Enhancing an image

Baz_

Hi all, not sure if this is even the right forum for this but I'm wondering if it's possible to enhance an image from a video file in a fashion similar to what can be seen in the movies.

In other words can you get a still and enhance it to get more detail from the image. Logic is telling me that if you have the original video and it is in a digital format then you are not going to be able to get any more detail from the image than is there already. In my mind the way the incredible image enhancement stuff in the movies works is that the movie makers start with high quality images and video and then edit them to make them look more pixelated and worse quality so that when they come to the enhancement scene they just return the images to the original high quality.

So, does anyone know am I wrong or right? Can you take a still from video footage and enhance it in a similar fashion to how it's done in movies so as to get more detail on a head or face in the shot or be able to better read information from elements in the image like a newspaper headline, street sign, reg plate etc...

Deliverance

I reckon that it could be done with a lot of expertise and patience. It may take a lot of manipulation depending on the amount of pixels involved. I imagine taking the image and enhancing each pixel individually to get the amount of contrast required to reveal more detail.

The more pixels in the image the more complex the process I reckon. Not sure about the question though. Are you trying to get more info from a security tape to define a reg, face etc?

Splinters

Yes it can certainly be done, but as mentioned it really depends on the quality and resolution of the original video. The stuff that happens on shows like CSI is often extremely exagerated and way beyond any technology currently available (well commercially anyway), however so long as the source video contains at least a vaguely decent picture its possible to clean up and sharpen the image quite a lot.

Baz_

Deliverance wrote: »

Are you trying to get more info from a security tape to define a reg, face etc?

Yes.

Deliverance wrote: »

however so long as the source video contains at least a vaguely decent picture its possible to clean up and sharpen the image quite a lot.

How would one go about it though?

Zillah

Baz_ wrote: »

In my mind the way the incredible image enhancement stuff in the movies works is that the movie makers start with high quality images and video and then edit them to make them look more pixelated and worse quality so that when they come to the enhancement scene they just return the images to the original high quality.

This is exactly right. Ignore the people who have posted already. The way it is done in the movies is completely fake. The image you have has all the information available already on display, anything you do only manipulates that image, you cannot retrieve information that is not there. The absolute most you could do is to adjust contrast to make certain features slightly more distinct, but that's it. Even then, as I said, you're altering the image, fabricating information, not retrieving it. It is at best an extrapolation.

I have video and image editing software at my disposal and quite a bit of experience if you would like to share what you have and I could tell you what your chances are.

Baz_

cheers zillah, I will try to lay my hands on the stuff tomorrow (I don't have it to hand now), but if I did mess around with it myself are you saying that messing around with the contrast settings would be a good place to start?

Zillah

Most programs have two things that might be able to help you a little. They have tools that let you alter general balance of light and dark ("brightness/contrast", "curves", "levels") and tools that seek out specific borders/edges and adjust local contrast to try and make them more distinct (aka, sharpening tools).

If whatever software you have has a setting like "unsharp" use that, there will be sliders for fiddling around with it.

If I were you I would export a still at the highest possible quality and post it in the photography forum, you'll then have dozens of photoshop experts doing their best. But like I said, don't expect anything amazing, if the image looks crap now it's still going to look crap.

Baz_

Excellent, cheers for that. Not great news, but not wholly surprising either, I did ask hoping for a miracle answer but I did not actually expect one