How to improve the quality of a figure for an image you captured it few years be - (Nov/20/2014 )

How to improve the quality of a figure for an image you captured it few years before and the source is not there anymore ?

Thanks 

Short answer is - you can't! Always capture your images as TIF/TIFF format (never JPG or PNG) as TIFF is the only format that captures information for every pixel. JPG and other formats compress information by making blocks of similar pixels and saying "these are all the same"

Always, always, always back up your files to at least 2 different locations as well as your computer (e.g. two portable drives and your computer).

Thanks for the information. Later I will do this, but now what to do as a side way to push it to publication ؟ 

It depends what you have now (file or print out, file-type), what is on the image (gel, leaf, microscopic slide,...), how large the final image has to be (the smaller the better) and how much improvement is necessary? You can try out filters as provided by Photoshop/Gimp or also do hand-work by magnifying the image and then work pixel by pixel to remove scratches, and/or concealing/removing jpg-pixel artefacts etc. But this is a nasty job and with really complex photos (e.g. a colour photo of a leaf with many different colour hues and complex structures) very time consuming or even impossible.

Mohamed 1984 on Fri Nov 21 16:16:25 2014 said:

Thanks for the information. Later I will do this, but now what to do as a side way to push it to publication ؟ 

That depends - what sort of image is it? and what does it of (like hobgoblin asked)? Most publishing companies use software to detect image manipulation, such as erasing of parts of images and cloning of image parts etc, but you can usually get away with brightness/contrast adjustment and cropping of the image. You may get asked to provide the original image or you can provide it as supplementary information.