Upscale and sharpen assets that are almost good enough—old campaign flats, cropped social grabs, or AI outputs saved at conservative resolutions—so they survive large-format crops and retina displays.
It improves perceived detail on mildly soft sources by inferring high-frequency structure. It cannot invent real sensor data from extremely tiny thumbnails or heavy JPEG mush—start from the cleanest master available.
Run super resolution after color decisions if possible so sharpening does not exaggerate noise that color grading later amplifies. For generative stills, upscale once you have approved composition to avoid wasting compute on discarded frames.