If you are not sure whether the image is out of focus, affected by motion, or simply low resolution, start with the guide to identifying and fixing blurry photos.
Well, things do go wrong from time to time. Here the camera focused on the background rather than the foreground. Normally this photo would be destined for the bin, but it can be rescued. First, to determine the type and magnitude of the blur, we'll zoom in and examine the shiny bits (point sources) in the image.
This is a highly magnified part of the man's eye and has a diameter of 14 pixels, counted vertically. When counting the diameter, count the actual number of pixels and subtract one. The point source in this case may not be very clear, but the following two definitely are.
They are below the woman's ear on the left and have a diameter of 13 or 14, depending on whether you count horizontally or vertically. Their diameter is a little less than that of the eye because they are a little farther away and hence a little more in focus. Any setting between 13 and 15 is suitable for Focus Magic's “Blur Width” setting for this image.
It is important in this case to select only the area to focus using the lasso tool, so areas that are already in focus are not processed by Focus Magic.
After selecting Focus Magic from the Filter menu in Photoshop, enter a Blur Width of 14 to produce the following result.
Before focusing, the glint in the man's eye is a broad circle of light and the woman's earring is difficult to see.
Notice how the red light is unaltered because it is outside the selection. The circle of light from the “glint” in his eye has become a brighter and smaller circle of light, as it should.
Where the woman's earring was not visible before, it can now be seen clearly.
After focusing the whole selected foreground, you get this result.
Then, just for fun, we can make the background out of focus by first inverting the selection.
Now that the background is selected, we can blur it using Gaussian Blur — which, by the way, is not the same as out-of-focus blur — with a radius of 5 and then deselect it, producing this result.
Wow, that looks a lot better. If you want to experiment, you can download the whole image here.
On Windows, Auto-Focus is the preferred starting point for fixing an out-of-focus photo because it detects the Blur Amount and can handle several blur widths. Use this manual method when working on a Mac or when you need more selective control.
For a video presentation of this tutorial, watch the Focus Manually video tutorial.
