Fix long/double exposure

[meisme]

I've attached the only available photography of a wanted violant criminal in Austria (see http://www.oliverlehmann.at/?p=643 for the details in German). Unfortunately the quality is very bad and of course police can't provide any help in increasing the quality of this photo.

Does anyone know if it would be possible to "fix" this photo so that the face is somewhat better recognizable?

It seems that there are two exposures of the face. I'm currently thinking about something like inverting the image and then subtracting it from the shifted version of itself so that one of the exposures cancels out.

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have practically no experience in this area.

[KTG]

It looks to be motion blur, not a double exposure.

[Boneappetit]

I'm not an expert but it looks more like a long exposure and possibly, the camera was moved while shooting...

[Tony W]

Movement of camera phone and subject?

If the guy is a wanted violent criminal I would have thought that the Austrian police should be able to identfy from this image and their own records. Even without this they may have better access to specialist reconstruction software than most.

I doubt that it is possible to reconstruct an accurate likeness (admissable in court) in this case at least with the software available to most users.

[John Wheeler]

Translating the article you find that this was a cranky old man that was walking his dog that yelled at a guy using the path with his bike (recently OKed for bikes). Altercation ensued where old man swung leash at biker and dog ended up severely biting the person on the bike. Image was taken by biker perusing the old man and dog.

I could not tell for sure yet the biker may have been a government or institute official and no doubt is pretty POed.

The indication was that the old man is a regular in the area so should not be too hard to find. Not to minimize the assault yet the police probably are not putting out an all-points-bulletin nor call up Interpol.

All that said there are two issues.
1) Movement of the camera during the shot
2) Movement of the subject during the shot (e.g. turning head)

For #1 you can note that there are near point sources of light in the trees that suggest the movement of the camera during the shot. Unfortunately it does not tell how much of the exposure was taken at each point along the curve. There may be high tech software that could do this more productively

In either case it will not solve the issue of #2 above so agree with Tony that you would get nothing that would stand up in court, yet may be possible to make a poster where a local may recognize the old man that frequents the park.

[John Wheeler]

Not sure this is an improvement. Used two layers in diff mode with about 35% to 40% opacity and did free transform (move, rotate, expand) until it looked like something. I focused on the face area only.

wanted-diff-mode.jpg

[Boneappetit]

Originally Posted by Tony W

Movement of camera phone and subject?

If the guy is a wanted violent criminal I would have thought that the Austrian police should be able to identfy from this image and their own records. Even without this they may have better access to specialist reconstruction software than most.

I doubt that it is possible to reconstruct an accurate likeness (admissable in court) in this case at least with the software available to most users.

LOL !!! Mission Impossible