Old brand files look rough on a new site: how to sort them, what to redraw and what to upscale

A site refresh shows every weakness in old files. Screens are larger and sharper than they were, so a logo that was fine in 2018 now looks fuzzy. The urge is to find one upscaler and feed it the whole folder. That is a mistake, because the files are not all the same kind of thing. A logo, a product photo and a staff picture each need a different fix, and some need a rights check before anyone touches them.

This page is about the audit and the triage. If you only need one photo enlarged for print, my page on enlarging an image without blur covers the pixel math and the print test. Here I use the vendors' own pages (checked on 3 November 2026), the advertising guide for small businesses from the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Higgsfield's tool list. Prices change, so confirm them on the live pages. Old video clips and old ad stills have their own routes: upscaling AI video to 4K and old ad images to new reels.

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The real problem: old files on a new, bigger site

"Low quality" can mean different things:

• The file has too few pixels for the space it now fills.
• It was saved with heavy compression, so it looks blocky.
• It is a screenshot or a photo of a screen, so it was never sharp.
• It is a low-resolution copy of a logo that once existed as a clean file.

Only the first case is a real upscaling job. The others need originals, a redraw or a recapture.

Option 0: find the originals and the source files

Before you touch anything, look for the better version. Ask:

• The designer or agency that made the logo: ask for the "source files". For a logo these are usually vector files with names ending in .ai, .eps, .svg or .pdf.
• The photographer or the old photo shoot folder: ask for the full-size originals, not the website copies.
• Your own old computers, shared drives and email attachments. A site export is almost always the smallest copy.

Write the request down so you can send it in one message:

We are refreshing our website. Could you send the original, full-size files for our logo and our product photos, and the vector or layered source files if you have them? Please also tell us any licence limits on the images.

If a designer or retoucher is needed, ask for a quote. A person can redraw a logo in an hour or two, and it is a one-time job.

Sort the pile: logos, graphics, product photos, people photos

This table is the core of the job. Put each file in one row.

Type	Best fix	Why
Logo or text graphic	Redraw as a vector, or get the source file	Upscalers guess at letters and shapes and can bend them. Canva itself says vector files are not supported and that results vary on text.
Product photo, same product still sold	Upscale a small amount, or reshoot	Safe if the product has not changed and you check the result.
Product photo, product has changed	Reshoot	An upscale will not show the new version. Do not mislead buyers.
Lifestyle photo with people	Check consent and licence first	Editing creates a new version of the image. Releases and licences may not cover it.
Screenshot	Capture it again at a larger size	A screenshot has no more detail to recover.

Redraw logos, do not upscale them

A logo is made of clean shapes and letters. An AI upscaler treats it like a picture and guesses, so edges can wobble, letters can change slightly and brand colors can drift. Vectors avoid the problem, because they are described by math and stay sharp at any size.

1. Ask the original designer for the vector file.
2. If it is lost, hire a designer to redraw it from the best copy. Give them the brand colors if you know them.
3. Compare the new file next to the old one at full size to confirm the exact shapes, spacing and colors match.
4. Save the vector as the master and export web versions from it.

I do not recommend an automatic picture-to-vector tool here. Check any result by eye against the old logo.

Work out the size each slot needs

Web images need far fewer pixels than print. Measure the largest place each image will appear on the new site. Then double the width for high-density screens (phones and laptops with sharp displays). That is the size you need.

A made-up example: a product image sits in a 600 pixel wide slot. Doubled, you want about 1200 pixels. If the old file is 800 pixels wide, you need 1.5x, which is a safe, low-risk upscale. If it is 300 pixels wide, you need 4x, and the result is much more likely to look artificial. Many "low quality" assets only need a small boost.

Upscale options for photos: free, subscription, Higgsfield

• Canva Upscale. Per Canva's help page, it is a standard feature on Free and paid plans. Canva chooses 4x or 16x itself. It accepts JPG and PNG files, once per image, and results vary on faces and text. On Free each use draws on the AI allowance, and on paid plans it does not.
• Topaz Gigapixel. Desktop software that upscales photos on your own computer. The pricing page (3 November 2026) shows it at $149 a year, and shows Topaz for Web - Image, a browser version, at $109 a year (listed down from $199). The page says a business needs Pro for full commercial rights, and it limits the single apps to personal and commercial use for organizations under $1M a year in revenue. Read the licence first.
• Other web upscalers. Several browser tools advertise batch upscaling for product photos. Phot.ai's page, for example, offers 2x or 4x upscaling and a batch mode. Their quality and privacy terms are unverified here, so run the five-asset test below before you upload a whole catalog.
• A designer or retoucher. Ask for a quote. For a handful of hero images this can beat any subscription.
• Higgsfield. Its tool list, read through its Claude connector on 3 November 2026, includes Topaz and ByteDance (the company behind TikTok) image upscalers. The cost per upscale, plan requirements and file size limits are not published, so read the credit cost on the Generate button first. See my guide to Higgsfield upscale, relight and edit for the toolset.

Higgsfield makes sense when your brand pictures are generated or edited there already, so the files are in one place. For a one-time refresh of legacy photos, Canva or a retoucher is simpler. Free Higgsfield accounts watermark every output, so a site refresh would need a paid plan. See Higgsfield pricing and check higgsfield.ai/pricing.

Rights and accuracy checks before you change anything

• Who owns the image? Old assets may come from a former agency, a stock site or a photographer with limited terms. Upscaling makes a changed copy. Confirm the licence allows editing.
• Who is in the photo? If it shows people, check the original releases. Do not use an upscale to change how a person looks. Check local law and the platform's current rules.
• Is the product still the same? An AI-upscaled product image can slightly change a label, stitching or color. For anything you sell, compare it to the physical product. The FTC says an ad is deceptive if it is likely to mislead a reasonable consumer on something material, and it looks at pictures and their context. It also says advertising agencies can be held responsible. Keep the original in the asset folder as a record.

A 5-asset test with pass/fail

This is a plan you can run in an afternoon. It needs a spreadsheet and no special software.

1. Inventory. One row per file. Columns: file name, source, rights, type, size in pixels, size needed, decision.
2. Triage with the table above.
3. Pick five typical photos (not logos) and upscale each with two tools.
4. Judge at 100 percent zoom on the real page, not in the tool's preview.
5. Replace and log. Note which version went live and keep the originals.

Fail on: changed labels or text, waxy or altered faces, odd edges or halos, shifted colors, or a patchy look at the real display size. Pass means none of these and a visible gain. If a tool fails on three of the five, change tools or reshoot. For 50 or more photos, check whether one month of a flat-rate plan covers the whole batch before you buy credits one by one.

Review checklist

• Did I ask for originals and source files first?
• Are logos redrawn as vectors, not upscaled?
• Is each photo sized for its largest slot, doubled for sharp screens?
• Is the licence checked for every edited image?
• Does each product image still match the real product?
• Are originals saved and the edit logged?

Who should skip AI upscaling here

• Anyone whose main problem is a logo. Redraw it.
• Anyone whose products have changed. Reshoot.
• Anyone with old images they do not have the right to edit.
• Anyone with only a few photos. A retoucher or Canva is faster than learning a new platform.
• Higgsfield specifically: skip it for this job unless your brand images already live there. The upscale price is not published, and cheaper tools cover a simple refresh.

How I'd approach this

I would not start with a tool at all. I would build the inventory spreadsheet, ask for source files, send the logo to a designer, and size every slot. Then I would upscale only the product photos that need less than about 2x, test them with Canva first, and use a paid Higgsfield account only if the files were already part of my workflow there. I would keep every original.

If a company has years of messy files across drives and inboxes, the lasting fix is a single shared library with a record of source, rights and approved versions. Blur Studio builds that kind of asset library and approval workflow around these tools. For ad shapes, see resizing ads for every placement.