Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

[jayagoddess]

I am having a hard time restoring this photo...and I think that it is because it is blurry....Can someone give me guidance and maybe a different look to it so....I have learned a lot from this site... Thank you so much .... Also what programs do you use if you don't mind me asking..

Cheers~

[zeroLiver]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

You have a lack of detail in the image. Basically you would have to reintroduce the detail, and because the detail is lost in the image any detail reintroduced is just a best guess as to how it would look. I am able to help with this but I would charge on this occasion because there is a bit of work and I've mucked around here too much today already.

Anyway what I would do is get a skin texture brush, a hair brush. Paint the skin texture back in. Paint the hair texture back in. Then you need to paint in the lip and eyelash texture, probably once you have that texture back in the image will look sharper how you want. You have to take your time with this else it will look silly. You start with the details that matter and go from there if you start with painitng pores on the skin you would loose motivation quick and be there for a long time which would be 20-80 hours depending on your skill level. Essentially you transition from general retouching techniques to photo-realistic-painting. I could probably get a reasonable level of detail within 3-6 hours

This is my advice unless anyone else knows some magical techniques then I'm all ears.

Good luck

[zeroLiver]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

Here is a start. I really have to stop. But you can see this does makes a little difference. There's just a lot of time involved if you want to make this sharp. Some of the detail I have added is a little visually jarring and it needs more work. If you want to go down this line of work then understanding anatomy etc can help. I learnt for drawing. For restoring shading it helps to know the structure of the body with respect to the people in an image, then you can get a reasonably accurate idea of how the missing shading would fall on the subjects within the over exposed areas of the image.

[0lBaldy]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

I subscribe to Photoshop.
multiplied a couple times using masked levels layers, sharpened using shake reduction, reduced noise using Imagenomic Noiseware, colored with Gradient Maps

[zeroLiver]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

I just had to keep going... Thanks 0lBaldy I used the camera shake reduction now also, that is an amazing algorithm. 0lBaldy is there a page online or video that refers to the technique you used with multiple levels layers multiplying? I don't actually understand that technique.

One thing I had to check was the positioning of the eyes. The general rule is that the distance between two eyes is one eye length. So I added a little highlight where the tear ducts are and also darkened that area a little as well.

EDIT:: Still needs a lot more time, but this is a start...

[Cupcake]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

Here is my look.

[skoobey]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

sample_forum_girls.jpgI've had some fun, too.

[Pentaxlover]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

Here is what I managed to do with it.
-In Raw I used the Dehaze filter (I love this filter because it tends to sharpen as well as give a little contrast)
-Made a mask of the girls, set it to overlay and then a pretty significant high pass filter.
I lost some of the detail in the faces so to partially fix that I put a brush to just the faces (between 20%-30%).
-I put some gaussian blur to the background so as to bring the girls out a little more.

And just for the record: what a sweet photo!

Amy

[philbach]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

Well I just used Photoshops Sharpen/Shake Reduction Filter. Very nice improvement. Heck I need to figure out how to use it properly

[Pentaxlover]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

Looks good! Lots of inspiration for me because I'm currently working on one that has a very similar problem from the same period of time.

Amy

[jeremy1986]

Re: Help photo is sooo blurry what do I do

I converted to black and white and then darkened the highlights to bring in more detail, then i used a high pass filter, then adjusted the sharpness, after that i used noise reduction but tried to leave the details, then i played around with the brightness and contrast