Software to automatically delete blurry images?

[bossturbo]

Like the title says, is there such a beast to find and delete (or move or flag or whatever) out of focus photos from my collection? Stand alone, or a plugin to graphics software is fine, just need something.

Thanks,
-brian
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-brian
SoCal Motorsports Photographer

 

[Jim Cockfield]

I don't see how that would be practical, especially for your kind of photos (motorsports photography).

You're probably going to have a lot of blur in images that may be keepers shooting motorsports (wheels on vehicles when using slower shutter speeds while panning, vehicles going at different speeds so that one may be sharp and another in the frame blurry, etc.).

I've got some taken on a local dirt track where part of a car may be sharp and another part of it blurry (just from track vibration, etc.), where I may still want to keep it.

I just don't see where software would be smart enough to make those types of distinctions yet.

If there is something like that out there, I'd like to see how well it worked. But, I've never heard of anything like that.

--
JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield

 

[Sean Nelson]

I'm not sure I'd want another person deciding which of my pictures to throw out, let alone software...

 

[bossturbo]

I don't see how that would be practical, especially for your kind of photos (motorsports photography).

You're probably going to have a lot of blur in images that may be keepers shooting motorsports (wheels on vehicles when using slower shutter speeds while panning, vehicles going at different speeds so that one may be sharp and another in the frame blurry, etc.).

I've got some taken on a local dirt track where part of a car may be sharp and another part of it blurry (just from track vibration, etc.), where I may still want to keep it.

I just don't see where software would be smart enough to make those types of distinctions yet.

If there is something like that out there, I'd like to see how well it worked. But, I've never heard of anything like that.

Yet, face recognition software is out there and that seems many times more difficult to me than just seeing if a photo is blurry.

I've got some good technical ideas of how to make it work (for me) anyway if I have to do it myself, but would rather just purchase something already on the market. Who knows, maybe it is much more difficult than I think it is; hence, why nobody has done it yet.

--
-brian
SoCal Motorsports Photographer

 

[Jim Cockfield]

Yes, software for recognizing faces is already there.

Some software even lets you search for photos with similar subjects, or even a crude sketch. Scroll down on this page and you'll see links to information about the new Find Dupe and Fuzzy search tools in digiKam (I use this free software for image management under Linux):

http://www.digikam.org/drupal/news?page=6

But, I don't see how software would be smart enough to know you wanted to be sharp in the image. The EXIF contains info on things like focus point used (and sometimes even focus distance), depending on the camera model. But, that type of software doesn't account for things like focus lock (where you may reframe for some reason); or when you may want parts of the image to be blurry deliberately.

--
JimC
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http://www.pbase.com/jcockfield

 

[bossturbo]

Yeah, it would be tough, but a fun project! Too bad I already have too many other projects on my plate like debugging my event software, which i haven't even had a chance to touch since february!

--
-brian
SoCal Motorsports Photographer

 

[bossturbo]

Any update on this? Still looking for software that can locate blurry photos where the entire photo is blurry.

Here is a page going WAY into detail about image sharpness and how to measure it:
http://www.imatest.com/docs/sharpness/

And a sneak peek at photoshop's not-yet-released unblur filter which is magnitudes more advanced that what I want:
http://edudemic.com/2011/10/adobe-photoshop-unblur/

There has GOT to be something out there already that can just find blurry photos in bulk. I would probably have to set a bunch of parameters to tell the program what I consider less than acceptable sharpness and it would flag all those that don't meet the requirements.

Thanks,
-brian

 

[skyglider]

bossturbo wrote:

Any update on this? Still looking for software that can locate blurry photos where the entire photo is blurry.

If you don't find the software you're looking for, an alternative is to use the Faststone Image Viewer.

Open the first image full screen and then press the right arrow key to sequence through the images in the folder, all in full screen for easier decisions. Press the "\" key to tag images that you want to delete (including sharp but junk ones) and just keep going. After all of the images in the folder have been viewed, delete all of the tagged images in one shot. Very fast to cull images this way.

For myself, I much prefer this method as I would be afraid to let software make decisions to delete my photos. Also, I often take multiple shots of a subject and need to delete the junk ones.

I must say that you are very brave to let "software" make image deletion decisions.

Sky

 

[Dan Marchant]

Yet, face recognition software is out there and that seems many times more difficult to me than just seeing if a photo is blurry.

An image either contains a face or it doesn't. Face recognition is difficult because people may be at an angle to the camera or have some parts of their face hidden, but it is still a case of there being a recognisable face or not.

Out of focus is not always out of focus. As the poster above mentioned, it may be due to blur from speed or the majority of the image may be out of focus due to the deliberate use of narrow depth of field. Software wouldn't e able to work out if the image was deliberately out of focus or not.

Also, any photographer who has so many images that are OOF that they need a piece of software to delete them all, actually doesn't need the software at all. What they need is to fix the problem they are having focusing. The camera either needs calibrating for back/forward focus problems or the tog is not using the correct focus modes for their intended target (or just isn't very good at keeping the focus points on their intended subject).

Lastly, depending on the software you use to catalogue your images, it is only a matter of seconds to delete duff images. When I download images to my computer I scan through them all quickly and tag any duffers with a "delete" tag. That will include OOF, under/over exposed and compositional disasters - basically anything obviously duff is tagged. After the first pass I just search by that tag and then delete them all in one go.

--
Dan
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I love my girlfriend, my dog and my canon 7d - even though none of them ever do what I tell them

I am learning photo graphee - see the results at http://www.danmarchant.com

 

[Rockwallaby]

I do motorsport, approx 100k shots per year and FastStone is my go to culling software. Plus I use it for all sorts of other stuff like batch renaming, contact sheets, slideshows. Great software.

 

[bossturbo]

I have used FastStone, but was not aware of this feature. Thanks for the head's up I'll give that a shot.

Perhaps since the auto delete blurry software would have to load each image and check it, it would end up being almost as fast for a human to do it anyway. Hmm.

--
-brian
SoCal Motorsports Photographer

 

[skyglider]

bossturbo wrote:

I have used FastStone, but was not aware of this feature. Thanks for the head's up I'll give that a shot.

Perhaps since the auto delete blurry software would have to load each image and check it, it would end up being almost as fast for a human to do it anyway. Hmm.

You'll have to enable tagging since FastStone comes with tagging off by default. To do this, click TAG > ALLOW FILE TAGGING. A tiny box will appear at the left of each image name. Press the "\" key to toggle tagging on (box turns red) or off.

To delete all of the tagged images, click TAG > SELECT TAGGED FILES ONLY. Then right click any tagged image, hold down the shift key and click DELETE to delete without storing in the recycle bin. FastStone supports shift/delete which is excellent.

Another consideration is that deleting junk images is usually the main reason for culling. For me, I think only 1 image out of 200-300 might be completely blurry, if that.

Cheers,
Sky