Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Can you really refocus in post process?

imageI came a cross a very interesting little program, when updating what's on my USB darkroom. Its called Smart Deblur, and it promises the restoration of defocussed and blurred photo. Quite a claim! The example is quiet impressive, my out of focus rainbowsyou can practise with the blur sliders on a deliberately out of focus image of text, which comes op as you start the software.

Ok how does it perform on real photos?. Just after the big storm on thursday last week I found myself in a taxi going over the Bolte bridge just as a double rainbow formed over the city. I grabbed my camera but i was taking the photo through a wet droplets covering the taxi window in rapidly darkening condition. The auto focus was tracking in and out, presumably confused by the contrast on the rain drops on the window. So I turned off the autofocus and had enough time to get two photos before a truck in the next lane blocked the view for long enough for the rainbow to fade, Damn! Trouble was my focus was not quiet right and/or the movement softened the detail too much. So I figured these where perfect images to test the deblur utility! With a fair bit of fiddling and a long wait or two I did get a serviceable improvement, albeit with more noise. which a little tweaking in lightroom calmed down. The results being better than I could achieve in lightroom alone, but in reality don’t expect magic.

deblurred rainbows over melbourne

No comments: