How to Sharpen a Blurry Photo on iPhone (and What AI Can't Recover)

TL;DR

Enhance upscales a photo 2× or 4× using a Real-ESRGAN model (quality) or a lighter, faster OmniSR model, adding plausible detail on-device. It helps soft, small and compressed photos. It cannot recover detail that was never captured, so heavy motion blur stays a problem.

The problem

The photo is soft: a missed focus, a compressed download, a screenshot of a screenshot. It was a moment you can’t repeat, so you can’t retake it. Standard sharpening only makes the blur crunchy and exaggerates noise, and online “AI enhancers” want an upload.

What Enhance does

PhotoRepair’s Enhance tool runs a super-resolution model on your photo, entirely on the phone, at 2× or 4×. It re-draws edges and texture rather than just boosting contrast, so a soft picture comes back crisper and bigger. You can pick between two engines:

  • Quality: Real-ESRGAN, designed for real-world degradation (noise, compression, blur).
  • Fast: OmniSR, lighter and quicker.

Large images are processed in tiles and blended, and the result is limited to a sensible maximum size (long side 4096 px by default) to keep memory in check.

Steps

  1. Open Enhance and pick the photo.
  2. Choose 2× or 4×, and the quality or fast mode.
  3. Run it. A progress indicator shows tile progress.
  4. Use the compare slider to inspect faces and text.
  5. Save.

What it fixes and what it doesn’t

Works well on: small or low-resolution images, JPEG compression, mild softness, old scans, screenshots of photos.

Doesn’t fix: strong motion blur, severe out-of-focus shots, or very dark noisy images. If the detail was never recorded, the model can only guess.

Be realistic about the result

  • Added detail is plausible, not real. Faces and text can look slightly smoothed or “painted”.
  • Check names and numbers in any text that was enlarged.
  • Don’t over-do it. A 2× is often more natural than a 4×.
  • For faces, try Restore instead.

Free vs. Pro

Enhance counts as one of your 3 free AI edits a day. See Free vs. Pro.

FAQ

Does Enhance fix motion blur? It improves soft and low-resolution images. Heavy motion blur or missed focus can’t be fully recovered, because the detail isn’t there.

What are the two modes? A higher-quality upscaler (Real-ESRGAN) and a lighter, faster one (OmniSR). Both can enlarge 2× or 4×.

Is it free? Enhance is an AI edit: 3 finished edits per day free, unlimited with Pro.

Does it upload the photo? No. Both models run on the device.

The app PhotoRepair →