Upscaling

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. The process of enlarging an image or video while attempting to maintain or improve its visual quality
2. Enhancing the size or resolution of digital media to make it appear larger and clearer
3. Transforming visual content to a higher resolution format by increasing its dimensions and detail

Etymology: "Upscaling" is the present participle of "upscale," a verb built plainly from "up" and "scale." The verb appears in English from about 1963, and the adjective, as in an "upscale" store or neighborhood, followed a few years later in 1966. The core idea is simple: to scale something up is to increase its size, and "up" makes the direction explicit. The image sense is a modern extension of that older meaning. Enlarging a picture while keeping it looking sharp is hard, because a bigger version has more pixels that must be invented from the original data. The verb therefore came to cover not just making things bigger but doing so with an attempt to preserve or improve quality, which is what the term means today when applied to photos and video.

Synonyms: upgrading, enhancing, improving, expanding, increasing

Antonyms: downscaling, reducing, diminishing, decreasing, contracting