Fix Blurry Text Without Changing What It Said

A photograph of words is a hostile input

Signs, receipts, whiteboards, and screenshots all ask the model to do something it was not primarily trained to refuse: invent a glyph that looks likely. On a soft shop sign the likely glyph is often the right one, and sometimes it is a neighbor. The only check is reading. If you cannot read the before and the after as the same sentence, keep the soft file or reshoot. Do not publish a sharper sentence you did not verify.

Screenshots are worse than signs because the letters were already a pixel grid. Upscaling that grid with a photo model turns stems into branches. PNG avoids a second generation of JPEG blocks. If the screenshot is evidence, re-export the screen or retype the words. If a product photo is trapped inside the capture, crop to the product and leave the chrome. The screenshot page is the companion when the whole frame is a UI.

Small type on a product label is the product page’s problem and this page’s warning. A care label at 40 px tall will not become a reliable care label at 160 px. 4× spends two credits on Pro to make a more confident wrong letter. The honest move is a macro photograph. This tool will still run if you insist, and the slider is where you catch the change.

When unblur is worth one credit

A large sign, a chapter title, or a poster in a room, photographed a little soft, can come back readable. Unblur is one credit on the free tool. Look at the counters of the letters: the hole in an e, the opening of a c, the crossbar of an e. If those fill in or open wrongly, stop. Sharpening afterward outlines the error. There is no amount slider to take the repair halfway back.

Motion blur on a sign is a streak through the words. A short streak may close. A long one splits each letter into a comb, and unblur often adds a second comb. That is the motion page. Focus blur with no direction is this page or the out-of-focus page. Do not describe a JPEG block as blur. Blocks want the artifact page, and sharpening them draws the grid.

Documents and forms are their own page because a page of body text is a different risk from a single sign. A contract photographed on a desk should be re-scanned, not enlarged. We do not OCR and we do not promise a searchable PDF. If you only need the page cleaner for your own notes, denoise the shadow and do not upscale the paragraphs.

Delivery, rights, and the clock

The free download of 3,200 px is often the right size for a document you are dropping into a slide. It is the wrong size for a poster of the same capture, and a poster of invented letters is worse than a soft photograph. Pro and Studio keep the full file and can batch a set of captures after one of them has been read letter by letter.

Do not upload someone else’s private screen on the theory that we delete it tomorrow. Deletion is not permission. Commercial use of a file you have rights to is allowed on every plan. A receipt you are sharpening for your own records is fine. A forged clearer version of a document you do not own is not, and the model will not be your excuse.

Uploads and results are deleted after 24 hours. Download the frame you verified. A failed job returns the credit. A successful word you later notice is wrong does not. Free pages show ads. HEIC must be exported first. The API runs the same modes and will not read the text for you.

A worked frame

A shop sign in a travel photo is soft, the letters are an inch tall in the frame, and you think the name is two words you half remember. Read the soft file first and write down what you believe it says. Unblur once. Read it again, including the counters of e and a and any digit in the street number. If your note and the result disagree, keep the soft file and do not caption the photograph with the model’s spelling. A second case, a screenshot of a spreadsheet saved as JPEG, is not worth the credit. The mosquito noise around the stems will become new stems. Retype the three numbers you need. 4× on Pro would spend two credits to make a more confident wrong total. The free download’s 3200 px edge is irrelevant if the words are false. There is no OCR step that will warn you. The slider is the warning, and only if you actually read.