Photo Enhancement

[oldrover]

Are there any photo boffins here who could tell me whether it's realistic to do anything about making this clearer?

from here http://www.milamba.com/australia/inhabit/animals/anim22.htm

Thanks for reading

 

[Mythopoeika]

I would say there's not a lot that can be done. You'd need a much larger/higher res picture in at least 16 bit colour before you could enhance it digitally. It being in black and white is problematic.

 

[Spookdaddy]

I would say there's not a lot that can be done. You'd need a much larger/higher res picture in at least 16 bit colour before you could enhance it digitally. It being in black and white is problematic.

Yup.

Using the most basic of tools - sharpening helps a little, as does reducing the brightness, and maybe a tad up on the contrast; this helps a bit with the back end of the animal - but the head area is, I'm afraid, lost to enhancement.

What I would say is that playing around with an image even though the overall result is a mess, can actually help you pick out details which are not so obvious in the original.

I've not explained that very well - what I mean is, for example, that aggressively increasing contrast will create an image which is unusable, but in the process it can also pick up areas of interest in that image which were not obvious in the original. It's always worth having a muck about.

 

[oldrover]

Thanks both. Fairly encouraged, the back end is the only part that matters really.

 

[Bigphoot2]

Just had a quick mess around with the image. I lightened it so it shows more stripes in the coat and reversed an image - I often find more detail can be seen in a negative image. Don't know why, maybe it's just me.

 

[oldrover]

Thanks Bigphoot

 

[EnolaGaia]

... I often find more detail can be seen in a negative image. Don't know why, maybe it's just me.

It's not just you ... I learned a long time ago certain details can 'pop out' better if a monochromatic image is reversed / made 'negative'. Like you, I don't know why this gambit works ...

 

[Spookdaddy]

It's not just you ... I learned a long time ago certain details can 'pop out' better if a monochromatic image is reversed / made 'negative'. Like you, I don't know why this gambit works ...

I think this is a really interesting mechanism, and one which I've often noted, both as a bit of a sketcher and in messing around with photographic images.

I suspect that, in very simple terms, what is happening is that when we look at an image (in a similar way as to when we look at a word) we do not 'read' the whole image, but absorb a certain amount of information and then mentally extrapolate the rest from that information. Doing something like looking at an image in its negative form removes the familiar elements upon which we base those assumptions from that image and thereby throws it's individual facets into complete focus.

Or something like that.

Anyway, it seems to work.

In the sense of drawing, I've found that if, for example, you sketch a building's roof not from the roof up, but the sky down, (erm, does that make sense?) you pick up entirely new and different details.

 

[rynner2]

I think this is a really interesting mechanism, and one which I've often noted, both as a bit of a sketcher and in messing around with photographic images.

It could be related to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure–ground_(perception)