When I enlarge an image, no matter what setting I choose (Smooth or Hard outline), the image is resized using a "hard" algorithm (when downscaling, on the contrary, the same setting has some obvious effect). If you are using gimp, this is equivalento to using "interpolation: None", and apparently there is no way to have a linear or cubic interpolation.
Can you confirm that?
I'm not going to discuss which method is the best, I just say that in an ambitious (and otherwise excellent) program like Clip SP there should be the possibility to upscale using a smooth algorithm.