Numerous recent approaches attempt to remove image blur due to camera shake, either with one or multiple input images, by explicitly solving an inverse and inherently ill-posed deconvolution problem. If the photographer takes a burst of images, a modality available in virtually all modern digital cameras, we show that it is possible to combine them to get a clean sharp version. This is done without explicitly solving any blur estimation and subsequent inverse problem. The proposed algorithm is strikingly simple: it performs a weighted average in the Fourier domain, with weights depending on the Fourier spectrum magnitude. The method can be seen as a generalization of the align and average procedure, with a weighted average, motivated by hand-shake physiology and theoretically supported, taking place in the Fourier domain. The method’s rationale is that camera shake has a random nature, and therefore, each image in the burst is generally blurred differently. Experiments with real camera data, and extensive comparisons, show that the proposed Fourier burst accumulation algorithm achieves state-of-the-art results an order of magnitude faster, with simplicity for on-board implementation on camera phones. Finally, we also present experiments in real high dynamic range (HDR) scenes, showing how the method can be straightforwardly extended to HDR photography.
@cite_19: Motion blur is a smearing of the image due to a long aperture time. We show that when two motion-blurred images are available, having different blur directions, image restoration can be improved substantially. In particular, the direction of the motion blur and the PSF (Point Spread Function) of the blur can be computed robustly.
@cite_33: Taking satisfactory photos under dim lighting conditions using a hand-held camera is challenging. If the camera is set to a long exposure time, the image is blurred due to camera shake. On the other hand, the image is dark and noisy if it is taken with a short exposure time but with a high camera gain. By combining information extracted from both blurred and noisy images, however, we show in this paper how to produce a high quality image that cannot be obtained by simply denoising the noisy image, or deblurring the blurred image alone. Our approach is image deblurring with the help of the noisy image. First, both images are used to estimate an accurate blur kernel, which otherwise is difficult to obtain from a single blurred image. Second, and again using both images, a residual deconvolution is proposed to significantly reduce ringing artifacts inherent to image deconvolution. Third, the remaining ringing artifacts in smooth image regions are further suppressed by a gain-controlled deconvolution process. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach using a number of indoor and outdoor images taken by off-the-shelf hand-held cameras in poor lighting environments.
Two or more input images can improve the estimation of both the underlying image and the blurring kernels. Rav-Acha and Peleg @cite_19 claimed that if the direction of the blurs are different. @cite_33 the authors proposed to capture two photographs: one having a short exposure time, noisy but sharp, and one with a long exposure, blurred but with low noise. The two acquisitions are complementary, and the sharp one is used to estimate the motion kernel of the blurred one.