AI photo enhancer comparison
Hyper Upscale v4 is the best fit for most photos: in our test it restored compressed photos, small text, a landscape, and an old photo more faithfully than the others. Pic Refiner gives the sharpest eyes on portraits, but it retouches skin and can change the face. Pic Refiner v2.1 is the fastest and cheapest, but it handles heavily degraded sources worse than the others.
Run on October 9, 2026. We compared the three most popular photo enhancement models in Problembo on six identical sources.
Summary
| Model | Price per image | Upscale | Time (median) | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hyper Upscale v4 | $0.06 | up to 3500 px | ~27 s | Compressed photos, text, landscapes, old photos |
| Pic Refiner | $0.06 | 4×, up to ~4000 px | ~25 s | Portraits, when facial retouching is acceptable |
| Pic Refiner v2.1 | $0.05 | 1×–4× (2× in test) | ~12 s | Quick upscaling of clean photos and AI art |
| Source | Hyper Upscale v4 | Pic Refiner | Pic Refiner v2.1 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old photo | best | changes the face | weak |
| Small portrait | good | best* | weak |
| Compressed JPEG | best | good | weak |
| Small text | best | distorts | weak |
| AI illustration | good | good | good |
| Soft landscape | best | good | weak |
* The sharpest eyes, but the skin is retouched and the freckles are gone. If likeness matters, choose Hyper Upscale v4.
How we tested
- Sources. The 1920s photo is in the public domain (Wikimedia Commons). The other five images were generated with OpenAI Image 2.5 in Problembo and degraded on purpose: the portrait was downscaled 3× and blurred, the market photo was downscaled 2× and re-saved as JPEG at quality 12, the bakery photo was downscaled 3×, and the landscape was downscaled 2× and blurred. The AI illustration was sent unchanged.
- Settings. All models ran with default settings. Pic Refiner v2.1 ran at 2×, the scale its users pick most often.
- Comparison. All results were resized to the same canvas (2048 px on the long side); the original was stretched with bicubic interpolation. The tiles show the same detail crop; a click opens a slider where either side can show any model or the original.
- Time. The median of all successful single-image tasks in Problembo over the last 30 days, from submission to a ready result. In our run, one task took 17–34 s with Pic Refiner, 22–39 s with Hyper Upscale v4, and 7–22 s with Pic Refiner v2.1, including queue time.
- Test cost. 18 upscale tasks cost $1.02; generating the sources cost $0.35.
Results by photo type
Old scanned photo
Pic Refiner redraws the face: it becomes sharp, but the features, eyes, and teeth no longer match the original. Hyper Upscale v4 sharpens the photo and keeps the face, but it also brings out the grain and cracks. Pic Refiner v2.1 smooths and darkens the photo with almost no extra detail.
If likeness matters, choose Hyper Upscale v4. None of the upscalers removes cracks, stains, or folds: use the AI photo editor for that.
Small blurry portrait
Pic Refiner produces the sharpest eyes and lashes, but the skin looks retouched and the freckles are gone. Hyper Upscale v4 restores the freckles and skin texture but adds wrinkles, so the face looks older. Pic Refiner v2.1 enlarges the photo faithfully, but the blur remains.
Heavily compressed JPEG
Hyper Upscale v4 removes the compression blocks completely, and the price tags become almost readable. Pic Refiner also cleans up the artifacts, but the letters turn into mush. Pic Refiner v2.1 enlarges the image together with the JPEG blocks.
Small text and signs
Hyper Upscale v4 makes the chalkboard menu readable, though it gets a couple of letters wrong. Pic Refiner distorts the text more, and Pic Refiner v2.1 leaves it soft. The models redraw letters and digits rather than recover them: do not treat the result as evidence of what the source said.
AI-generated image
On a clean 1448 × 1086 px generation, all three models do well. Pic Refiner and Hyper Upscale v4 add slightly more sharpness to the lanterns and figures, but the difference is visible only when zoomed in. To simply enlarge AI art, the fastest and cheapest Pic Refiner v2.1 is enough.
Soft landscape
Hyper Upscale v4 gives the sharpest boards, needles, and stones without obvious artifacts. Pic Refiner comes close but is slightly softer. Pic Refiner v2.1 adds almost no detail to the blurry source.
Which model to choose
- Hyper Upscale v4 is the default for compressed, small, and soft photos, photos with text, and old photos where likeness matters. It accepts up to 50 files per run.
- Pic Refiner suits portraits and selfies when you want a retouched look and facial changes are acceptable.
- Pic Refiner v2.1 is for quick 2–4× upscaling of clean sources and AI generations.
All three models can be paid for with the daily bonus.
Test limitations
Each source was run once, and a repeated run may give a slightly different result. Pic Refiner v2.1 was tested only at 2×. Hyper Upscale v5 Realism and Creative, Pic Refiner v3, Hyper Upscale v3.5, and Simple were not included: see their prices and use cases on the service page. We will update the comparison when new models are released.