Blur correction

LP
Posted By
Larry Preuss
May 12, 2004
Views
468
Replies
3
Status
Closed
Some years ago, I believe in this forum, I read the frequent question, "What can I do to get rid of a blur?" The immediate answer was, "You can’t; you are stuck with it." Almost immediately a poster contradicted this and linked us to a site showing a process in which the lengths and directions of blur lines were analysed and then reversed. This was all in investigational stages, and there was no commercial aplication available that incorporated the process. By now my memory of any more specifics has erased itself.

I have recently taken a photo that is important to me, but is spoiled by motion blur. Remembering, possibly incorrectly, that other long-ago post I googled for "blur correction," and found Focus Magic as the only program that promised to reverse it. Not being sure if I was dealing with the same entity that I had seen before, not being clear about Focus Magic’s process, I asked a question about it both here and at adobe.photoshop.elements. I had one answer from the latter group that was not too encouraging. The poster said that it did a good job on blurs, a poor job on motion blurs and took forever to perform corrections. However he had tried only several applications of the limited trial download.

I had hoped to get even more answers here, and shortly after I posted was surprised to see another post mentioning the program, but not answering my request for some sort of critical comment.

I was surprised that, simply because my name was unfamiliar, my posting was assumed to be dishonest. I have lurked about Usenet since it had 600 groups, seldom posting unless I had a question, posting frequently in the asthma group, where I was able to offer a great deal of expert information. Previously I have almost uniformly been offered ready help.

Has anyone here used Focus Magic? Can anyone comment on it? Larry
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blur correct

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JK
JP Kabala
May 12, 2004
I tried the demo, was not knocked out by the results, didn’t buy it.

I had some images taken in the Selby Botanical gardens orchid house (where light is often scarce in some locations and tripods and flashes are verboten) that were just a bit out of focus. Not really motion blur, a bit of hand shake because of the angle at which I had to hold the camera to get the shot and no place to brace to brace an arm or elbow. (Touching the plants is even more forbidden than tripods and flashes)

The result from Focus Fixer had an unpleasant "too much unsharp mask" look that I was not pleased by. I tried layering with layers created at various settings and masks, etc….and I never really got what I wanted. Added too much noise for my taste and destroyed the delicate textures of the leaves.

If it had been the only extant photos of my dead great-grandmother instead of a repeatable macro of a rare orchid in bloom might I have been more willing to settle for less than wonderful output, or fool with it more, but for my needs it was not the right tool. If you look at the on site demo, it is a landscape, which is often a bit more forgiving than portraiture or macros, where textures are paramount.

I suspect for other users and other applications, it might be a good tool, but it didn’t work for me.
D
Don
May 12, 2004
Blur is simply a filter imposed on the image at the time it is taken that reduces (and often eliminates) data at certain spatial frequencies. For instance, a uniform linear motion imparts a sin(f)/f MTF to the image, along with some phase (position) shift. That function goes to zero at some spatial frequencies, and those data are gone forever.

You can partially compensate for the blur by boosting the spatial frequencies some where they are simply reduced in amplitude, and there are several filters I’ve seen that do that with mixed success since noise is also boosted. Restoring the phase distortions is also necessary, and more complicated. Measuring or deducing the actual blur function is difficult since they are rarely so simple as uniform linear motion. In general, other than applying an unsharp mask for improvement of minor blur, it is usually a lot of work to compensate for blur, with generally disappointing results.

Don

"Larry Preuss" wrote in message
Some years ago, I believe in this forum, I read the frequent question,
"What
can I do to get rid of a blur?" The immediate answer was, "You can’t; you are stuck with it." Almost immediately a poster contradicted this and
linked
us to a site showing a process in which the lengths and directions of blur lines were analysed and then reversed. This was all in investigational stages, and there was no commercial aplication available that incorporated the process. By now my memory of any more specifics has erased itself.
I have recently taken a photo that is important to me, but is spoiled by motion blur. Remembering, possibly incorrectly, that other long-ago post I googled for "blur correction," and found Focus Magic as the only program that promised to reverse it. Not being sure if I was dealing with the same entity that I had seen before, not being clear about Focus Magic’s
process,
I asked a question about it both here and at adobe.photoshop.elements. I
had
one answer from the latter group that was not too encouraging. The poster said that it did a good job on blurs, a poor job on motion blurs and took forever to perform corrections. However he had tried only several applications of the limited trial download.

I had hoped to get even more answers here, and shortly after I posted was surprised to see another post mentioning the program, but not answering my request for some sort of critical comment.

I was surprised that, simply because my name was unfamiliar, my posting
was
assumed to be dishonest. I have lurked about Usenet since it had 600
groups,
seldom posting unless I had a question, posting frequently in the asthma group, where I was able to offer a great deal of expert information. Previously I have almost uniformly been offered ready help.
Has anyone here used Focus Magic? Can anyone comment on it? Larry
NS
Nicholas Sherlock
May 12, 2004
Larry Preuss wrote:
Some years ago, I believe in this forum, I read the frequent question, "What can I do to get rid of a blur?" The immediate answer was, "You can’t; you are stuck with it." Almost immediately a poster contradicted this and linked us to a site showing a process in which the lengths and directions of blur lines were analysed and then reversed. This was all in investigational stages, and there was no commercial aplication available that incorporated the process. By now my memory of any more specifics has erased itself.

I’m trying out "Unshake", a freeware Java application that seems to do okay with motion blurs.

Cheers,
Nicholas Sherlock

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