How many times have you face palmed while watching a show like CSI because of technicians magically “enhancing” an image, somehow finding digital information where there clearly isn’t any? Well it turns out that if software designed by one Vladimir Yuzhikov works as advertised, we might have been wrong to laugh. It’s called SmartDeblur and it uses some pretty advanced mathematical algorithms to try and minimize blur that comes from three sources: shots that are out of focus, shots that were taken while moving and something called gaussian blur, which Wikipedia assures us is different than the other two. But as they say, the proof is in the pudding and the image you see above was restored using this very application. Color us impressed.
Matter of fact, it gets better. Not only are there quite a few more such shots for you to look at after the break, there’s also a link to download Vladimir’s software! Yes, it’s free and as long as you have a PC, you can go ahead and try and save all those shots that you thought were ruined forever. It won’t produce images that are as sharp as a proper picture, but hey, this is some cool tech right here. Also after the jump, a link to a detailed explanation of what’s actually going on here. Math-phobes might want to abstain.