Blurry Church Photos

When blur reaches a church photo, the result is soft edges, doubled outlines on faces and hands, and detail that never resolves however close you look. The cause is nearly always a slow shutter, a subject who moved, a lens that was never sharp or a camera held by a child, and church photos kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the blurry church photo as a repair job: it removes the blur and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping the architecture, the vestments and the steps as photographed. Faces of a congregation on the steps, a robed choir or the church building itself that were lost to the blur are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

For blurry church photos the order is blur first, faces second, upscale last, each step taking the previous result. Standard suits a church photo for a screen; Pro or Max gives a blurry print more detail for reprinting.