How to Turn that Blurry Photo into a Work of Art

Sometimes it seems to take shot after shot of a particular subject to get that one perfect picture. When your subject is a child or a pet it may not be possible to use a tripod to steady the camera. While trying to get a picture of a cats beautiful blue eyes shot after shot was taken to no avail. But still while looking through the photos you may find that some are endearing, even close to perfect, except for the blurriness. Why not take that out of focus image and turn it into art. Here I will show you how to do just that using the Microsoft Picture It! software with your computer.

Saving the Images
First you will need to save the pictures to your computer. After saving the images open Microsoft Picture It and click on Get Pictures to load the images you wish to use. Now look through the images and pick one that you feel captures the feel or mood of the subject you were hoping for. Here I have chosen a photo of a kitten. Even with the blurry image the innocence of the kitten shows through.

Altering your image
With the image you wish to alter open in Picture It! click on Special Effects and then on Illusions. These buttons are located on the left of your screen. Above the illusion tiles is the word All, click on the down arrow to the right of this word and you will find another drop down box with many illusion categories listed. You will find multiple illusions to pick from in many categories such as arts and crafts, chalk, crayon, paint, pencil, etc. For the purpose of this experiment I took the time to click through each illusion tile to see how the image would change. Some were awful with the kitten completely disappearing, others I found to be pleasing. Many brought to mind images created during the pop culture era. Spend some time seeing how the image changes with each tile (illusion) that you click on. Once you have found an illusion that pleases you click on the word Done at the bottom left of the screen. Now click on the words Save & Send to the left of the image. You will choose how you will save the image by what you intend to do with it. I chose to click on Save for the web to save the image in jpeg format. Next you will choose what size you want your picture to be, thumbnail, quarter screen or half screen, I chose thumbnail. Click on Next to choose modem speed and quality setting. You will again click on the word Next and then To Save. On the next screen, still to left of your monitor screen, you will choose where to save your image. Look at No. 3, Type a Name. Here be sure to give your image a new name so that you will not be saving over the existing blurry image. You can now go back to the same image and apply a new illusion or choose another image to alter. There are even other ways of altering the image even further built in to the Microsoft Picture It! software. Be creative and have fun with the different processes.

Printing
Experiment printing your image on different types of paper. Try printing on card stock, linen paper , homemade paper or water color paper. The paper type or quality may enhance or further alter the image you have created. Once printing you are ready to frame in a pleasing manner and display your masterpiece for all to see.

*See the illusion images I have included here as samples of what can be done with Microsoft Picture It to enhance your blurry images.*