and you don’t want to go for a paid option, FreeScaler is a very capable free upscaler. It could use more features and fine-tuning capabilities, but it should do a pretty good job in most cases.