Fix Blurry Phone Photos

Night mode is not the same as shake

Computational night modes blend frames. The result can be clean and strangely smooth, with edges that were never sharp because the blend preferred a quiet pixel. Unblur can pull a little of that back. It can also add a crunch that looks like detail and is not. The slider against the phone’s own file is the test, and you should keep the phone’s file.

Shake is a streak. If the streak is long, no mode on this tool will reconstruct the moment. If the streak is a slight smear on lights and the subject is almost there, unblur is worth one credit. Denoise comes second, because night photos are noisy and a sharpener will outline the noise if you skip the order.

HEIC is the iPhone’s default. This server does not decode HEIC. Export a JPEG from Photos, the highest quality you can, and upload that. A re-export at low quality adds the blocks we then have to fight. The HEIC page is the longer version of that limit.

What you can do before you create an account

Three guest repairs: unblur, denoise, 2×. Free pages show ads, no watermark on the preview, no card. That is enough to know whether this particular phone frame survives. The download is capped at 3,200 px until Pro or Studio. Many phone originals are already larger than that, which is another reason to keep them.

Face restore is the paid step when a portrait’s features collapsed. It is the wrong step for a landscape that is merely dim. 4× is the paid step when you measured the paper and 2× is short.

The phone already has the original in its camera roll. Our copy is deleted after 24 hours. Do not treat the tool as a backup.

The camera roll is the original, and it is probably larger

A blurry phone photo is often a frame the camera already kept at full size, plus a smaller copy a chat app made. Restore the full-size original if you still have it. Upscaling the chat copy spends a credit to guess what the camera roll still stores. If the only copy is the small one, then you are in the right place, and you should say so when you look at the slider: the detail you see was not in that file.

HEIC is the format many phones use, and this server does not decode it. Export JPEG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF from the camera roll first. A conversion that also shrinks the long edge has already thrown samples away. Turn that off. Night mode and portrait mode add their own blur and their own sharpening. If the portrait mode cut a hard halo around the hair, unblur will not negotiate with the mask. Denoise is for the speckle in the shadows. 2× is for a crop that was never many pixels to begin with.

Three guest repairs cover those free modes. No card, no watermark on the preview. The download cap at 3,200 px matters less when the phone original is already larger than that and you kept it. Paid plans are for the case where the only surviving file is small and you need the full upscale. They cancel anytime and are not refunded. Failed jobs return the credit. Everything we held is deleted after 24 hours, which is another reason not to treat the tool as a backup of the camera roll.

A last look in the camera roll

Scroll the camera roll before you upload the picture a chat app made. The phone often still has the large frame. Restoring the small copy is a guess at a file you already own. If the large frame is the soft one, then unblur is honest. Export it as JPEG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF at the original long edge. HEIC stays on the phone until you do that export. We will not decode it, on the free plan or on Studio.

What to keep beside the slider

Portrait mode and night mode are already opinions. A hard halo around hair is a mask, and unblur will not negotiate with it. Speckle in the shadows is denoise. A crop that was forty pixels tall is 2×, then a likeness check, not a demand for 8K. The camera roll is the archive. Our copy lasts 24 hours and is not a backup. Export JPEG, PNG, WebP, or AVIF at the original size. Three guest repairs are enough to know whether this particular frame survives. Many phone originals are already larger than the free download cap, which is a reason to keep them and a reason not to replace them with our preview.