can anyone help me touch it up so it looks at least slightly more presentable?

I'm not asking for a miracle here, I know blurred photos are tricky. I will appreciate any advice you have. Thanks!

Hi,

This looks like an ideal candidate for Flora's technique of blurring the background more, to make the figure look sharper.

So I did a rough selection round the girl, copied and pasted her to a new layer.

Then I blurred the background using Gaussian Blur, and applied a Gradient mask, to increase blur from bottom to top.

Lastly I created a new layer, and cloned out the motion blur on the girls fingers.

The picture posted was a little on the small side to see too much detail, the technique above should work better on the full size file.

Nice job Gary! The picture is small to work on but I tried an extreme Unmask Sharp: 500/1/20 then used the Blur tool to smooth out all the artifacts that the sharpening created.

Cheers
Dave

Awesome, thank you both.

Sorry for the small picture; I was afraid it would be too large so I overcompensated. :) I'm going to try your techniques right now. Thanks!

I gave up trying to 'Sharpen' this so I just boosted the contrast

Ken

sharpen more
texture preserving smooth (medium setting)
sharpen more
despeckle
edge preserving smooth (lowest setting)
jpeg artifact removal at 'normal'
unsharpen mask at 100/20/100 (in paint shop pro 7. this may have different settings in photoshop)
cloned out blur on fingers and forearm. fixed teeth messed up by other filters.
clarify (set to medium) to bring out the face more
fade correction (set to medium) to bring out face a bit more

seems like a lot, but is still fairly easy and gives you some examples of other possibilities.

one other thing you might want to try is, double the file size first to give more resolution to work with. then, if you like, half it again after you're done.

Craig

edited for typos.

I did the bes I could do (preserving the originality of the photo).

Starting from Gary Gary Richardson's Version!

Increased size of photo with Graffi 100% so that it could be worked on.
Adjusted levels for better color.
Duplicated layer and used the sharpen tool to bring out the graduate's features.
Masked graduate and blurred the background just a bit.
Whitened teeth and gave just a bit of life to the eyes.

Off with the HEAD... I mean finger.

Butch

Repeated what others did. I did use the clone tool to smooth out the face and curves to lighten the face.

I'v used adjustment of levels, curves, unsharp mask.

fun photo...here's my take! :dizzy: