Enhancing pictures

[Center]

I laugh when I see on CSI and The Agency television programs where they take a 20 pixel per inch video camera tape and blow up a cartag on a car a block away so they can read it. Seemed like "artistic license".
I have tried the many "enlargers" offered in Irfanview, and edge sharpening, etc. and can't bring back anything not in the picture.
But lo and behold I was watching the News the other night and they had the Okla. City police department on, saying they had bought the program and it was amazing what they could do--Just like on CSI and the Agency.
How in the world can this be?

 

[BDNFLNC]

They know how to use it.

 

[jimoblak]

A lot of this TV stuff is #$^% but there are ways to pull license plate numbers from minuscule images. One way is to blend video frames. By blending a series of frames, one can interpolate missing pixel data.

For every whiz-bang trick you see on these TV shows, you see another shamefully bad photo of a guy holding up a bank on the local news. The video-still is no better than an 8mm frame of a bigfoot-sighting film. The anchor reports that 'If anyone recognizes this man, please call the police.' I've seen some crooks signal with their favorite finger to surveillance cameras because they know how bad they are.