Re: Image Newbie Question

Musashi wrote:

I have a JPG of some books in a bookcase
(from a b&w picture taken in the 50's)
and I'd like to be able to recover the
names on the books.

I hope you have the original print. If you cannot read them on there with an eye glass then there isn't a lot of hope for the JPEG.

When I zoom in on the jpg, the letters are too blurred
to read.

Could someone point me to the correct image
processing algorithm to try and recover the
titles on the books in this jpg.

Would it be some sort of low pass filter.

Almost the opposite. The closest consumer software to doing what you want is an unsharp mask high pass filter. But it will amplify all the JPEG artefacts as well probably rendering it completely illegible.

The only remote chance you have of getting some resolution back is if the image has very good signal to noise and is already within a factor of 3 of being legible. Then maximum entropy deconvolution might help if you can set the problem up exactly right from JPEG coefficient space.

I am a software person, so once the
correct algorithm is suggested,
I can implement it.

Post the image and it may be possible to say whether there is anything that can be done with it. I hope you have original high resolution scan data rather than a JPEG - but even then you cannot expect miracles.

Deconvolving blurred images is a notoriously ill-posed problem. Even using published algorithms it will take you a very long time to get a working code that makes a passable job of it on real data.

Google "regularised deconvolution" and/or "maximum entropy"

Regards,
Martin Brown
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Image Newbie Question
    ... >> names on the books. ... > with an eye glass then there isn't a lot of hope for the JPEG. ... >> When I zoom in on the jpg, ... >> processing algorithm to try and recover the ...
    (sci.image.processing)
  • Re: Challenae question for mathematician
    ... problems relating to permutation groups. ... adjacent books. ... called "bubble sort" - it is a quadratic time algorithm, ... efficient as a sorting method - efficient sorting is O. ...
    (sci.math)
  • Re: Regularly populating the line - revised version
    ... As I posted, I did hit the books before posting this, but you do raise good ... former life I designed 3D graphics chips). ... this algorithm comes from a rather different domain having no ... > more curious habit of recording much if it in books. ...
    (sci.math.num-analysis)
  • Re: Image Newbie Question
    ... > names on the books. ... > When I zoom in on the jpg, ... thousands of times the original picture quality, ... original file, not using jpeg, you will have a much better chance. ...
    (sci.image.processing)
  • Re: srand() troubles
    ... > books are crap is a different topic.) ... of the lack of goals and direction for this forum and this language are ... > algorithm can be expressed in any Turing-complete language. ... getting those programs running on my implementation. ...
    (comp.lang.c)