Blurred / Motion blurred images. are they a lost cause?

[questdvd]

Hi, I havn't been doing image restoration/retouching etc long but with the help of some very talented and helpful people on the forum i'm begging to get to grips with it. up until now i've done some of the challanges and played around with some of my own older, torn, patchy etc images, using help from people here...

But now i've found an old photo which is very blurred.. and seemingly motion blurred... and was wondering if once a photo of this nature has been taken, which is very out of focus, can much if anything be done to improve the image??...

various photoshop sharpening techniques have limited effect.. as the motion blurring is causing problems.. i.e the girl seems to have 4 eyes where the camera has moved.. the image is roughly 25 years old...

Can anyone sugest anything i can try to bring a bit of focus back... im not expecting anything drastic... just something that would look a touch nicer in a photo album.. even if it is still blurred.

Thanks alot.
Any comments or suggestions at all are more than welcome

Pat

http://img.villagephotos.com/p/2003-...55/blurred.jpg

[Duv]

Blurry

Pat

I think this pic is pretty much beyond hope. If you have other pics that aren't too blurry, try applying a guassian blur to the image then erase back with a white brush elements that are important. The features will still be as blurry as the original but may give a sense of sharpness relative to the now more blurry background.

Dave or Duv

[roger_ele]

If this picture has been sharpened at all, post the raw scan with no sharpening. I had given it a try but the sharp texture kept getting in the way

I think there might be a little that can be done, although it won't be perfect ...

Roger

[catia]

Try deconvolution.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7210

Here is a result that I posted on your last post of this photo.

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/attachment.php?s=&postid=61679

I used a simple linear pixel shift model to get this result. Notice that the double eyes are gone. To improve on this you would need a more precise model for the motion.

Another alternative would be to completely hand "paint" the photo.

Catia

Roger, I ran this image through NeatImage and jpeg artifact removal first. Then I did a lot of cleanup before I did the deconvolution. Even with that, you can still see a lot of "stuff" in the image.

[catia]

Here is a version of my last post of this pic with a radius 8 USM applied as post processing.

Catia

[roger_ele]

Catia,

Thank you! I have been looking for motion de-blur techiques, I will check out Image Analyzer.

You did a great job on this one.

Roger

[catia]

Thanks Roger.

I had to experiment with the settings. Turned out that 12 pixels seemed to be the optimum linear shift value for this picture at the original resolution. I thought about up sampling and trying a larger shift just to see what it would do; but, decided enough was enough.

BTW, you can thank Doug for the original post on that software.

Catia

[questdvd]

thanks alot, very good tips guys especially Catia.Very nice!