Teacher Qi: Caicai, why do you look so depressed today?
Cai Cai: Many of the photos I took during my recent travels have good expressions and postures, but because the light and focus are not very good, the photos are a bit blurry, which is really a pity.
Teacher Qi: Really? Let me see. Ah! The problem is not big, there is still a way to save it. I will teach you a few methods so that you can make them clear.
Spot Healing and Sharpening Tools to Help
The sharpening tool is the simplest tool. We first learn how to use the sharpening smear repair method to partially repair blurred images. It is often used to repair people's faces.
Cai Cai: I have used this tool before, but it is very difficult to use. There are always colorful spots.
Teacher Qi: That’s because you missed the point, or the photo itself is of low quality. Remember to use a soft brush, low intensity, and paint over and over again.
1. Select the Sharpen tool in the toolbox.
2. Set the pen decoration properties of the sharpening tool in the property bar. Set the brush tip to a softer tip and drag the slider to reduce the intensity.
Tip: Use a soft brush to smear, and there will be no ugly hard edges. Repeated smearing with low intensity is somewhat similar to the rendering technique in Chinese painting, which can make the modified part and the surrounding area have an excellent transition, and no traces of repair can be seen.
3. Set the pen tip to the appropriate size. Apply on the eye area, and you can see that wherever the pen passes, the image will gradually become clearer. We apply slowly until the clarity reaches the ideal level. Don't overdo it, otherwise it will look ugly. of mottled colors and spots.
Mild blur USM overall sharpening
The advantage of using the sharpening tool is that you can sharpen it as needed. If you want to quickly repair the entire photo, it seems too troublesome. Then try the "USM Sharpening" filter, which is specially prepared for blurred photos. This filter is suitable for adjusting the entire photo.
Use the menu "Filter→Sharpen→USM Sharpen" to pop up the sharpening dialog box. In this example, we set a larger quantity value to achieve a clearer effect, and a smaller radius value to prevent loss of image quality. Minimum threshold to determine edge areas that require sharpening.
Tip: The quantity value controls the degree of sharpening. The higher the value, the clearer the image. However, it is not that the higher the value, the better. Too high a value will increase image noise and affect the quality. The radius value is used to set the affected pixel range, that is, specify the range of pixels next to the edge to be adjusted. If the radius value is very high, the image will have large areas of highlights and dark parts, losing details. The threshold is used to determine how much the sharpened pixel must differ from the surrounding area before it is treated as an edge pixel by the filter and sharpened. When the threshold value is higher, the image is softer, and when the value is lower, the image is sharper. When adjusting these values, you should observe more and choose the most appropriate value.
Strengthen repair and superimpose edge sharpening
The above two methods are common tips. If you want to make your photos clearer and have better effects, you have to use the two magic weapons of high-contrast preservation filters and layer blending modes.
1. Open the blurred photo, press the "Ctrl+J" shortcut key to copy the layer. Press the "Shift+Ctrl+U" shortcut key again to decolorize the image. We will use this black and white layer to enhance the edges.
2. Use "Filter→Others→High Contrast Preservation" in the menu to pop up the High Contrast Preservation dialog box and set the value to about "0.9". Click OK.
3. Set the layer blending mode to "Overlay" and press the "Ctrl+J" shortcut key to copy the layer. If the image is still blurry, you can copy a few more layers and superimpose them on top.
Tip: The image is not all balanced. During repair, some areas may be over-retouched, resulting in spots. We can use an eraser to erase the superimposed image there.
Super magic weapon - TOPAZ filter
If you are not satisfied with the above three methods, then I will give you a super magic weapon - TOPAZ. This is a very excellent clarifying filter. It can not only be used to clarify blurry photos, but can also be used for artistic processing of pictures. Its calculation method is different from the sharpening filter that comes with Photoshop. It can calculate a very beautiful hand-painted effect, which is very suitable for clarifying and artisticizing hair and plant images.
After installing the TOPAZ plug-in filter, we open a picture and use the menu "Filter→Topaz Vivacity→Topaz Sharpen". In the Main tab, set the sharpness value to "1.9".
After entering the Advanced tab, set the linear feature to "0.84". You can see that the hair details in the image immediately become very clear and are artistically processed, just like drawing them one by one with an outline pen. Using this feature, we can create a hand-painted effect.
The left side of the title picture is the original image, and the right side is the effect of using the TOPAZ filter, especially the eyes and hair, which are particularly clear.
Private secrets: Mastering the above methods, in addition to easily restoring some photos that are out of focus due to the lens to clarity, applying the TOPAZ filter can also be used to adjust low-resolution photos taken with mobile phones to achieve clear results. But it can't do anything about ghosting caused by shaking hands. Friends who are interested can try using the "smudge tool" to smear the ghosted parts of the photo, which may also achieve a certain repair function.