Aseprite. I don't have experience at all, though.
Viewing post in Pixel art cover images being blurry?
Aseprite upscales well.
Would you like to describe your process?
Typically, the best upscaling is by multiples of a hundred: 200%, 300%, 400%, and so on. I’ve read downscaling works best with the default Nearest Neighbor option by divisions of four: 75%, 50%, and 25%.
I’m going go post this next part here not because I think it’s what is happening, but because I wish someone had told me two years ago— Undoing what you’ve already upscaled after an original is lost should reverse what was done, but that can be messy. An example is that 33% after 300% might not return the image exactly. Using the original image for scaling each time is best.
What I do is I select all of the sprite then I edit the resolution from the options at the top, next to the rotation options. Doubling the resolution each time like you've suggested landed me on 357x324 which seemed good enough and not blurry, but uploading it led to the same result. Also, I am using the original image each time like you said. Thank you for trying to help.
Okay, I see there are two areas to look at.
The blurriness is primarily coming from itch.io resizing your image to its default.
I’m not how you ended up 357x324 by doubling, so for an example, let’s say we have an 80x64 image. Scaling that canvas up 800% would results in a 640x512 pixels. That resizing puts us over the 630x500 pixels, close enough not to distort noticably at a glance.
512 / 640 = ~0.79 500 / 639 = 0.80
They’re similar.
324 / 357 = ~0.91
That image is not only too small, meaning it’ll get stretched out, causing blurriness, but the proportions are also off. The pixels become misshapened and blurry.
Super easy mistake to make.
The fix I know of is to change the canvas size, revise the pixel art as needed, then scale up with Sprite Size -or- Export Resize.
Well... I did just that. I adjusted the canvas size then redrew the entire thing. Sadly still blurry. What's funny is if I post it as a screenshot or even a banner it'll look perfectly fine, but it'll blur if it's a cover image no matter what. Thank you for looking into this so much, but I think I've tried everything lmao