Screenshots fail in three different ways
A capture can be blurred by motion during a camera photograph of a screen, softened by resampling, or enlarged from too few pixels. Only the first two leave an edge profile a reconstruction pass can work with. A block grid means the missing samples were never recorded, so this tool names that failure and does not start a reconstruction unless you override it.
That diagnosis matters more than a strong sharpening slider. Letter strokes produce hard halos quickly; one measured pass is easier to judge against the original than a stack of manual effects.
What the rail decides before running
| Movement | A directional smear with an angle and extent. This is the strongest case for the pass. |
|---|---|
| Defocus | Softness spread in all directions. The pass can restore edge contrast, but cannot recreate missing letter shapes. |
| Block grid | Regular scaling or compression blocks. These are reported and Auto reconstructs nothing. |
| Already sharp | No useful smear was measured, so running would mostly add ringing. |
Limits that matter for text
- A sharpened character can be the wrong character. Confirm account numbers, addresses and dates against another source.
- This does not perform OCR and does not turn the screenshot into editable text.
- A screenshot enlarged from a thumbnail has lost samples; no local pass can infer them reliably.
Related instruments
- Deblur textWhen the question is whether four characters can be read.
- Unblur an imageDiagnose the blur, then reconstruct it, with the kernel on a dial.
- How it worksWhich engine ran, how each verdict is reached, and the model licence chain.
- What can be reconstructedLearned priors, the GoPro corpus, and reading a result sceptically.
