History Main / EnhanceButton

CCTV security camera footage of a major crime. ''"Zoom in. Now... enhance"'' says the detective. The image gets bigger and zooms in so clearly that we see the suspect's neck tattoo/necklace/monogrammed initials on shirt.

This allows characters to glean information beyond what the picture itself actually contains. As such, most Enhance Button functions are [[RealityIsUnrealistic impossible in real life]]. The Enhance Button derives from legitimate RealLife "image enhancement" techniques that allow you to change things like colors or saturation, or compare frames of a video, which will create a clearer image than before. But there's still a limit to what it can do, and it can only work with the data in the photo. The Enhance Button in fiction ''adds'' data. The most unrealistic cases will even allow you to change the camera angle, see through or around things, or pick up tiny reflections in unlikely places. They also have an incredible zoom, which creates new pixels rather than simply enlarging them.

''"Zoom in. Now... enhance."''

A staple of any crime drama, the "Enhance Button" is a computer function that allows you to turn a tiny, blurred, or grainy image into a clear, unmistakable piece of evidence. It's nearly always heralded by someone standing next to the computer ordering it (or the technician operating it) to "Enhance."

This allows characters to glean information beyond what the picture itself actually contains. As such, most Enhance Button functions are [[RealityIsUnrealistic impossible in real life]]. The Enhance Button derives from legitimate RealLife "image enhancement" techniques that allow you to change things like colors or saturation, or compare frames of a video, which will create a clearer image than before. But there's still a limit to what it can do, and it can only work with the data in the photo. The Enhance Button ''adds'' data. The worst cases will even allow you to change the camera angle, see through or around things, or pick up reflections in unlikely places. They also have an incredible zoom, which creates new pixels rather than simply enlarging them.

Sometimes a technician will point out this impossibility but nevertheless be able to "clean up" the image with his [[HollywoodHacking mad computer skillz]], with an appropriate HandWave as to how he did it. This is based off a RealLife technique where you can ''guess'' what's in the picture based on the position and color of the pixels, the way you might be able to guess the words of a missing page in a book based on the text of the surrounding pages. This kind of thing is good for guessing things from a limited range of possibilities, like license plate numbers, but not much else.

** In "[[Recap/CommunityS3E17BasicLupineUrology Basic Lupine Urology]]", This is subverted again. Britta seems like she is about to zoom in on a part of a photo, then she instead just shows off her ability to use a sepia filter.
---> '''Britta:''' I transfered, or "downloaded," Todd's photo to this computer, and as you'll see, with a few adjustments I can make the entire image... ''[taps clumsily on keyboard]'' old-west color. ''[Everyone is unimpressed.]'' I don't know, I thought it was cool.

** In "[[Recap/CommunityS3E17BasicLupineUrology Basic Lupine Urology]]", Britta seems like she's about to zoom in on a part of a photo, but she's really just showing off her ability to use a sepia filter. When they actually zoom in, it doesn't reveal anything new.

* In 2012, there was a case where a pedophile was identified by enhancing a photo taken by him to the point a label on a prescription-medication bottle in the background was legible. And then in order to confirm that he was actually the guy, they scanned another photo in which his fingertips were in front of the camera lens and actually got his fingerprints.

* In 2012, there was a case where a pedophile was identified by enhancing a photo taken by him to the point a label on a prescription-medication bottle in the background was legible. And then in order to confirm that he actually was there, they scanned another photo in which his fingertips were in front of the camera lens and actually got his fingerprints.

%% * In one of the live-action segments of ''Anime/OtakuNoVideo'', an interviewee claims to have invented a pair of goggles that could do the same thing as the above on the fly, while he's watching a censored video.
* In the climax of ''Anime/{{Belle|2021}}'', Suzu and her friends are able to pinpoint Kei and Tomo's location in Tokyo, thanks to [[TheSmartGuy Hiroka]] enhancing a video of their apartment and discovering a pair of buildings seen from a window that [[PluckyComicRelief Kamishin]] pointed out.

* {{Subverted}} in ''Manga/TwentiethCenturyBoys'': Fujiki and Yoshitsune have some old pictures magnified so Kyoko will have an easier time identifying someone in them, but she points out that it just makes them more blurry.

[[folder:Films — Animation]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/TheBadGuys'', Ms. Tarantula is able to instantly recreate Diane Foxington's pupil from a selfie Mr. Wolf took with her earlier to bypass a retina scanner. With the film being what it is, it's PlayedForLaughs.

[[folder:Films — Live-Action]]

* A new algorithm created by Japanese programmers, amusingly called ''[=Waifu2x=]'', can upscale pictures reliably to a high-quality image, in a way Photoshop can't (mainly because it's very processing-intensive). It works best with flat artwork, but it can also produce good results with other images, depending on how much picture noise they contain. It can't restore detail that wasn't in the original image, so the results can look soft and waxy, but it's probably the best approximation of an Enhance Button that currently exists. Here's the documentation [[https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x on Github]], as well as an [[http://waifu2x.udp.jp/ online version]].

%%* ''Series/HumanTarget'' used the Enhance Button as early as its sixth episode, "Lockdown". [But how?]
* Federal agents in ''Series/TwentyFour'' seem to do this a lot, such as when the FBI finds out that [[spoiler:Tony Almeida is still alive]]. But they did get a chance to {{lampshade|hanging}} it once: [[spoiler:the Chinese government]] produces an enhanced photograph of [[spoiler:a CTU agent illegally entering a Chinese embassy]], and Jack Bauer immediately denies its authenticity by saying it was digitally altered.
** Also played straight in season six with [[spoiler:the security camera footage of Jack, entering the building where David Palmer was shot from.]]
** But also averted in season two: when CTU has to find out what was written on a burnt piece of paper they call in a specialist with his own equipment (which is ''better than what CTU has'') and it still takes him close to an hour to extract something actionable.
* Averted in ''Series/{{Alias}}'': Marshal is working to get a better look at a murderer's face from a very poor quality security camera. He creates a rendering program that takes the movement of the face in the image and attempts to reconstruct the face from there. It takes a day or two to render, and [[PhlebotinumBreakdown ends up failing due to a virus]].

** Inverted in an episode where Angel is given a visual image taken from the ''psychic imprints'' of a blood sample. Angel asks if it can be cleaned up at all, only for Wesley to tell him no -- because it's not a real photograph.
** Played straight in "Dad", when the demonic lawyers zoom in 100x on Lorne's shirt pocket. Then again, they're demonic, so maybe their CCTV footage is high-definition.
* On ''Series/BabylonFive'', not only is the computer able to enhance a motion-blurred image to perfect clarity, it is able to figure out from a vague verbal instruction which portion of the image Londo [[ContextSensitiveButton wants to enhance]].
* Mocked in ''Series/{{Barry}}''. Cops come to Barry's acting class with a video of a killer (actually Barry himself) shooting out the mobster who killed one of the aspiring actors. An actor suggests the cops use the "Enhance button" to get a clearer look at the picture, to which the detective answers "That's not a thing"
* In the 2000s ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|2003}}'' revival, a character says it'll take a day to enhance the picture of someone's reflection in a computer mainframe, as seen in CCTV footage. The computer ultimately produces a crystal-clear image of the character who had been implicated of sabotaging the mainframe, but in a variation, the image turns out to have been faked by the Cylons in the first place. Despite the outcome, however, it still contains the fundamental aspects of the trope: it produced a clear image, and everyone involved expected this.
* Parodied on ''Series/TheBigBangTheory'', when Howard and Raj find a drone crashed in Howard's backyard, and use footage from its onboard camera to try and return it to its owner. They spot a pin on the owner's lapel in the video, and Raj tells Howard to zoom in on it. Howard picks up his laptop and, making a "zooming" sound effect with his mouth, shoves it into Raj's face.

* In the ''Series/BlakesSeven'' episode "Stardrive", a Federation patrol is blown up by a tiny one-man spacecraft pulling a HyperspeedAmbush. It's too fast to be seen by the naked eye, so they have to rewind a recording frame by frame to find the attacker. Despite this, the resolution is still high enough to zoom in on an insignia on the pilot's helmet and establish who he is. At least they have the excuse of this taking place in the future, when camera technology would have improved considerably.

* Averted in an episode of ''Series/BronBroen'', when the Swedish cops are looking at a supermarket security camera video of a suspect. Saga asks if they can enhance the image to get a recognisable face, but their tech guy explains that the original quality of the recording is too poor to get anything more.
* Parodied in ''Series/BrooklynNineNine''. When presented with a grainy surveillance image that has a detail they need, Jake declares "It's time to ''squint''".
* Parodied on ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', when viewing some fuzzy CCTV. One character asks another to zoom in on an element, and after being told no:

'''Xander:''' Not with a regular VCR they don't.
** This is followed a few lines later by the immortal exchange:
--->'''Oz:''' What's that? Pause it.\\
'''Xander:''' Guys! It's just a normal VCR. It doesn't... Oh wait, uh, it can do pause. [[note]]Admittedly, it's a very impressive pause for a "normal VCR".[[/note]]

** Subverted in "Almost Famous": A character is requested to zoom in on an image, and the image gets blurrier and more pixelated. The character is asked to zoom in again, and yet again, the image gets blurrier. They're still able to identify the subject of the picture, but it's nothing a real computer couldn't do. They try it again in the following episode, "Murder Most Fowl", and Beckett {{lampshade|hanging}}s Castle's expectation that this will work:
--> '''Castle:''' The enhancement only increased the pixelation on all these! You can't even see there's a side-view mirror!\\
'''Beckett:''' It's not like on ''Series/TwentyFour'', Castle -- in the [[ThisIsReality real world]], even zoom-and-enhance can only get us so far.
** Then they started playing it straight. In series 8, they take the CCTV footage of an internet café and "enhance" a laptop screen by zooming in on its reflection in the mirror. They can read the scanned document from the laptop screen, including the smudged-out notes scribbled in the margin.

* ''Series/CobraKai'': Subverted. A kid uses a handheld camera to record a fight between Johnny and Daniel. Afterwards they are viewing the footage and Johnny asks to see it from another angle. The kid considers the stupidity of the request before pointing out that there was one camera so there is only a single angle to view.

* Spoofed in the ''Series/ColdCase'' episode "Time to Crime": Detectives Vera and Jeffries are watching a videotape and notice something interesting in the background. Jeffries says, "Let's enhance this." The two detectives then get up from their chairs and walk closer to the TV screen. Vera laments that their station is too poor to have [[BuffySpeak one of those zoomer things]].

** In "No Time to Die", Columbo's nephew's bride is kidnapped. The cops spot the kidnapper in the background of one frame from a security camera. They're able to not only zoom in on the man's face, but also ''read the writing on his class ring.''
** In the [[OlderThanTheyThink 1975]] episode "Playback", a recorded surveillance video serves as an alibi. A frame is enhanced (off-screen) to reveal that a tiny white rectangle, at most a few video lines in size, is an invitation with clearly readable writing.
* Averted on ''Series/CommonLaw'': The detectives have a picture of a suspect driving a truck, but it is too low quality to tell them who the man is. They call in a police sketch artist and have him draw a composite sketch of the suspect based on the features they can see. It's a [[TheGenericGuy very generic likeness]], and in the end it doesn't really help their case much on its own.

** In "Basic Lupine Urology", Britta seems like she's about to zoom in on a part of a photo, but she's really just showing off her ability to use a sepia filter. When they actually zoom in, it doesn't reveal anything new.
* Since ''Series/CriminalMinds'' focuses on criminal behavior, they usually skim over the collection of physical evidence. By the time the audience sees the picture, it's already been "enhanced," so maybe the sources are just incredibly clear. But in one episode, the unsub sent the team pictures he'd taken of them. They zoom in on Blake's sunglasses and get a crystal clear reflection of the unsub, despite sunglasses lens being curved, the unsub being at a distance, at an angle, through a chainlink fence. The worst part? All they see is his camera, gloved hands, and the window of the car he's sitting in. They don't even get anything useful out of the miraculously enhanced picture.

** All three CSI shows used the Enhance Button to construct a recognizable image from the reflection in someone's ''eye''. It being dark and the footage being from a grainy CCTV camera just makes it worse.
** One ''CSI'' episode used the Button to obtain a recognizable image of the person behind the camera, by looking at the reflection of someone's sunglasses in the window of a car -- a ''double'' reflection.
** Another ''CSI'' episode used a 3D crime scene scanner in this manner. Such devices do exist, using a laser to create a 3D image of an area. ''CSI'''s version, though, lifted the body off the bed to look at the stains on the sheets underneath it. That's the equivalent of taking a photo of a guy, "stripping away" the skin and muscles, and looking at what ''color'' the guy's bones are.
** One ''Series/{{CSINY}}'' episode used the Button to get a positive fingerprint ID -- after the suspect waved his hand in front of the camera lens.
* Subverted in ''Series/DueSouth'', where the detectives are trying to identify a suspect in the crowd of a hockey game from the TV broadcast. One asks about zooming in on his face, and the TV owner helpfully explains the resolution problem (while namedropping ''Film/BlowUp'' and ''Film/BlowOut'', which are built around this trope). But the detectives can still work out his ''seat number'', as they suspect he's a season ticket holder. Then they show the footage to an elderly deaf lady, who gives her best guess at lip-reading what he might be shouting.

* Averted on ''Series/{{Fargo}}'': The cops have security footage of Lorne Malvo, but it's too low quality to make a positive identification. When Gus arrests Malvo, Malvo is able to convince the other cops that it's just a case of mistaken identity.
* In the pilot episode of ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', the protagonist is blasted into deep space, positioned perfectly to deflect an interstellar fighter into an asteroid, killing the pilot. This pilot turns out to be the brother of a fleet commander, who upon viewing the footage of his brother's demise demands that his crew "peel the image." This process takes some time, but it produces a crystal-clear likeness of the main character, and the interior of his spacecraft, right through the canopy.

* In ''Series/TheFlash2014'' ChristmasEpisode [[Recap/TheFlash2014S2E9RunningToStandStill "Running to Stand Still"]], both Team Flash at S.T.A.R. Labs and Patty at Central City Police Station are able to zoom and enhance a video the Trickster [[DoNotAdjustYourSet broadcast across Central City]] to see a reflection of a teddy bear in his eye, cluing them in on his location. Given that when Comicbook/TheFlash and Patty arrive at the location, the Trickster has prepared a trap for them, it looks like [[BatmanGambit he planned for them to do this]].
* DoubleSubversion in the 2009 ''[[Series/FlashForward2009 FlashForward]]'' pilot. The FBI finds footage of someone who might have stayed awake during the visions, but when they try to enhance his face, it's just as blocky and pixelated as before. But they give it to the NSA, who finds a ring on the man's finger they "enhance" to the point that they can identify the specific ring. It might have been because it's a lot easier to extrapolate the shape of a simple object like a ring than a human face.

* ZigZagged on ''Series/{{Fringe}}'':
** In "The Bishop Revival", Olivia sees a suspicious character in a wedding video and asks Astrid if she can enhance it. The image Astrid produces is enlarged and very grainy. She says, "That's the best I can do."

* The "magic zoom" is used very frequently on ''Series/FXTheSeries''. They justify it by claiming it's "fractal enhancement", and that they're analyzing high-quality film from movie shoots, so they have multiple high-quality frames from which to get pixels.

* Subverted on the British show ''Series/{{KYVT}}'': In the murder special, the characters examine some CCTV footage and attempt to zoom in, only for the enhanced version to be even worse than the original.
* ''Series/LasVegas'' took the Enhance Button further than likely any other show on this list. Surveillance is built into the premise -- as noted in the pilot, Las Vegas has more surveillance cameras per capita than any other city in the world, and the characters use them to solve crimes in their casino. But nearly every episode involves them zooming in to identify individuals from at least twenty feet away and using absurdly sophisticated facial recognition software (for a casino, at least). For example:

** {{Subverted|trope}} in an episode of ''Series/LawAndOrderSpecialVictimsUnit'': The defendant (played by Creator/RobinWilliams) is caught on a security camera, and the enhanced image showing his face is presented as evidence. The defendant, [[AFoolForAClient representing himself]], shows the jury the original image, which is just of a blur wearing a baseball cap, and then cross-examines the enhancement guy and gets him to admit that the image of his face was, in essence, little more than guesswork on the part of the computer. The jury returns an acquittal.

* ''Series/MidsomerMurders'' usually avoids this trope, but in "Days of Misrule", WPC Stephens is able to enhance a photo from a speed camera to reveal a crucial piece of evidence in the rear window.
* The original 1966 version of ''Series/MissionImpossible'' had an Enhance Button without a computer. In "The Bank", Barney pauses a recording of a bank vault on a black-and-white CRT screen, and Jim Phelps uses a ''pocket telescope'' to zoom in on the screen and read the number of a safe-deposit box.
* Averted and parodied in the ''Series/{{Monk}}'' episode "Mr. Monk and the Birds and the Bees". Stottlemeyer and Disher look at a surveillance tape of their suspect and try to enhance it, but it's still too blurry to make out who the people are. Stottlemeyer sarcastically suggests that the blurs could be Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (Randy informs him that [[SarcasmBlind Ginger Rogers has been dead for years]]). Randy then points out the blurs on the screen, by circling them with a permanent marker.
* In ''Series/MysteryDiners'', the Enhance Button is used repeatedly in the Anchor Bar (S10/10) episode. Surveillance footage taken outdoors at three in the morning in murky green light - which was blurry even at normal magnification ''and'' taken in the dark - is blown up to reveal the unidentified suspect has a large tattoo on his forearm. This appears as a big undifferentiated dark smear. Charles orders the pixellation to be cleaned up. Miraculously, a clearly detailed and identifiable tattoo of a dragon is revealed. This is used later to identify a suspect.

* Played for laughs in the Belgian show ''Series/{{Neveneffecten}}'': When asked to enhance a blurry screen, the computer technician remarks that he normally can't, but they sometimes make exceptions for TV shows.
* Parodied in ''Series/{{NTSFSDSUV}}'', where the Enhance Button is so powerful, they can even search through the pockets of the person in the picture.
* A first season episode of ''Series/{{Numb3rs}}'' deconstructs this trope. They are able to "zoom in" on a poor-resolution image, but Charlie and Amita explain that what they're seeing isn't actually information contained in the original image (in fact, Amita explicitly shows them that just magnifying the image accomplishes nothing because "the information's just not there"), but rather a predictive tool that extrapolates from the existing data to fill in the missing information as best it can.

** In the Season 2 finale, Reese is shooting at a bunch of attacking {{mooks}} [[spoiler:with guidance from the Machine]]. The Machine gives a perspective straight out of ''Film/EnemyOfTheState'', allowing the viewer to rotate the image -- except it already has the building's blueprints, and the human characters are flat and poorly rendered.
* In ''Series/PrettyLittleLiars'' Season 2, Episode 18, Caleb is in the process of decrypting a video found on [[spoiler:A's cell phone]], when he shows Aria, Spencer, and Emily a frame they previously hadn't seen. After catching a glimpse of a blurry driver's license on the ground, Caleb proceeds to zoom into the frame twice, enhancing and showing the girls a very clear photo of [[spoiler: Alison's second fake ID]].
* ''Series/TheProfessionals'' had TheSeventies version in "Involvement". Bodie and Cowley are using a slide projector to go over some surveillance photos. Cowley sees someone lurking in the background of a shot and has Bodie adjust the projector lens to blow up the image. It helps in this case that the lurker turns out to be Doyle, so he's easily recognised.

* The ''Series/RedDwarf'' three-parter "Back to Earth" has a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aINa6tg3fo ridiculous parody]] of the phenomenon (part of an episode-long pastiche of ''Film/BladeRunner''). The ''first'' command is to "uncrop", and it gets crazier from there. To see the other side of a business card, they enhance several different reflections (one from the metallic "H" in Rimmer's skull, and the rest from very distant objects, one of which is a faucet in someone's bathroom) before getting a clear image of the back of a guy who was not even in the original image. Then when they read the address on the back of the business card, Kryten asks if it would have been easier just to look him up in the phone book.

* Averted in an episode of ''Series/RookieBlue'', when Epstein is asked to do this to find out who shot a man dressed as a chicken (ItMakesSenseInContext) and answers that this isn't actually a thing.

* Spoofed on ''Series/TheSarahSilvermanProgram'': Sarah spots a curious detail in the background of a photo. Despite being the only person in the room, she tells no one in particular to "enhance to 125 percent". She then pulls out a magnifying glass and looks dramatically at the image. When that's not enough, she calls for another 50% and pulls out an even smaller magnifying glass. The process is punctuated with dramatic camera work and high-tech sound effects like a ''CSI'' enhancing sequence, but the image it reveals is exactly what you would expect if you looked at a photo with a magnifying glass -- ''i.e.'', just bigger and blurrier. Despite this, Sarah declares the image proof of... something (the viewer never quite finds out what).

* The ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "Endgame" uses the Button to enhance the image of a camera pointed at the Stargate and identify the person who left a tracking device on the gate. Presumably, they could achieve the same result more realistically if they cobbled together security footage from multiple cameras (plausible for such a high-security complex), but it was faster this way.

** An early episode, "Duet", has a possible war criminal apprehended by the crew. After finding that the only known picture of him is blurry and small, they enhance it to perfect clarity and zoom in on different faces. (Like the ''Blade Runner'' example, this may be because they have [[AppliedPhlebotinum magical future technology]].) It's also {{lampshaded}}, since at first it just does a realistic low-resolution zoom on the face; when Sisko complains, Dax tells him the computer is still processing.

** In "The Vengeance Factor", the crew finds a picture of someone with their face half hidden, and they're able to reconstruct the person's entire face, implicating her as the episode's villain.
** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E18IdentityCrisis Identity Crisis]]", Geordi asks the computer to isolate and enhance a quadrant of footage to show a sliver of a shadow, transfer the scene to the Holodeck, then remove the characters who were obscuring the shadow, before extrapolating the general 3D volume of the shadow-casting object. Justified in that Geordi is shown to be ''really'' reaching in his attempt to find even a possible answer; the computer initially tells him there simply isn't enough data to tell him what he wants to know, so he plugs in what's essentially a guess for one of the missing parameters so that the computer will have enough data to make an estimate on the rest. Even then, what he gets is basically just the 3-d equivalent of a silhouette -- an approximate position and rough shape, but no features or details.
-->'''Geordi''': All right, let's say that my friend and I here are about the same size, say 1.7 meters. ''Now'' can you extrapolate its shape and its position?\\
''(an object appears... [[spoiler:just in time for Geordi to start metamorphosing into a creature just like it]])''
** "Unification Part I" starts with a Starfleet admiral enhancing an image and discovering that Ambassador Spock was on Romulus.
*** The camera that took this image was in another star system and picked him out of a crowd. Future tech indeed!
* Inverted in the ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' episode "The Corbomite Maneuver", where the crew is looking at an image of a BigDumbObject, and they can't see the entire thing unless they zoom ''out''. But for this to work implies the same principles that power the garden-variety Enhance Button.
** One can assume from this scene that the ship's forward-facing cameras must normally be tightly zoomed-in, and they simply reduced the magnification back towards a more normal view.

* Beautifully subverted on ''Series/TakeTwo''. Samantha, an actress who spent years playing a cop on TV, is now working with private eye Eddie. In the pilot, they watch a video with Eddie giving Sam a ThisIsReality moment.

* Parodied in ''Series/ThirtyRock'': Jack receives an old home movie of his younger self opening a now-forgotten birthday gift, but the object itself is always out of shot. Curious, he summons a techie to "zoom in and enhance" on the wrapped box to find out what's inside. The tech tells him he can't do that, but he has a better solution: just call the original gift giver and ask.
* The pilot of the short-lived ''Series/ThreatMatrix'' showed Homeland Security examining a traffic camera footage, removing a man from the image, and revealing the briefcase the criminal was holding.
* Averted in the ''Series/{{Torchwood}}'' episode "Day One"; Toshiko is trying to match a CCTV image to a database, but the CCTV image is "too low-res", and that's that.
* Taken to an absurd extreme in the 2009 ''[[Series/{{V2009}} V]]'' series. The Visitors are able to analyze footage of an explosion caught by a fairly standard surveillance camera ''outside'' of a building and reconstruct not only the specific explosives used, but even a ''fingerprint'' supposedly left on one of the explosives ''inside'' the building. [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] to the extent that the results were actually fake, but absolutely ''no one'' from Earth who did not already know better questioned the viability of the method -- or even asked how it could possibly work. Without context, a viewer could easily mistake the scene for parody.
* Averted in the Krister Henriksson ''Series/{{Wallander}}'' episode "Blodsband": Wallander asks Nyberg if he would be able to enhance some surveillance footage, and is told that that wouldn't improve anything.
* In the episode ''The Night of the Hangman'' of ''Series/TheWildWildWest'', Artemus Gordon uses a projector to do this with photograph. While searching for clues he is able to easily zoom and pan across the image despite the series being set in the 1870s. The concept is even made fun of as the critical clue (a large balloon) is not visible in the part of the image he has zoomed into.

** Averted in "Shadows", when Scully comments that a blurry photograph on a computer monitor can't be enhanced because the resolution is too poor.
** The Season 2 episode "The Calusari" was the first appearance of Dr. Charles Burk, the FBI's resident digital imaging expert, and creator of a special photo enhancement software. He and Mulder use it to identify photon distortion caused by an "electromagnetic cloud", which is supernaturally luring a child into the path of an oncoming train.

** In "Ascension", a thumb-sized section of a still from a cop-car surveillance camera is enhanced to reveal a crystal-clear image of a central character, giving the police a chance to save her. Even more incredibly, the footage doesn't otherwise relate to Mulder's case at all, and he was watching it by random chance.
** In "Rush", the Button colorizes black-and-white security camera footage, allowing Mulder to identify a blur on the frame as a school's letter jacket -- even though the blur was on screen for exactly one frame (''i.e.'', 1/30th of a second).

* Subverted by [[Wiki/SCPFoundation SCP-191]], as seen [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/experiment-log-191 here]], as it is explicitly stated that SCP-191 "had to guess" as to the missing data. The images produced in another impossible CSI-like process, however, while still being inaccurate, were very convincing to someone unfamiliar with the location depicted.

----

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E18IdentityCrisis Identity Crisis]]", Geordi asks the computer to isolate and enhance a quadrant of footage to show a sliver of a shadow, transfer the scene to the Holodeck, then remove the characters who were obscuring the shadow, before extrapolating the general 3D volume of the shadow-casting object. Justified in that Geordi is ''really'' reaching; the computer initially tells him there simply isn't enough data to tell him what he wants to know, so he plugs in what's essentially a guess for one of the missing parameters so that the computer will have enough data to make an estimate on the rest. Even then, what he gets is basically just the 3-d equivalent of a silhouette -- an approximate position and rough shape, but no features or detauls.

* In the climax of ''Anime/{{Belle|2021}}'', Suzu and her friends are able to pinpoint Kei and Tomo's location in Tokyo, thanks to [[TheSmartGuy Hiroka]] enhancing a video of their apartment and discovering a pair of buildings seen from a window that [[ComicRelief Kamishin]] pointed out.

** In "[[Recap/StarTrekTheNextGenerationS4E18IdentityCrisis Identity Crisis]]", Geordi asks the computer to isolate and enhance a quadrant of footage to show a sliver of a shadow, transfer the scene to the Holodeck, then remove the characters who were obscuring the shadow, before extrapolating the general 3D volume of the shadow-casting object. Justified in that Geordi is ''really'' reaching; the computer initially tells him there simply isn't enough data to tell him what he wants to know, so he plugs in what's essentially a guess for one of the missing parameters so that the computer will have enough data to make an estimate on the rest.

''(an object appears that turns out to be over 90% right... [[spoiler:just in time for Geordi to start metamorphosing into a creature just like it]])''

** In ''VisualNovel/AceAttorneyInvestigationsMilesEdgeworth'', Edgeworth takes the security camera footage of the murder and uses the Button to zoom in on a car parked outside the building, showing that the suspect was in the car -- because he could see the reflection of his medal in the window on the opposite side of the car to the one facing the building.
** In ''Gyakuten Kenji 2'', the Button in a video analyzing machine Gumshoe calls "Mr. Analysis", and it's used twice. First, they look at footage of an apparent dog attack, zoom in on a mirror, and identify the victim as a police officer by his uniform. The second time, they zoom in ''between'' a set of shut window blinds to see what's going on behind them.

* In the ''WesternAnimation/XMen'' episode "Time Fugitives: Part 1", Beast uses an Enhance Button to see what Creed used to infect himself:

* Exaggerated to the point of sheer ridiculousness in ''Film/BabyGeniuses'': The BigBad's right-hand scientist showcases in the middle of the opening InfoDump about how babies are actually super-geniuses with their own secret language by showcasing "computer extrapolations" of babies' doodles and random slamming of a piano's keys that reveal the doodles are actually notes in a long-disappeared cuneiform alphabet and the piano playing is actually a Mozart-level symphony.

* In ''Film/{{Evidence}}'', criminal investigators looking through dark, partially-corrupted footage are able to "enhance" it enough to get clear images out of pixel soup.

* Both adaptations of ''Literature/TheGirlWithTheDragonTattoo'' have ridiculous uses of Enhance Buttons on photos taken from a distance, 30 years ago, on ordinary cameras, by ordinary citizens completely unrelated to the case. This indeed helps them identify the murderer. The original novel was guilty of this to some extent, but was more explicit in how much guesswork and Photoshop there is in the process.
* In ''[[Film/HoneyIShrunkTheKids Honey, I Blew Up the Kid]]'', two lab technicians muse over a very blurred photo of Adam and his stuffed bunny, thinking it's an alien. When Dr. Hendrickson arrives, he presses one button which completely unblurs the photo.

* {{Handwave}}d in ''Literature/DirtyMartini'' by J. A. Konrath, where a tech-savvy police grunt drops some TechnoBabble to describe how they were able to filter and blow up a grainy picture until it became legible.

* In Roger Macbride Allen's ''Literature/{{Inferno|RogerMacbrideAllen}}'', a computer compiles images from multiple security cameras to create a full representation of what's going on at a party. If anyone wanders out of frame in all of the cameras, the computer extrapolates as to where they were in the room during that period (although the image is low-quality).

* Exaggerated to the point of sheer ridiculousness in ''Film/LittleGeniuses'': The BigBad's right-hand scientist showcases in the middle of the opening InfoDump about how babies are actually super-geniuses with their own secret language by showcasing "computer extrapolations" of babies' doodles and random slamming of a piano's keys that reveal the doodles are actually notes in a long-disappeared cuneiform alphabet and the piano playing is actually a Mozart-level symphony.

* ''Anime/LycorisRecoil'' has people trying to figure out who is in an accidentally taken, blurry, picture of an arms deal. By Episode 4, the trade has been rudimentarily replicated in 3D from one photo.

* The climax of the 1987 film ''Film/NoWayOut'' hinges partly on the excruciatingly slow "enhancement" of a tiny, blurry Polaroid picture -- continuously displayed with a ViewerFriendlyInterface so the moviegoer can see just how close it is to [[FramingTheGuiltyParty implicating]] Kevin Costner as a [[RedScare Soviet]] [[TheMole mole]]. The computer program doing the "enhancing" is explicitly stated to be guessing what's there rather than magically creating missing data, but the resulting image is still incredibly accurate.

* The 1948 film ''Film/CallNorthside777'' provides an early example; a reporter proves that a witness lied in a trial eleven years earlier by blowing up an old photo of the witness with the accused. He can thus read the date on a newspaper in the background, revealing that the witness saw the suspect a day before she claimed to.

* A first season episode of ''Series/{{Numb3rs}}'' deconstructs this trope. They are able to "zoom in" on a poor-resolution image, but Charlie and Amita explain that what they're seeing isn't actually information contained in the original image (in fact, Amita explicitly shows them that just magnifying the image accomplishes nothing because the information is just not contained in the image), but rather a predictive tool that extrapolates from the existing data to fill in the missing information as best it can.