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Focus Magic 3.0
Several of our alert readers brought
Focus Magic to my attention,
so I
thought I would give it a try. The claims on their website were quite bold,
including the claim that Focus Magic could even greatly reduce or even eliminate blur
caused by a moving subject. I found this claim a little hard to believe
because I have never had much luck in my many attempts to enhance a really blurry
image.
To put their clams to the test, I first selected an image of a dog that had turned its head to one side just
as the shutter fired, and after following the instructions in the short "Motion
Blur" tutorial on the Focus Magic website I ended up with a very usable
photo.
There was still a slight remnant of blur left when I finished up, but I could
never have achieved results anywhere near that good with any of my image editing
programs. To say the least, I was
quite impressed.
Next, I opened a photo of my infant granddaughter playing in her crib in
PhotoShop Elements. It had been taken in a fairly dark room, and while
relatively sharp in most areas, her face and left arm were clearly out of focus.
I did my best with the Unsharp Mask tool, but I was never able to
completely remove the blur. Then I went to work with the Focus Magic plugin, and
in about 15 seconds flat I had an image that was virtually free of blur!
Conclusion: While Focus Magic isn't a magic elixir that can turn even the worst
of images into a work of art, it is clearly much more effective at reducing both
"out of focus blur" and "motion blur" than every other sharpening tool I have
used. If you wish, you can try it yourself by downloading a free evaluation copy at
www.focusmagic.com.
The Focus Magic download file for Windows includes both the stand-alone
application and a plug-in that works seamlessly with Adobe PhotoShop, PhotoShop
Elements, and a plethora of other image editing programs.
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