Topic: Improving Digital photographs

[Garden Manager]

I have some photos taken on a digi camera, which have been taken on the wrong setting (i beleive macro instead of landscape) and have come out blurred and out of focus. Is there any way to manipulate these to make them sharper using computer software.

I have a couple of programs already that do this, and have tried to use them to sharpen the pictures, to no effect (software: arcsoft photoimpression and MGI photosuite).  Is there anything else I could try either in terms of software or techniques that might help or am i stuck with the photos as they are ?

The photos are important, but are currently disapointing to say the least.

Any help gratefully received

[derbex]

Richard,

my guess is that if you have shot these on Macro instead of landscape then they're very blurred; unless they're really important to you then it's probably not worth trying.

If you know someone with a copy of Photoshop you caould have a go with that (or even better get them to) -it's what the pros use.

Otherwise you could try downloading an evaluation copy of FocusMagic and seeing if you can get anywhere with that, I've never tried it myself -but they seem keen.

http://www.focusmagic.com

Jeremy

[Garden Manager]

Many thanks Jeremy.  I have looked at the site you quoted, and am down loading the software to try it out.

I hope it works  :)

Just to say the photos were of a holiday to a place special to me so the pictures are quite important.

[tim]

db - WHOOPEE! - thanks for that. = Tim

[Garden Manager]

I have tried out the software recomended. Unfortunately it did not help much, in fact in some cases the photos looked worse.

Looks like I shall have to live with them for now at least.

Thanks again to 'derbex' (jeremy) for his help with this.

[derbex]

No probs -I thought it was a long shot (on a short lens!)

Jeremy

[Jesse]

Hi Richard, I have Photoshop (I use it for work) if you still haven't found a solution you could email me a sample pic and I could give it a try and see if I can help you out.

[OP]

Likewise, I can give it a try. The problem is that with digital photography, you generally can't improve the image beyond what it was initially taken at.

you can run sharpen filters, but they rely on contrast between ajoining pixels, and merly enhance this contrast.  Improving the quality of an image is very difficult, and you only get marginal results.  The computer cant interpolate where the lens should have been focussing, it has no depth on the image as its two dimensional so it can't interpolate what it should look like.  A blurred photo is going to stay blurred.  At most you might enhance some lines on it.