Security Camera Photo Help

[witqueen]

I'm new to Paint.net and I've been through the boards and FAQ's and tutorial. Maybe I missed it, or the product can't do it, but here goes and is for a good cause.

The local police captured this picture on a security camera that was involved in a hit and run. I'm looking for a way to remove the blurred image of the vehicle, at least to help identify what the make and model could be. I see there are all kinds of ways to add blur and distort an image, but not the other way around. Is this fix possible in Paint.Net?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thank you.

[david.atwell]

CSI has ruined the world, unfortunately. This is an impossible feat. The information simply doesn't exist, and there's no way to recover it. What you have is the equivalent of a sheet with an ink drawing that has been dipped in water and smeared; the information simply does not exist.

I know they do it in cop shows all the time. It just has no basis in reality. :-) You might be able to make it a little sharper, but all you'll see is a very sharp image of a blurry streak.

The highest-end professional graphics programs might be able to make a guess, but there's no program that can make this image clear. I'm sorry.

[witqueen]

That's why I don't watch those shows..lol

Actually I was looking at Focus Magic to load into Photoshop, but I was just trying to do a good deed. The person that got hit is still in critical condition, and the local paper was asking for help. I know they meant witnesses, but if I felt like spending a day learning and counting the pixels, I could.

Thank you for your help!

p.

[david.atwell]

Yeah...you can try and do it by hand, but honestly, many courts won't accept as valid evidence any photo that has been run through a photo editing program. And they do have ways to tell...

[Chopperoad]

My guess from the photo is a late model Mustang (90's) from the headlights and roof contour and of course we can assume it's blue.

Remember the internet when video feeds looked like static? They will get this camera thing figured out sooner then later :wink:

ChoP

8)

[oma]

unless you have any first hand info to add for the authorties leave it and let them do their jobs . They are the professionals and you have no idea what other tips have come into them previously that this untouchedup photo can confirm. Someone else may have actually noted something and any retouch by amatures of this photo may hinder their investigation.

so in other words unless you have something other than a guess to add don't take away their valuable investigative time.

OMA

[Rick Brewster]

This is from a video camera? (as opposed to a still/photo camera) There are some severe interlacing artifacts. If you had neighboring frames of video it might be possible to stitch together a less blurry one, especially with some trivial CodeLab hacking. It looks like you have half of one frame and half of another.

[Rick Brewster]

For example, just by doubling up one set of the scanlines, I got this. It might not be clearer, but there is less motion artifacting.

I did this by going to Image->Resize, setting it to Nearest Neighbor, and turning off Maintain Aspect Ratio. I halved the height (480 -> 240), and clicked OK. Then I went back into Image->Resize and doubled the height (240 -> 480).

[Rick Brewster]

Here's the other frame. I obtained it by going to Move Selected Pixels and moving the whole image up by 1 pixel, then repeating the process from my previous post.

If you open both images in Paint.NET -- that is, into two tabs -- then you can switch between them repeatedly, e.g. using Ctrl+Tab, and maybe get a better idea of what was going on.