13 jul 2023

AI Image Unblurrer: Fix Blurry Scans with One Tap

Image deblurring tools are great for rescuing blurry photos caused by shaky hands or fast movements, but they often overlook a major problem: blurry documents. A blurred scan isn’t just frustrating—it can lead to missed deadlines or rejected applications. That’s why the iScanner team has stepped up to fill this gap with our new Document Deblur feature—an AI image unblurrer designed to turn those messy scans into sharp, clear documents with just one tap.

A Powerful Addition to the AI Enhancer Toolbox: AI Image Unblurrer

Document deblur is yet another AI-powered feature that has become a valuable addition to iScanner’s AI Enhancer menu. For those who are yet unfamiliar with iScanner’s AI Enhancer, it’s a set of powerful AI algorithms of our own design that allow users to instantly: 

  1. Smooth out a scanned page by removing skews, warps, and minor creases. 
  2. Fix the geometry of a scanned page by correcting perspective distortions.
  3. Remove accidentally captured fingers from scans.

Now, in addition to that, users can also deblur images and sharpen out-of-focus documents. The great news is that the new feature allows users to fix not only the documents they’ve just scanned but also to upload and fix images from their gallery. 

How Image Unblurrer Works in iScanner

The image unblurrer feature is a deep learning algorithm that can cope with various types of focus and motion blur. This means the algorithm can tackle both the blur caused by shaky hands or scanning while on a bumpy bus ride and the blur in out-of-focus images. Basically, what it does is bring back the sharpness to blurry documents by removing rough and fuzzy edges and increasing the contrast between the text and the background. 

  • First, the algorithm identifies the pixels that differ significantly from their neighboring counterparts. 
  • Next, it enhances the contrast between them so that light pixels become even lighter and dark pixels become even darker. 
  • As a result, the contrast between the text and the background is increased, making the text appear much less blurry and more legible. 
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The secret of effective document deblur is to train the neural network to understand what perfectly focused documents look like while simultaneously teaching it to identify and rectify diverse forms of motion and focus-related visual disturbances. That’s a hell of a job given how diverse document layouts and visual artifacts can be. In essence, this is what we’ve managed to do with our algorithm. We’re constantly fine-tuning it to supercharge its performance, speed, and accuracy so that you guys can take the quality of your scans up a notch with just a single tap,” says Nik, a deep learning engineer at iScanner.  

How to Use AI Image Unblurrer for Scans

The flow depends on whether you need to deblur a document that you scanned with iScanner or a document from your gallery, but both ways are super straightforward. 

For Documents Scanned with the iScanner App

  1. First, open the document you want to deblur. 
  2. Next, tap Adjust. 
  3. Within the next menu, tap the AI Enhance button. 
  4. Now, tap Deblur. 
  5. Tap Save to save the unblurred document. You’re all done! 

For Uploaded Documents 

  1. First, open iScanner, tap the blue plus icon at the bottom of the screen, and choose Photos. 
  2. Next, find the document you want to deblur and tap on it. 
  3. Tap Save in the top right corner.
  4. Next, tap AI Enhance. 
  5. Within the next menu, tap Deblur. 

Whether you’re racing against the clock to complete an application, working with challenging scanning conditions, or struggling with unfocused text, our image unblurrer and other cutting-edge tools in the AI Enhancer kit can be your secret weapons. With just a few taps, transform your scanned documents into professional, high-quality outputs that rival those produced by top-of-the-line scanner machines.

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