[m8o]

My friend is relying on me for this. Even shrunk down to 800 px wide and max sharpening in Lightroom, it's still not enough.

Lighting was ridiculously low. Shot it at ISO1600, I think I was at f/1.2 (but I was tanked so maybe not) and green button set my shutter speed @ 1/6 sec on this shot for acurate exposure. As I had about 3 bottles of wine in me at this very moment I took this photo, and was manually focusing the 55mm Cosina f/1.2, I guess I did fairly well, and I can't thank Pentax SR enough!!! btw, I know WB could be better, but WB temp is already set @ 2000 in Lightroom and it's still not blue enough; like I said lighting was really really low.

But I'm hoping to get it better. So what is that software called that does that fantastic job sharpening-up blurry photos unlike any other I've ever seen? (leaving few artifacts)



Yes, that's Harvey Kietel. I've got a bunch of "over the shoulder" candids of him too that I'll post at a later time in the "post your photos" section.

[gwing]

I would try the 'refocus' plugin that is available in Digikam, Gimp etc and get as much from that as possible. After that you can apply whichever conventional sharpening techniques you prefer to finish it up, I tend to like the the wavelet denoise functions over unsharp mask myself but there are so many to choose from.

I guess the refocus tool is available in the PS world somewhere as well but no longer use that myself so am not sure. In any event the tool works completely differently than conventional sharpening techniques, I don't think you can get it as sharp with just refocus as with unsharp mask etc. but the two together are complimentary.

[dosdan]

Focus Magic is the program you're thinking of. Trial version allows you to process 10 images. That will be enough to save your bacon.


Dan.

[bluespearbone]

m8o,

Just tried a hit in Focus Magic
(You get 10 free with the download before you need to register)
This was at the 4 pixel width setting

File Date

View Picture EXIF

Edit: Sorry about that Dan, you must have been replying at the time i was messing about with the image.

[m8o]

Thanx a load everyone. I'll try the options mentioned on the full rez. Yep, Focus Magic was what I was thinking of but couldn't remember. I'll probably need to drop to B&W for this tho too.

[GerryL]

Here's a little tweaking in PS CS3 but I might have overdone the sharpening a bit.

[m8o]

wow, I'm so buying a license to Focus Magic.


I never had heard before that it has something I always imagined would be great to have, "undo motion blur", which I made good use of above.

Why I always wanted it was to take 30 second exposures of the milky way and reduce the star trail back to a spec.

Before:


After:

---

Last edited by m8o; 12-24-2009 at 12:54 AM. Reason: update the 1st & last image with a better one

[maxmagnum]

Before you spill some cash, take a look at this:
cooler
According to some articles it also fixes motion blur. Free of charge.

Also, this:
http://refocus.sourceforge.net/


...and this:
http://www.zen147963.zen.co.uk/Unshake/index.html

[JohnBee]

Before you spill some cash, take a look at this:
cooler
According to some articles it also fixes motion blur. Free of charge.

Also, this:
Refocus Home Page


...and this:
Unshake Index

Without testing, I wouldn't be surprised if unshake outperforms all the others.
Nothing but amazement from that utility

[Pentaxoid]

Your photo isn't going to look good even after being processed by any plugin on the planet. You used high iso, probably slow shutter speed, a bit of shaking due to alcool, a lens which is soft wide open, etc. Try it in B/W so that the chroma noise will disappear and will kinda look like film, but don't put your expectations too high though

For these kind of very low light pictures, use the "night club technique": a diffused flash with 1-2" shutter speed and colorful background (in that shot you had nice colors in the back), they will look much better

EDIT: back on the subject, I tried sharpening your image in ImageMagick, but there is a lot of work to be done: image is underexposed, blurry and noise is kicking in

[m8o]

Before you spill some cash, take a look at this:
cooler
According to some articles it also fixes motion blur. Free of charge.
Also, this:
Refocus Home Page
...and this:
Unshake Index

Without testing, I wouldn't be surprised if unshake outperforms all the others.
Nothing but amazement from that utility

Thanx very much for all this.

I made use of LR's adjustment brush to only affect Harvey's head and did some add'l tweeking, then did some tweeks in Focus Magic, then did some tweeks in Unshaken, leaving me with a very sharpened but speckled photo. So I then used Picture Cooler to reduce a few forms of noise. Ending up with this....



I think I'm going to stop with this and share this version w/my friend.