by Christopher Chatterton

Created on: November 02, 2010

Blurred or out of focus pictures are one of the most common and infuriating aspects of photography. Blurry pictures occur when the image sensor at the back of the camera is unable to record the image clearly. This usually happens because 1) the lens is out of focus or the subject moved, 2) the shutter speed is too slow, 3) the scene is too dark and 4) there is too much movement of the camera, known as "camera shake".

However, even the most professional and experienced photographers will take a blurred photo on occasion. All is not lost though as there is an excellent array of digital photo editing software available that can fix all but the most blurred of photographs.

How to fix blurry photos using Photo-editing software

Photo-editing software programmes like Adobe Photoshop have improved with every incarnation, with the ability to fix blurry photos becoming more user-friendly each time. Most photo-editing software works in much the same way, by tidying up the distorted edges around the blurred photo. For the sake of argument, the techniques described are from Adobe Photoshop, but could be applied to most similar editing software.

Digital photographs are composed of millions of pixels, which the camera interprets as small squares, each exactly the same dimension. A blurry image will be recorded by the camera as a series of 'extra' pixels that shadow the actual contours of the subject.

For instance, if the blurry photograph was of a tree swaying in the breeze, in Photoshop it would appear as if it had another 'ghost image' immediately behind it, thus causing the distortion. Selecting the magnifying tool, and zooming in on these blurred or distorted areas, will show where the blurred pixels have been recorded, which usually appear as either black or white squares (under or over-exposed areas respectively).

Photoshop can attempt to restore blurry photos, but only if there is enough detail, or 'data', in the original picture.   

Step 1

After you have uploaded your blurry photo to your computer, open Photoshop, select your photo and open it. The information and a small preview thumbnail of the photo will displayed in the layer palette menu to the side of the screen. Right click on the image and select ‘Duplicate layer’. This will give you a back- up of your work, which will allow you to return to that point if you make a mistake. It will also work on the copy of the image, meaning that you are not doing any permanent damage

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