Focus Magic versus Unsharp Mask Examples

Introduction

Unsharp Mask has traditionally been the best way to sharpen photographs which are a little blurred.  It increases the contrast of the edges of an image to make it look sharper.  There are many programs which have Unsharp Mask (or Sharpen) included, and there are even some dedicated Unsharp Mask programs.  The mathematics is quite simple (more), and it runs quite fast.    Focus Magic however doesn't use the Unsharp Mask principle to sharpen an image.  It uses advanced mathematics to reverse the way in which the image got out of focus to restore the original "in focus" image as much as possible.  On this page we compare Unsharp Mask with Focus Magic for various degrees of blur, starting with a slightly blurred image and finishing with a very blurred image.

Testing Method

The blur width parameter in Focus Magic is equivalent to the diameter of a circle and is in each of the following examples set to twice the Unsharp Mask Radius.  The Amount is in all cases set to 100%.  For Unsharp Mask the Threshold is set to zero.  For Focus Magic the Noise Reduction is set to Auto and the Image Source is set to "Conventional Camera" (except for example 2 which was taken with a digital camera).  The exact settings used to sharpen these images are displayed when your place your mouse over the image.  Feel free to experiment with different Unsharp Mask settings if you want to.

Example 1 - Slightly Blurred Image

Original Image	Unsharp Mask	Focus Magic

This image of an old historic building is only a little bit blurred.   Unsharp Mask makes the image grainy and doesn't sharpen the brickwork silhouetted against the clouds very well.  Focus Magic sharpens the brickwork a lot better and doesn't make the image grainy.

Example 2 - Fairly Blurred Image

Original Image Out of Focus	Unsharp Mask	Focus Magic	Original Taken Again In Focus

This image of a fridge magnet was taken firstly "out of focus" and then "in focus" with a Fuji digital camera.  The photo's were taken with the camera on a tripod, and only the focus setting was changed between the two shots.  Although Focus Magic could not restore the image completely back to what it should have been, it did take it back a long way.   Unsharp Mask made the image grainy, didn't sharpen the image much (or at all), didn't recover any of the detail in the eye and has a more severe "halo" effect.

With the naked eye we would not have been able to see from the original that the eye consisted of a black dot on a white background.  It looks more like some kind of a plastic bobble.  Focus Magic is able to restore the eye mostly back to what it should have been.  The ability to recover detail that is not normally visible makes Focus Magic invaluable for forensic scientists.

There is unfortunately a limit to how much Focus Magic can restore detail.  The limiting factor in restoring an image is not in the power of the focusing algorithm used by Focus Magic, but it is in the quality (or accuracy) of the input image.  Under laboratory conditions, images which are de-focused with software, saved as 48 bit images, and then re-focused can be re-focused a lot better than real world images.

Example 3 - Very Blurred Image

Original Image	Unsharp Mask	Focus Magic

This image is a highly magnified part of an image, and shows a ladies watch and bracelet.  When an image gets out of focus, point sources of light (from small shiny objects) become circles.  With Focus Magic the circles become smaller concentrations of light, which is what you would expect when sharpening an image.  With Unsharp Mask the circles stay the same size and get brighter which is not correct for sharpening an image.

In this image we are again able to recover detail which would normally be lost.  For this watch (which is shown upside down) you can almost make out the hands.  One of the hands appears to be between the five and the six.

Summary

Focus Magic sharpens images a lot better than Unsharp Mask, and doesn't have the side effects of making images grainy or of making a halo around the edges.  The reason why Focus Magic does better than Unsharp Mask is because it actually reverses the formula by which the image got out of focus.  Focus Magic can recover detail, where Unsharp Mask can't.

Focus Magic needs to do a lot of number crunching to recover the original "in focus" image, and therefore does run slower than Unsharp Mask.

For a more detailed explanation of how Unsharp Mask works and why it produces the side effects that it does click here.

With Unsharp Mask there is not one setting which can be said to be correct for that particular image.  It is a matter of trading off the sharpening effect against the side effects of graininess and halo-ing.  For Focus Magic however, there is technically speaking only one or two correct settings for the Blur Width.   The Blur Width is auto-detected when the image is opened and is usually accurate to plus or minus one pixel.

For examples of other Focus Magic Filters, click here.