"Blurry" covers several different problems, and the fix depends on which one you have. Look at the photo first.
- It is too small. An old phone picture, a thumbnail, something saved from a chat. It looks fine at its own size and turns soft or pixelated when you make it bigger.
- It has been compressed. After a few trips through a messaging app, edges go blocky and smeared.
- It is grainy. Poor light leaves speckle all over the picture.
- It is slightly soft. The focus was a little off and nothing has a crisp edge.
All four can be improved in a browser tab, on your own device. This guide uses OpenPixels, which is free and does not upload the photo.
The short answer
Open OpenPixels, choose your photo and press Enhance. With the settings it starts on, the photo comes back twice the size and sharper. Press Save the photo to keep it. There is no account to create.
Step by step
- Open openpixels.app and press Choose a photo, or drop the photo anywhere on the page. JPEG, PNG and WebP files all work.
- Under Size, choose how much larger to make it: 2×, 4× or 8×. If the size is already right, choose Same size, just cleaner.
- Leave What is it on Photograph and Noise and grain on Reduce. These are the defaults.
- Press Enhance. The first run downloads the model it needs and shows its progress.
- Drag the slider across the picture to compare Original with Result.
- Press Save the photo. You get a PNG named after your file with the size added, such as
holiday-2x.png.
To try another setting, change it and press Apply changes. Another photo starts again with a different picture.
Which setting for which problem
Fix a pixelated image
A pixelated image is usually a small image shown too large. Give the app the small file and enlarge it with 2× or 4×. This is where the change is easiest to see: lettering and hard edges come back as clean lines.
Fix a photo that has been compressed
Use the same settings. Reduce, the default under Noise and grain, also clears up the blocky edges left by heavy compression.
Clean up a grainy photo
Choose Same size, just cleaner and keep Noise and grain on Reduce. The speckle goes and the edges stay. The image denoiser page describes the three Noise and grain settings.
Sharpen an image that is slightly out of focus
Start with the defaults. If the result is still soft, change What is it to Photograph, best quality and press Apply changes. That model is a larger download and slower, and the result is crisper.
If you only want to sharpen an image without changing its size, choose Same size, just cleaner, open More options and move Extra sharpening to the right. The image sharpener page covers this, and what it will not do.
Reading the result
Under the picture is a panel headed What changed. It gives a few plain lines: how much sharper the result is ("5.9x sharper"), how the noise changed ("Noise 2.1 → 1.6") and the new size against the old one ("576 × 384, from 288 × 192").
You may also see Faithful to the original. To decide that, the app shrinks its result back to the size you started with and checks that it still matches your photo. Open The numbers for the figures behind these lines: Sharpness, Noise, PSNR and SSIM. There is a longer explanation in how OpenPixels checks its own work.
How to check that nothing is uploaded
Open your browser's developer tools (F12 on most keyboards), switch to the Network tab and press Enhance.
On the first run you will see the model, and the engine that runs it, being downloaded from openpixels.app. After that, pressing Enhance sends no requests at all. The site does count page views, so a small request appears when a screen opens. It contains the screen size, the language and the name of the page. The photo is in none of them. The privacy policy has the details.
Using it with no connection
Run one photo while you are online, so the browser can keep the app and the model. After that you can switch off Wi-Fi, reload the page and carry on working. Each model is downloaded the first time you use a setting that needs it. If you want Photograph, best quality on a flight, run it once before you leave.
FAQ
Can I fix a blurry photo for free?
Yes. OpenPixels is free and needs no account. There is no watermark on the result.
Is my photo uploaded?
No. It is processed inside your browser tab and saved straight back to your device. The Network tab of your browser's developer tools will confirm it.
How do I depixelate an image?
Open the small original and enlarge it with 2× or 4×. The larger picture has clean edges where the squares used to show.
How much bigger can I make a photo?
Up to 8×. You can also keep the size and only clean the picture up.
Does it work offline?
Yes, once you have run one photo with a connection. After that the same settings work with the network switched off.
What kind of file do I get back?
A PNG, saved as a new file. Your original is left as it was.