Image sharpener
OpenPixels is a free photo enhancer that runs in your browser. It sharpens a photo that is slightly soft on your own device, and the photo is never uploaded.
Free, no account, no watermark, and no limit on how many photos you process.
A photo sharpener for a picture that is slightly soft.
Start with the defaults
A slightly soft photo is one where the focus was a little off and nothing has a crisp edge. With the settings the app starts on, the photo comes back twice the size and sharper.
Sharpen an image at its own size
To sharpen an image without changing its size, choose Same size, just cleaner, open More options and move Extra sharpening to the right.
If it 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.
It says how much sharper the result is.
Under the result is a panel headed What changed. One of its lines says how much sharper the result is, for example “5.9x sharper”. Open The numbers for the Sharpness figure behind that line.
Sharpness is the variance of the Laplacian, a standard focus measure. When a photo has been enlarged, the comparison is not with your small original. It is with the same photo enlarged to the same size by a plain resampler, so the figure means sharper than simply making it bigger.
Below 1.15× the panel says About as sharp instead of quoting a ratio. How OpenPixels checks its own work explains each measurement.
There is no server to pay for.
Tools that charge for this upload your photo and pay for the GPU that handles it. That server bill is what a subscription covers.
OpenPixels has no such bill. The AI models run inside your browser through WebAssembly and WebGPU, on your own processor, so there is nothing to charge you for. The first run downloads the model it needs and shows its progress; after that it works with no network connection.
Sharpen a picture in five steps, no sign-up.
- Open the app and press Choose a photo, or drop the photo anywhere on the page.
- Under Size, choose Same size, just cleaner.
- Open More options and move Extra sharpening to the right.
- Press Enhance, then drag the slider across the picture to compare Original with Result.
- Press Save the photo.
To try another setting, change it and press Apply changes. How to fix a blurry photo in your browser covers which setting fits a pixelated, compressed, grainy or slightly soft photo.
What it will not do.
It is for a photo that is slightly soft. It cannot invent detail that was never captured, and nothing can, so it does not promise to rescue a photo that is badly out of focus or smeared by movement.
The panel is honest about a small change too: when the result is less than 1.15× sharper, it says About as sharp.
Before you open it.
Is this image sharpener free?
Yes, entirely. There is no paid tier, no account, no trial, no watermark, no credits and no limit on how many photos you process. Your photo is processed by your own device, so there is no per-photo cost to pass on.
Is my photo uploaded to a server?
No. Your photo is processed inside your browser tab and never leaves your device. There is no server to upload it to.
How do I sharpen an image without changing its size?
Under Size, choose Same size, just cleaner, then open More options and move Extra sharpening to the right. Press Enhance and the photo comes back at its own size.
Can it sharpen a photo that is out of focus?
It can improve a photo that is slightly soft, where the focus was a little off and nothing has a crisp edge. It cannot invent detail that was never captured.
How do I know how much sharper the result is?
After a run, a panel headed What changed says how much sharper the result is, for example 5.9x sharper. Below 1.15× it says About as sharp instead of quoting a ratio.
Which image formats can I use?
Any still image your browser can decode, including JPEG, PNG and WebP. The result is saved as a new file and your original is left as it was.
Do I need an account?
No. Every feature works with no account and no sign-in.
Open the picture sharpener and drop in a photo.
The same app also enlarges a photo up to 8×, clears noise and JPEG artefacts, rebuilds faces that have gone soft, colourises a black-and-white photograph and cuts out the background, all on your own device. See what else it does.
Open OpenPixels →