That concert pic I snapped last month came out like a blurry mess

I was at the Saint Motel show at the House of Blues in Cleveland last month. I was in the pit, right up front, and thought I got the perfect shot of the lead singer jumping off the monitor. Nope. When I checked my phone later, it looked like a ghost in a dark tunnel. I tried fixing it in Lightroom on my laptop, but the focus was just too far gone. My shutter speed was probably too slow for how dark it was in there. Has anyone here actually saved a super blurry concert photo with those AI sharpen tools, or is it all hype?

2 comments

2 Comments

zara_miller15d ago

Have you actually tried the AI sharpen tools yourself, or are you just going off what people say online? I've used Topaz Photo AI on a few of my own blurry concert shots and it honestly saved them more than I expected. It's not magic, you can't fix a completely motion-blurred face, but it does a decent job pulling detail out of low light noise and slight softness. The key is you gotta give it a clean JPEG or RAW, not something you already ran through Lightroom adjustments. Also, you have to play with the settings, don't just hit auto and expect a miracle. I've got a shot from a dark punk show where the bassist was moving fast, and the AI made it look crisp enough to print small. It's not hype if you know what you're doing with it.

the_kim14d ago

Wait, did you actually use Topaz on a RAW file or a compressed JPEG? I used to be one of those people who thought AI sharpen was just marketing fluff, I blew it off after one bad try with a sunset photo where the "magic" gave me weird artifacts on tree branches. But you might have just changed my mind. I never considered that running it through Lightroom first could mess with the data the AI needs. The part about the clean JPEG or RAW makes a lot of sense now. I might need to dig up that Saint Motel disaster and give it another shot before I delete it for good.