Total Noob question

Feel free to laugh and shoot me down on this one guys because it might be the most stupid question you will ever hear!!!!

If I was to use my 3MP camera phone and take a picture can i then upload it to me mac and improve upon upon the picture quality i.e make it look like say a 10MP image? If (which i highly doubt the answer to this is a yes) what software would I use and is there anyway i can get this for free? (legally!)

Thank you for your replys

You could open it up in photoshop and up the resolution, then use the Smart sharpen filter - but you are still just sharpening a lower resolution image - there are several paid for image upping utilities out there but they are still sharpening an image

Haven't got photoshop - try GIMP

http://www.macgimp.org/

Thanks for the reply but is MacGimp free? I have no money to spend on software as im still at school and have no income because i'm broke after buying this mac lol

You can not make a 3mp picture into something else... but as said, you, can adjust it to make it look better.

The auto adjust functions in iPhoto should be enough but http://www.pixelmator.com/ should be a great alternative if you want to spend a little money on a editing tool.

GIMP is part of The GNU Project, open source and free

Can you make a 3mp picture into a 10mp picture? The answer is no.

Can your 3mp camera end up taking a 10mp picture? Yes with same post processing and some camera work.

If your only doing it once in a while fine, but it will become a pain in the (_)_) if you have to do it every picture. Basically you have to take multiple pictures of the same subject. For simplicity sake lets say 4 pictures. You have to stagger them such as that the 4 pictures are 4 quadrants with each one slightly over lapping the next above/below and left and right. Then you can use a program to stitch them together into one picture.

For example this picture from the stitch program PTGUI:

No, you cannot. With any method you try, you are going to ask any program to make pixels out of thin air. It's more complicated than that but that's the simple way of thinking about it. Photoshop and other photo editors will evaluate the image and it will take each pixel and look at each surrounding pixel and determine what color should be there and add it. If you are upscaling the image in a small way (say 10% larger), the quality is a lot higher than if you were to upscale it to 50%. But the original file will always look best.
Go to ononesoftware.com and download the free 30 day trial of Geniune Fractals. It's what most Pros use and it does a far superior job compared to Photoshop when it comes to image enlarging.

Yep even Photoshop can't boost a picture at over 300% and make it look like it was shot that way.

There is a Photoshop plugin called Genuine Fractals that is said to help you boost your photos to up to 800% and make a decent job of it but it isn't free and it works, to my knowledge in Photoshop which isn't free either.

And like louishen suggested, download Gimp, if you want free, that's the closest you can get to Photoshop. Other image editors are out there but Gimp is pretty close to Photoshop with its features.

There's software out there, definitely not what the OP wants as it's expensive.

Genuine Fractals claims it can up size up to 1000%. I haven't done anything 1000% but I've went from 8mp to 24x36 with no loss of quality on the print.

If the op has the photo and wants it blown up, he can send it to me and I can transfer it back. What's the physical size of the photo?

http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=2