Blurry Family Portraits

When blur reaches a family portrait, 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 family portraits kept in albums, frames and boxes were all exposed to it.

The restoration reads the blurry family portrait as a repair job: it removes the blur and rebuilds what was underneath from the surrounding grain, keeping every face, the seating order and the clothing as photographed. Faces of three or four generations posed in a studio or on the front steps that were lost to the blur are plausible reconstructions, so compare them with other pictures.

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