Tips for scaling images (working on Street Fighter project)

[mike boss]

I'm working on this Street Fighter project.
Marquee, Side Art, Control Panel Front Image, and Front Panel.

The customer wants the Ken and Ryu to be as big as possible.

The source images are found on Google.

Here are the specs of the character art.

Ryu 5855 x 7524 = 19.517" x 25.08 @ 299.999 pixels

Ken 4378 x 7846 = 14.593" x 26.153" @ 299.999 pixels

My concern is blowing these up........... any tips or tricks I could use ?
The cabinet sides are nearly 70" .

[Malenko]

vectorize them

[mike boss]

Like re-draw the entire image ?
Or run them thru Vector-Magic ?

[Malenko]

Like re-draw the entire image ?
Or run them thru Vector-Magic ?

You can try vector magic, but I meant trace them in illustrator


EDIT:Removed emoticon I didnt realize was there

[mike boss]

I'm not really familiar with Illustrator, so I would not be able to trace them.
I'll give VectorMagic a try tho.

I was hoping perhaps Photoshop had some tricks I was unaware of.....Wishful thinking I guess.

Thanks

[sellsellsell2000]

Let take a un-inflated balloon, draw a happy face on it and then inflate it. The image looks good when it is 'un-inflated', but when you stretch it looks really bad.

This is the same concept. Never upscale an image, but if you do everything is gonna look super blurry.

[n3wt0n]

What everyone is saying is true and vector would be best but IF (huge if) you have a good quality image to start with you can try this plugin for Photoshop. I have used this before when it was called Genuine Fractals with great success on a few images for clients and it worked as expected. The image was great before and after enlarging and the end results printed fine. They used to have a free 30 day trial of the full version. If they still offer that I would give it a go.

https://www.on1.com/apps/resize10/

[Martijn]

hows this?

http://www.mediafire.com/download/1aa46e4zbybab54/ryu.psd

[mike boss]

ohhhh..................a surprise ! Thanks, I'll download now.

@ Martijn,

thank you for your help. That is perfect, that is a huge help.
And I don't mean to be a beggar...........do you have a Ken image ? 

[Martijn]

Ill do the ken tomrrow, glad to be of help

[mike boss]

Thank you sir , you are of a tremendous help.
I am truly grateful, thank you again.

Thanks Thanks Thanks

[Martijn]

http://www.mediafire.com/download/0azss6mt4773p6u/ken.psd

[mike boss]

Thanks again Martijn,

This will be a HUGE help, thank you for your time kind sir.

Thank you

[mike boss]

Just wanted to say thanks again to Martijn for his HUGE help!
Thank you very much.

I was able to complete the SF project, and got some test prints done.
I did an 8x10 of Ryu's head (to scale of the actual sideart) and the quality was awesome.

Thank you again kind sir, truly a massive help.

Many, many, many thanks.

I truly appreciate the help.