Restoring the blurred glory

[nikhildesai]

During my last vacation, I was travelling around the city. It was past midnight, when I came across this Church on the country side. Thought might capture a shot or two of the same. Did not have much time to adjust the ISO and capture the picture at that point of time.

I agree, I could have just given it a thot and captured a better picture of the church by adjusting the ISO Setting as it was already a low light area, rahter than sulk at it after getting back to the resort.

Anyways, I kept the image as is. Was just planning to rework on a pic, just for fun and thot of reworking on this image.

Reworked on it using the available filters in photoshop and made to it to atleast a better pic that what was before. Adjusted the noise, added brush strokes, distorted the image a bit and etc etc to achieve this.

Might not be the best example of before or after, atleast I have tried to make it a bit better than being a blurred image,

[chopstickjayne]

I came back from a family vacation with several shots blurred - I would love to know exactly what you did to fix your shot. The transformation is wonderful. I had no idea blurred pictures could be fixed to this extent. I'm using Photoshop Elements 7 so hopefully you can tell me what all is included in the "etc. etc." portion of your explanation - and perhaps more details on the steps you took? I think I would be able to save some of the shots I'm ready to delete from my computer...really great fix!

THANKS!
Jayne

[nikhildesai]

Hi Jayne,

Thanks a ton for the compliments. I do agree that it hurts a lot, when we return back from vacation and find some of the best shots we've thot might have taken turn out to be blurred. This was just an experiment with the filters in Photoshop. Trying to regain the lost pic.

I am summarizing the steps I have taken in order to restore the blurred pic. Hope this works out for you.


Steps Followed:
Step 1: Open Image & make a duplicate layer of the image.

Step 2: Filter > Brush Strokes > Ink Outline (Settings: Stroke Length: 0; Dark Intensity: 0; Light Intensity: 0)

Step 3: Change the Layer Blending Mode from Normal to Darken (this step overlapped my Blurred version with the ink stroked version.)

Step 4: Duplicate Layer again

Step 5: Add Noise (Settings: Amount: 6%; Distribution: Gaussian; Monochromatic checked)

Step 6: Change the Layer Blending Mode from Normal to Soft Light.

Step 7: Set Layer Opacity to 50%

Step 8: Filter > Sharpen > Smart Sharpen (Settings: Default; Amount: 30%; Radius: 2; Remove: Lens Blur; More Acurate checked)

Step 9: Change the Layer Blending Mode from Normal to Soft Light.

Step 10: Set Layer Opacity to 50%


These layers overlap the base layer, which was blurred.

These are the steps I have followed to restore the lost glory of the otherwise beautiful shot.

Hope this works for you Jayne.

Attached the reworked files again to give a glimpse of the level of blur the original picture had and the difference made in the restored picture.