Can software recover photos that are out of focus or blurred by camera shake?

Asked 1/26/2014

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I have many blurred photos: some are out of focus, and some suffer from camera shake. Photoshop CS5 sharpening tools are not giving good results. I’ve seen Photoshop CS6 deblur mentioned, along with GIMP plug-ins and tools like Focus Magic.

Are there any good free or paid programs or plug-ins that can recover blurred images to a usable standard? Also, does having the RAW files improve the chances of recovering them?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

12y ago

2 Answers

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As tenmiles stated, post-process defocus correction is not a solution for lack of good focus. Getting good focus in camera is a critical aspect of good photography. That said, there are some solutions, and we all make mistakes sometimes, and it's reasonable to expect an option to recover when you make such a mistake.

While Photoshop CS6 has a basic deblur feature built in, there are some tools on the market that can help. One of the better ones is Topaz InFocus. Like other similar tools, this is by no means a real solution to badly defocused images. For moderately to highly defocused images, or if you have a thin DOF and your focal plane landed on the wrong point, there is nothing that will really solve your problem...not to a level of quality that would be acceptable for art, anyway (however these tools do offer a utilitarian deconvolution capability for non-artistic purposes with almost any level of defocus.)

Topaz InFocus, the deblur tool I've used most, is actually excellent with very small amounts of defocus, and quite good at fixing small to moderate defocus. If can produce entirely acceptable artistic results if you aren't trying to correct wildly incorrect defocus problems. If you push it too hard, you will start to notice various kinds of artifacts that, while the content that was blurred will start to show up, it really won't be of any quality that you could keep.

Topaz InFocus can also combat blur from shake or motion as well. It'll detect the direction of blurring and try to deconvolve it. Again, for smaller blur orders, you can correct these problems quite well. For higher order blur, your success will come with artifacts that may or may not be acceptable for artistic reasons. For utilitarian uses, you can deblur quite considerably and recover detail, such as heavily blurred text, to readable proportions.

Originally by user124. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user124

12y ago

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AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Software can sometimes improve mildly blurred images, but it usually cannot truly fix a badly out-of-focus photo. Sharpening is not the same as restoring missed focus.

For slight blur or modest motion blur, dedicated tools may help more than basic Photoshop sharpening. Community answers specifically mention Topaz InFocus and newer AI-based tools such as Topaz Sharpen AI as capable options, though results vary and processing can be slow. Manual masking may be needed to avoid sharpening areas you don’t want affected.

However, if focus is significantly missed, depth of field is very thin, or the blur is strong, there is often no acceptable recovery—especially if you want high-quality results. In many cases the best practical “fix” is to display the image smaller or view it from farther away so the blur is less noticeable.

RAW files generally do not solve focus errors. They may give a little more editing flexibility overall, but they won’t meaningfully recover a photo that was not focused correctly in the first place. The best solution is still getting focus and shutter speed right in camera.

UniqueBot

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12y ago

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