

Show HN: Blurity, my project for making blurry photos sharp - teuobk

http://www.blurity.com/<p>Hi everybody,<p>Wanted to show you all what I've been working on for the past (many) months.  It's an online tool to remove the blur from motion-blurred photos.<p>First, let me set some expectations: this only works on certain types of blur.  Severe focus blur, blur that is inconsistent within the photo, "blur" because the image is very small, blur due to compression artifacts, and other non-motion blurs don't usually work too well (there are occasional exceptions).  Early users (and paying customers, woo!) have shown a remarkable breadth of interpretations about what constitutes a "blurry" photo; I'm still trying to figure out on which segment to focus.<p>I'd love to get some feedback, especially about how to better educate users on what the tool does and how to improve the user experience.<p>If you're wondering how this works, the short answer is that it builds a model of the blur and then removes it from the image using deconvolution.  The technique ("blind deconvolution") has been around for a while, and there are a few mostly academic tools out there that work in a similar manner, but Blurity attempts to bring the blur removal technology to the consumer market.<p>This falls into the category of a project that has been "almost ready" for about a year and a half, spending most of that time in a quiet beta.  In any case, I'm finally ready to give it some exposure.<p>Comments and questions appreciated.  Thanks!
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bhickey
I don't see the price point working. While I'm sorely tempted to shell out
$300 for Adobe Lightroom, I am unwilling to use a service that charges me by
the image. A subscription model might be more palatable to users.

Some cursory searching turned up FocusMagic, which operates as a Photoshop
plugin or stand-alone and is billed at $45.

Edit: Sorry, I forgot to say that some of your examples are really impressive.
Especially the goalie shot.

Edit Again:

Before: <http://www.blurity.com/view/unprocessed/3EE424BE32D5DF95.jpg>

After: <http://www.blurity.com/view/preview/3EE424BE32D5DF95.jpg>

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teuobk
Thanks for the input. Figuring out what to charge, and on what terms, has been
a struggle.

To follow up, in your opinion would it need to be a stand-alone tool and/or
Photoshop plugin, like FocusMagic, or is a web-based solution viable?

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Geee
Which algorithms do you use? Blind deconvolution is kind of a hard job to do
properly, but there has been lots of advancements recently. I had the same
idea to sell it as an app and I did some investigation on the subject a while
ago.

I think it's OK to charge per photo. Most people have that one very important
photo they want to fix and that's when they search for a solution and are
willing to pay. On top of that you could sell a subscription or plugin for
photographers.

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teuobk
Clickable: <http://www.blurity.com/>

