About Focus Magic and Acclaim Software Ltd
Acclaim Software, which was founded in 1995, is a software-development company based in New Zealand. Its software is sold in more than twenty countries around the world. The company has two divisions: imaging software and accounting software.
The imaging division developed Focus Magic photo sharpening software, which was the first commercially available product to refocus blurred images using a reversing formula. Focus Magic continues to be the world's leading product in this field. The vision for Focus Magic is to broaden it into a suite of image-restoration filters which are both easy to use and highly effective at repairing defective photos.
The accounting-software division developed and sells Cashbook Complete, primarily for the Australian and New Zealand small-business market. Cashbook Complete is also the leader in its chosen market: keep-it-simple accounting.
The Focus Magic Story
Focus Magic was developed over several years by a team at Acclaim Software led by Eric Schwerzel. Although Version 1.0 was released in December 2000, major technical difficulties still had to be overcome, and it took the Focus Magic team another two and a half years to resolve them. About a year was then spent optimising the focusing code using AMD's CodeAnalyst software because processing speed was an issue. The innermost loops were converted to assembler and tuned for maximum speed.
Version 2.0 was released in 2004. Until 2018, the only changes made were those needed to keep Focus Magic working with operating-system developments such as Intel-based Macs and 64-bit Windows.
In March 2018, the development team started work on Version 5 with the aim of making the algorithm even more accurate. Version 5 was released in July 2020.
Version 6.1 was released in January 2024 after another three and a half man-years of research and development. It introduced a new pattern-matching focusing algorithm which produces a cleaner, more natural-looking result with fewer artefacts. It also added Auto-Focus, substantially improved the Increase Resolution filter and introduced better handling of halos created by in-camera sharpening.
Version 6.24 was released in June 2025. It added the ability to repair images affected by heavy JPEG compression, extending Focus Magic beyond traditional out-of-focus and motion-blur restoration.
Other Acclaim Software
Acclaim Software also develops straightforward accounting and backup software for Windows.
Need help with Focus Magic? Email support@focusmagic.com.
"I have tried various other products to fix blurry photos but Focus Magic was the only one that actually worked. The results are amazing!"