Techniques... upsizing small pictures

Have you ever made an image where the subject did not fill the frame, something else is in the frame that you want to crop out,- only to find out the subject is now really small!
This will happen when you can't get close-enough to the action or have some-one/thing in the image that you just don't want to see.
You are thinking, if i make an enlargement of the cropped part it will be to small, noisy or pixelated?

Fear not, there is a way to upsize your image in Photo Shop to fix this problem.

This was such an image. I was at the longest range of my 400 mm Canon and it was still just to far.

So let us look at the PS steps i use to help in these instances;

1. Open image in PS
2. Filter > Noise > Reduce noise > Advance settings
    Most noise are in the Blue channel
    Strength around 8
    Preserve details close to 100%
3. Now to up-size.
    Image > image size > change pixels to % > increase only 10% at a time.
    NB; Before pressing OK,- > at bottom press Bicubic Smoother
    Do NOT miss this as it makes a big difference.
    This step can be repeated if necessary.
4. Still some noise in the upsized image?
    Filter > Convert to smart filter > Gaussian Blur > Zoom to mort important part of image > apply a small      amount of blur.
5. Because you select Convert to smart filter, you can use the filter as you want and later paint the blur   away over the important part of the image.
6. You can also leave the blur making the picture soft if you like the effect.

Naturally purest will disagree with the cropping of an image. They will say never crop,- use it, it is part of the image.
I say,- why have the technology and not use it?