Adobe admits using 'synthetic blur' image in deblur demo

Of interest: Some brand new before-and-after images from the tool have just been released, along with further details

http://prodesigntools.com/photoshop-image-deblur-adobe-releases-new-photos.html

The historical B&W Capa D-Day photo is a notable inclusion. Independent submissions are also invited

I consider this a relief! This deblurring technology would have been a compelling reason to upgrade to the next version of Photoshop if it was offered there! Now, the only way I'll be convinced that this technology is real is if they take a batch of my blurred images and convert them to my satisfaction.

But this fraud was great marketing. When I go out to the web and look for the "correction," to their fraudulent presentation, I get very few links. But I get raftloads of links to pages about the wonders of Adobe's new deblur technology. The Adobe marketeers work is done.

Many of Adobe's technologies are smoke and mirrors. For instance, the refine edge tool seems amazing, until you consider that every single person demonstrating it extracts their images from stark monotone background. Take a picture where you have a real reason to use the tool? Doesn't work very well. You got to be very careful with Adobe and always peek behind the curtain ;-).

Adobe's intentional blurring of the truth revealed:

http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/2011/10/behind-all-the-buzz-deblur-sneak-peek.html#comment-12880

BREAKING AND TRULY SHOCKING NEWS:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1000&message=39638642

If Adobe had the integrity that I thought they had (yes I'm naive) they would have done what a previous poster indicated - took one clear image & one blurred image of the same subject. Then posted the images with indisputable documentation.

I do feel deceived and it will be a long time before I forget.

If this process really works, Adobe has a chance to redeem themselves if they feel it warranted and take a "do-over" (pun intended)

And as the poster commenting on the 'slow computer' - really! that was some weak-assed crap.

If it pans out, it's a really great feature. Too bad that Adobe had to resort to trickery in its presentation. What rankles the most however is the presentor's comments about a "slow" computer. Really, guys, come on!

Sorry, Adobe. That the picture you were caught with red-handed is the only one that got... uh, digitally enhanced for greater marketing impact, while the other two are real, REAL, cross-our-marketeering hearts is kinda hard to swallow.

Unless you post the original RAW files - preferably with a pre-demo time stamp from a service you don't own directly, like Flicker - your credibility on this issue is zero.

Maybe you have a winner on your hands here. Who knows? But until your efforts have been reviewed and verified by independent third parties, the rational thing to do at the moment, given your conduct, is to assume this is all so much exaggerated hype for the sales drones to regurgitate.

"The first two images we showed – the crowd scene and the image of the poster, were examples of motion blur from camera shake."
Am I the only one reading this that the first two pictures were legitimate (or the only one reading more than the headline of this article?)

If you watched that and said "WOW!" for those first 2 images you're still talking about a real life application. The last one may have been a setup but from what I'm seeing this is still a 100% viable feature. Even if it's not as impressive as the manipulated shot of Kevin it still made huge improvements on the other shots.

Maybe people should see this application in use first hand before they jump to conclusions that "Adobe lies! Photoshop is just MSPaint marked up to $300!"

What?! A giant corporation misrepresented the facts for financial gain? Shocking! Absolutely shocking!

Actually, this is not unlike the anti-ballistic missile test run by the U.S. military, in which the target missile was emitting a tracking signal. Without that signal, the ABM was unable to hit the target. Perhaps Adobe will eventually get their technology to work, but they should not claim success until they can demonstrate its effectiveness under realistic testing conditions.

Rob

I can't think of any other word for this other than "Cheating", let me tell you why...

Estimating the PSF/debluring kernel is only one part of the job and so far it looks like they have accomplished it (not that I trust this any more), however inherent image noise is one of the biggest barriers for deconvolution filters and it usually results in all kind of wild sharpening artefacts.

Using a pre-blurred image is obvious cheating because they removed the noise problem out of the equation.

The picture wasn't what people thought Adobe said (or alleged) it was, this will make people mistrust future claims they make for this (c.f. Topaz Labs InFocus)

What they did was understandable, by extracting the blur info from a known (and presumably successfully processed) image they were playing it safe by choosing something which the software already knew how to process.

All demos are rigged, you would be insane to risk a belly flop in front of a live audience but you have to be careful not to mislead the audience. This technology may or may not have promise but Adobe now have to overcome the hurdle of these seemingly exaggerated claims.

My only gripe is the guy stood there and said it was a crappy bad photo they got on the internet. All they had to do was not embellish the facts.

First of all, I think that this technology has great potential. But it's sad that Adobe somewhat ruined it by using this synthetically blurred photo. That only breeds suspicion. Perhaps the first two photos were truly average blurred photos, but it's harder to take them completely on their word. I hope it's true, though.

One other thing. Did anyone notice the Adobe guy apologizing for the "slow computer". College kids showing each other cool programs might do that, but one of the most technologically oriented companies in the world can probably afford a computer that's at least an above average consumer PC when they're showing off their new software. It seems obviously to me that they got the best computer that money can buy and then apologized for it being slow.

Also, those idiots in the chairs on stage were completely annoying.

With all of this said, if that technology is actually as was demonstrated, it is one of the greatest advances in photo editing in history.

Please people, have a sense of humour. The people making photoshop, Lightroom etc are just that- people. Forget about bashing the 'big monolithic company' for 5 minutes and appreciate what they have made for us.

honesty is the best policy. When you loose credibility it takes a long time to get it back.

I don't know, the synthetic image doesn't bother me that much, it is research and the product is not ready yet, and it is not as if they are offering it for sale yet. Often people will test their algorithms on synthetic data first, before testing it on real data. I'm certain that they won't include it in CS6 if it doesn't work on real images.

Is no one bothered, however, by the ridiculous person who was on stage at the same time of the presentation, the person going on about what an "algorithm" is, and that "you should sell this"? I found that distracting, insipid, and technically profane.

Algorithms of deblurring are known for a long time already:

http://www.cse.cuhk.edu.hk/~leojia/projects/motion_deblurring/index.html

And yes, in research images are often artificially blurred with a known kernel ("camera shake data") to be able to control also the intermediate results of the algorithm.

The real question is how much CPU time and memory one needs to deblur a 15MP image.

I think what everyone is forgetting is that these are SNEAKS. Sneaks mean, "we're showing you something that we're developing and something that MIGHT be in a future product" (no promises).

So if the technology isn't completely done, or they show an example of what it might do when completed, I don't have a problem with that. They're not trying to sell it to me now. They're just showing what they're working on. And knowing Adobe, they'll get it perfected before another version of Photoshop is released (or whenever).

Making a huge deal about this is simply silly—it's a "sneak". But maybe it's just me. ;)

....I cant believe how so many people are SO negative with things...
too much blablablablablabla....
adobe did what adobe did and they announced it by themselves...
they explained it is a common practice and I take their word for that...
adobe has given us photoshop a great tool for photographers all over the world..and if they say that they try to fix blur photos I don't care what path they follow as long as they give me such a major breakthrough...
I will stop deleting blur photos..maybe in the future adobe will manage to fix them for me...
until then...keep on trying guys! we are with you 100%!

The fact they used synthetic blur means most probably this feature is nowhere as good they promise but they scored some marketing points.Who cares about truth, truth is what they say it is.

I remeber they guy in the demo told they 'found' this 'blurry' photo of their friend.This is simplyl a lie, the photo was never blurred it was made to be blurred thats huge difference.The cheated and lied to deliver good marketing effect, because there is no way they couldnt not take a real blur photo.But real photo would most probably not impress audience so here you are.

Why Adobe Why ? Was it too hard for you go go out and take a photograph at a slow shutter speed........this is not "research" you were demonstrating the possible future of Photoshop in front of few hundred people......

It is pretty hard not to be a little suspicious of the technology when they tell you we faked some of the results. Try and imagine me posting some of my Canon A620 photos here and then later telling everyone that 'some' were taken with a Leica M9.

I'm not particularly impressed by the "real" images that they used, either. Look at the deconvolution kernels, there's a "dwell", a time where the camera was steady enough to record a sharp image for part of the exposure time, so the movement adds a "ghost" to that, but there's still a sharp component.

Having run hundreds of images through similar algorithms (generally, I'm more interested in the analysis of the motion or of the point spread due to optical flaws, the actual deconvolution generally turns out to be a mess) I can tell you what rarities the images Adobe "cherry picked" for their demo are. If even those 1 in 100 flukes weren't dramatic enough for their demo, necessitating the totally faked image, that's a pretty good assessment of the general uselessness of this sort of thing.

And that's the "KEY point" you can "takeaway".

The KEY point not to forget is that the most impressive examples - the first two images - were restored after actual camera shake.

http://blogs.adobe.com/photoshopdotcom/files/2011/10/Plaza.png

Everything else seems tangential to the takeaway.

First Olympus, now Adobe. Everything's a blur.

I'd be impressed if adobe could manage to write a data base that didn't crash all day long... PS is a very buggy, crash prone app... in fact the only software I use that crashes several times a day... $.02

Curious how they synthetically blur an image that looks like coming from the camera. Could be a nice feature too! I hope to see it work in both way in the final release.

Wow, what a tempest in a teapot. If you watch the demo, the image in question is shown mostly for comic effect after the technology is show in detail on two larger images that are truly blurred by camera motion. Some marketing person helping to put the presentation together decided to add a little humor and thus the "synthetic" blur was born. If the algorithm can extract a motion formula to remove blur, it makes sense that the motion formula could be applied to a sharp image in a reverse of the process. Frankly, although it wasn't mentioned in the presentation, such a synthetic blur could be a useful tool. Motion blur isn't organic or realistic.

Adobe's technology works in two directions instead of one. You'd think this was some big coup on the part of pixel peeping web geeks, but it's just a very minor bit of unexplained showmanship on the part of Adobe marketing. Grow up internet, and shame on DPReview for jumping on the bandwagon.

So . . . Adobe has included and solved for the introduction of temporal distortion from rolling shutter effects? Because of this, the motion “profile” is not always static across the entire frame.

Good luck on that.

This to be a completely valid argument since there are no blurry photos online. Also, taking a blurry photo of Kevin just to maintain integrity of the demonstration seems like overkill.