Today’s point and shoot digital cameras do one thing very well. Quick and easy photos. Good color. Fine definition. Autofocus. So why do I have a few thousand photos in my iPhoto collection that are not quite in focus?
Modern digital photography remains a you get what you pay for proposition. My less expensive auto focus cameras take their good old sweet time to focus, which often results in an image captured that’s just perfect in composition and color. Perfect– except for the slightly blurred image.
Guess what? There’s an elegant, inexpensive Mac app that actually sharpens blurred photos. It’s called Photiosity and despite a plethora of granular settings, it’s mostly click and be done.
Click to open a photo in Photiosity, and without touching any other controls, click the Sharpen! button.
Even on a fast Mac, Photiosity takes a minute or so to chew through a slightly blurred, out of focus photo, and bring clarity to the edges.
Controls include an option for grid size, divergence, sharpness quality, and advanced settings which manage noise control options.
To get a closer view of how Photiosity handles slightly blurry images, click on the two photos above for a larger, pop up, close up view.
A year or two ago I saw an Adobe Photoshop demonstration of similar functionality, which took a highly blurred image, recalculated the pixels, and produced a very sharp image.
Photiosity works similar magic on blurred photos or photos which are not in focus due to a shaky hand when taking the photo.
That said, there are limits. The app is trying to determine what those blurred edges should look like before attempting to bring them into focus, so it works well on some photos, but not so much on others. Still, it’s inexpensive and try before you buy.