How To Save A Blurry Image

[mveda2004]

Hello everyone,

I am just playing around with photography and digital editing and I have this picture that I really like but has a shake in it. Wondering if i can sharpen or reconstruct it using photoshop cs6. Photo is attached. If anyone can do it and tell me how they did it that would be great.

 

[ABJayce]

If a picture is out of focus/blurry, there is really no way to fix it. We can make it look better, but can't make it look like a crisp and clean image.

 

[KmH]

You can improve it to some extent with careful editing, but the OOF is motion blur and cannot be repaired. Part of the problem is we can't see their eyes very well because their sockets are dark because of the overhead lighting.

The first issue is if the original is a Raw file or if it's a JPEG. A Raw file provides more editing headroom. A JPEG was already edited in the camera, which used up most, if not all, of the editing headroom.

CS 6 includes Camera Raw (ACR).
In ACR the first thing to do is correct the white balance. (White Balance tool).
Then you can globally capture sharpen the image using the Sharpening/Noise Reduction panel. Don't use an Amount more than 25. You'll need to experiment with Radius, Detail, Masking, and the Luminance and Color Noise Reduction sliders.
Go back to the Basic panel and increase the Clarity slider.
Open the image in CS 6
Adjust the mid-tone contrast using a Curves Adjustment layer.
Use the Sharpening tool in Protect Detail mode, and set to about 60% or so and locally sharpen the just the faces of the 2 girls on the right. You won't see much, if any, improvement on the girl in the middle.

 

[bianni]

Here is an edit using the high pass filter and some dodging and burning

 

[KmH]

The high pass filter sharpening technique is an option, but notice all the JPEG edit artifacts it produces, like making MCU edges visible on the middle girl's jacket. (MCU -Minimum coded Units - part of how JPEG reduces file size.)

 

[mveda2004]

Thanks everyone for your responses.. Bianni i do like yours its a lot better so I am going to try that technique and see. I do have the original image in RAW. It was just too big to attach here so i had to opitmize it. Kmh let me try your technique using raw and see the results i get.. I will post after i do both.

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

The lesson here is that, No...you can't save or fix an image that has motion blur* (motion from either the camera or subject). You can often make it better, but not save it completely. Another option is to go with an 'artistic' filter type effect. Make it look like a sketch or painting etc.

* I have heard that Adobe is working on the ability to analyze images with motion blur and correct for it. Interesting and scary to think about that.