As an experiment, here is a babelfish translator for other languages: It may make mistakes, and I cannot take responsibility for these!
Sorry I've been away so long. I named version 1.4 of Unshake "Meerkat" long ago. Isn't it wonderful how if you wait, the world can catch up? Seemples! (Readers outside the UK might not know what I'm blathering about, nor what blathering is. Ah, well.)
As an experiment, here is a babelfish translator for other languages: It may make mistakes, and I cannot take responsibility for these!
Most image processors offer pre-defined filters which have been found useful after a lot of use. They bring out hidden detail by emphasising changes (like edges) in pictures.
Distinct from this, deconvolvers try to recover what the original scene looked like, but they have the problem that one needs to specify exactly how the picture was blurred in the first place (for example, if the camera was poorly focused, one would ideally specify not just how bad the focus was, but how fast the shutter moved at each phase of its cycle, and how many leaves the shutter had).
An automatic deconvolver attempts to estimate itself how the picture was blurred in the first place, then to deduce what the original scene would have looked like. This is a very difficult task, involving automatically setting dozens or hundreds of controls.
Unshake can only usually double or treble the resolution of a blurred
picture. Nonetheless, Unshake is still, after first being released in August
2000, the only automatic deconvolver available which works on normal
domestic photographs, the only free automatic deconvolver designed for
non-specialists to use, and the only
automatic deconvolver which is capable of handling poor focus and mild
camera shake in single photographs of people or scenery. To my knowledge.
If any one knows of another example, please let me know, and I will amend
this paragraph!
The latest release, Unshake 1.4, is easier to use, gives better results, and gives the user control over the time spent on processing the photographs, and over what part of the image the deconvolution will be based on. Because it takes time to work, it now allows the user to estimate how long the processing will take, before committing the job.
Note for amateur astronomers: Versions of Unshake which I have released to date are tuned to work on photographs of Earth (people, scenery etc.), not on astronomical photographs, though they might work on pictures of planets.
Unshake 1.4 has a good chance of deconvolving star-fields however, if you use the default "Estimate" setting, which will take account of the point-like nature of stars. I have not had the chance to test this yet, so I'd be interested in your results - if they are bad I'll modify this paragraph.
It still does not, and never will, break the Airy limit!
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed. And on the pedestal these words appear -- "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!" Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.' Percy Bysshe ShelleyWhy Ozymandias, why Hamangia?