Today’s video talks about the much-beloved “enhance button.” TVtropes has a great summary and explanation:
A staple of any crime drama, the “Enhance” button on the computer is able to turn a tiny, blurred, grainy image in a photo or video into a clear, unmistakable piece of evidence. This process is virtually instantaneous unless added dramatic tension is required (in which case extra Techno Babble or more Applied Phlebotinum may be needed). May require someone to stand next to the computer intoning “Enhance…. enhance…” for full effect.
Now there are real techniques that vaguely fit under the category of “image enhancement” that can enable one to see details in a picture that’s blurry, grainy, dark, overexposed, and so on, but this use of “image enhancement” ignores the fact that the big blocky pixels you get when you zoom in too close on a picture are the only information that the picture actually contains, and attempting to extract more detail than this is fundamentally impossible. No matter what you do or how you do it, you’re merely guessing, if not making stuff up outright.
The following video is a montage of various “enhance” sequences from movies and television. Let’s enhance…
They sure love reflections, don’t they?
Where else have you seen the “enhance” button? What did you think of the video?
<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="40491 ">2 Comments
Thanks, will have to check that movie out
Nice montage. I guess the earliest "enhancement" that I can recall was not with computers but with film enlargement in the 1966 film Blow Up. The entire film was built around the concept of blowing up a photograph to reveal a crime that had occurred in the background of a photographer's photo shoot. It's a great film that you should check out if you have never seen it.
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