What's new
Photoshop Gurus Forum

Welcome to Photoshop Gurus forum. Register a free account today to become a member! It's completely free. Once signed in, you'll enjoy an ad-free experience and be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

Can someone fix this blurry photo for me?


Snoogans37

New Member
Messages
2
Likes
1
I need to sharpen this photo up. Can anyone help? I'd greatly appreciate it.
 

Attachments

  • DSC_0317.jpg
    DSC_0317.jpg
    359.9 KB · Views: 11
What are your intentions for it's use? Are you wanting to print larger prints or what? What size do you want it to be? Are you planning on using it online at the 700pixel width as shown here or are you going to print it? Your print size is pretty small as is 2.3" x 1.5".
 
Last edited:
@OP - I think the reason you are not seeing a whole bunch of people jumping on your request is because we all know that in reality, even the most knowledgeable real-world Photoshop gurus are not as good as the folks on TV detective shows who can sharpen and magnify the smallest underexposed image to look perfect even when it's blown up to the size of a billboard ;-) .

The reality of the situation is that you've got an underexposed, slightly noisy, out-of-focus snapshot that just can't be made magically sharper without introducing other problems. We can apply the usual sharpening procedures, but they will introduce artifacts such as halos, they will exaggerate the existing noise, etc. etc. Such trade-offs may or may not be acceptable to you, but you should be prepared for this. Also, knowing the likely poor results of trying to sharpen your snapshot takes a lot of the enthusiasm out of going through the exercise.

Cheers,

Tom M
 
Last edited:
Well said Tom (as usual). To be honest, there is not much hope for making this into a really nice photograph. I attempted a couple of standard PS sharpening filters on it and it looked worse than when I started, as Tom predicted. I might be able to enlarge it a bit to get a half way acceptable print if you like. Sorry
 
all hope is not lost, if you have the faces of those people, that are not blurred you could probably manipulate with those,although the rest of the image would be blurry but you can fix that by a type of fading out effect from the faces and make the faces more of the focus point like it was done purposely.. Just a thought
 
Here is an attempt at a fix..hope you like the beach! Not perfect for sure but not blurry.
Guys_pe.png
 
The price is right, how can he complain. :thumbsup:
 
Snoogans, I had a go at this. There really is only so much to be done. The low light really caused this to be a poor shot. However, I understand why you want it anyway. So I did the best I could with what you had. There really is nothing left to sharpen. Softened some of the grain in the faces with a smudge tool. I hope that didn't make you all seem too unreal. Just don't print it out or post it too large! :mrgreen:

Buds.jpg
 
Here's about the best I can do without re-drawing it, ie, as if it was an original painting.

As everyone predicted, all these so-called "fixes" trade one problem (blur) for others (eg, halos, noise, etc.).

T

PS - This is the largest size I will do.
 

Attachments

  • DSC_0317-tjm01-acr-ps02a_650px_wide-02.jpg
    DSC_0317-tjm01-acr-ps02a_650px_wide-02.jpg
    70.5 KB · Views: 29
If you are a good artist with a tablet, or very good at the mouse pad on laptops, you can repaint the detail into the image. though this is very time consuming, and if you are not good at drawing, you will probably end up making the image worse!

It's taken me half an hour just to start retouching the guy in the middles face, and there is still loads to do on just that area, so you have to decide how valuable this image is to you, even if it is just in terms of time spent working on it.

View attachment 32111
 
We're on the exactly the same wavelength, Spruce. As you stated in your post and I hinted in an earlier post, I don't pull out the pen (tool) and start painting to improve a snapshot unless I'm getting paid, or the image is irreplaceable (eg, one of the subjects died since the photo was taken, etc.).

Tom M
 
Ain't any of these too hot. What happened to the OP?
 
Hot as in?
er...like hot stuff, hot-meaning something that is in great demand LOL. I must have had too much to drink when I posted mine, but like you said, THE PRICE IS RIGHT! Take it or leave it.
 
Thanks to everyone who tried!

I tried myself and I couldn't fix it without getting too much grain and noise on it, so that's why I figured the geniuses like you could probably do a better job.

Thanks Tom Mann, that looks a lot better than anything I could've done. And thanks ibclare. I noticed the extra work you did with taking Mewe's wife out of the picture (even though that wasn't that big of a deal).

This one out of two shots I took with them. The first one came out perfectly, but I did enjoy this one a bit more, hence why I was hoping it could be fixed.

I've printed the first picture in 8x10, but from what I understand, this photo probably won't look so good given the same treatment.

Do you guys recommend a smaller size, like 4x6? Or even at all?

Thanks again, everyone!
 
Hi Clare - In case you are interested, the approach I took violates one of the oft-repeated commandments for PP'ing, that is, the usual rule that one should do all manipulations at the highest resolution available, and then down-rez at the end.

When a photo is this blurry, I will do noise reduction immediately (ie, at full rez), but then down-rez to the final size and do all my sharpening at the lower rez. This avoids unwanted sharpening of artifacts and noise.

In addition, I never sharpen all in one step, and I almost always use several different sharpening methods so that the artifacts characteristic of one sharpening method may be partially canceled (...or, at least, not amplified) by subsequent sharpening methods. For example, for this image, I did an initial weak sharpening using "Focus Magic", and then a second weak sharpening step using onOne's "inFocus".

As you know, sharpening always tends to magnify local contrast, so to compensate for this, I always use the blendIF sliders to prevent sharpening of the very lightest and very darkest tones to avoid completely blown and completely black spots from developing along the way. This is a very important part of my workflow.

Even if you don't have any 3rd party sharpening plugins and want to stick with USM, set the radius significantly different between the sharpening steps. In fact, for quite a while, a method called "octave sharpening" was favored for critical work. In this approach, only USM was used, but it was done in several weak steps, changing the sharpening radius by a factor of two or three between steps.

HTH,

Tom M
 
Hi Snoogans - I'm glad to have helped, if only a bit.

WRT size, the following comment is most definitely not meant to be sarcastic, just pragmatic, but when something is OOF, the smaller the print, the better. For this one, I would recommend something even a bit smaller than 4x6 -- or ... just show it on your smart phone, and most probably no one will even notice a sharpness issue.

Cheers,

Tom M
 

Back
Top