Can I improve an out-of-focus photo without Photoshop?
Asked 8/26/2017
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I have a photo that was taken slightly out of focus, and I don’t have Photoshop. Is there any app or free software that can improve it, even if it can’t make it perfect?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
8y ago
2 Answers
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You can't make it perfect, but there's an algorithm with the fancy name "Richardson–Lucy deconvolution" which can get impressive results.
The open source and free software program G'Mic has a feature to do this. It's implemented as a plugin for GIMP. You can find it in the "Details" section of the G'MIC plugin, which is under the Filters menu.
Play around with the sliders. "Sigma" is the most important; it basically corresponds to how big the blur circles are. Somewhere around 4 seemed to work for this image. I ran it with 100 iterations; this makes more speckling but has a stronger sharpening effect, too.
The image is also significantly unfderexposed — probably the camera was fooled by those bright lights in the backround — so I used a quick shadows & highlight adjustment too. You could also play around with those manually to get things better, but this is a quick fix. The resulting image has some speckling and other artifacts; I think for a final result you'd want to do some by-hand touchup. But this should get you started.
Originally by user1943. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user1943
8y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
You usually can’t fully “fix” an out-of-focus photo, but you may be able to improve it.
A useful approach is deconvolution sharpening, commonly called Richardson–Lucy deconvolution. Free/open-source software can do this: the G’MIC plugin for GIMP includes a tool for it under the Details section in Filters.
For this kind of blur, the key setting is often Sigma, which roughly matches the size of the blur. You generally need to experiment with the sliders to find the best result. More iterations can increase sharpening, but they can also add speckling/noise.
If the image is also too dark, a shadows/highlights adjustment may help after sharpening.
So: yes, there is free software that may improve the photo, but don’t expect a perfect rescue if the focus miss is strong.
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