Exingo,
If your source images are from a digital camera or, as in my case, from a digital video camcorder, you need a third party plug-in or standalone application to deal with amplification noise, CCD artifacts and, in some cases, with in-camera JPEG artifacts. Neat Image is very good for that, as you can see by exploring at:
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http://www.neatimage.com/examples.html>
The focus on my images is never perfect for one reason or another. Maybe the camera moved or the subject moved or the autofocus wasn’t perfect. It is commonly believed that you can’t fix an out-of-focus image, but that isn’t strictly true. Focus Magic uses a mathematical process called deconvolution to reverse the process of defocusing an image to a certain degree. I find that refocusing the image is preferable to using Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask because USM works just on edges and Focus Magic works on the entire image. For more information, explore at:
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http://www.focusmagic.com/examplefocusing.htm>
I first use Neat Image to clean up an image and then use Focus Magic to improve its focus. Then I continue in Photoshop to upsample the image with help from Genuine Fractals. And I do the usual Photoshop image improvement stuff before making prints from the video frame grabs. I routinely do that to all of my video frame grabs. For that reason I consider both Neat Image and Focus Magic to be indispensible.
— Burton — (not associated with Neat Image or Focus Magic)
