Resizing images help?

[purple]

Using paint.net how can you resize the image without ruining the quality.
Whenever I I resize it (enlarging it) it loses quality and isn't as sharp.
I've tries sharpening but then it just looks worse.. >.<
Anyway to upscale the image and kee good quality????

[Vulcan]

Your initial image quality is going to be your issue here. If you have an image that is in a compressed format (JPG, etc) when you go to enlarge it you will get heavy pixilation . Compression actually removes parts of the image, which normally isn't noticeable to the human eye, however when you start to enlarge the photo you also enlarge the missing parts of the image making it look worse.

In short there's really not any decent way to do this. Your best bet is to try to obtain the images in an uncompressed format (TIFF, RAW) this will give you images that have had nothing removed and you can do much more to re size them and manipulate them.

One side note: If you are scanning from old-school photographs you are going to be size restricted as you will see much of the flaws in the photo that are not normally visible when you expand the size. Your best bet for old-school pictures is to get a film scanner and scan the negatives directly to digital. Much fewer flaws that way.