# CSI:- Can they really recover that amount of detail from a photo? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 31, 2003, 11:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/csi-can-they-really-recover-that-amount-of-detail-from-a-photo/165417 "2003-03-31T11:21:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/csi-can-they-really-recover-that-amount-of-detail-from-a-photo/165417/21 "2003-04-01T13:05:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Diceman \* > I remember an episode where Mac had some guy do the “enhance the picture beyond the pixels” BS. They called it “bitmapping” and gave some technobabble involving the X, Y, and Z directions in the picture. Ooooh, bitmapping. In later episodes, did they do jpegging, giffing and tiffing? The whole thing is complete Hollywood hogwash. Worst example I saw was an episode of _Earth: Final Conflict_ in which they zoom in on a picture of a kidnap victim and get a perfectly recognizable reflection of the kidnapper… off the victim’s eyeball. Okaaaay… this show is set in the near future, so many cameras are super-duper high tech, and the victim was an alien, so maybe his eyeballs are particularly reflective… …or it could just be complete deus ex bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/csi-can-they-really-recover-that-amount-of-detail-from-a-photo/165417/22 "2003-04-01T13:25:25Z")
> [@](#): > > The picture super-enhancement schtick goes at least as far back as MacGyver The first place I saw it was in **Bladerunner** , where Harrison Ford’s character uses the voice-activated computer to whiz around and zoom in on the replicant’s pictures. That was in 1982, and I think that pre-dates MacGuyner. In **Bladerunner** I could kinda accept it. This is supposed to be taking place in the ill-defined future, so I could accept that they had some super-resolving photo format, maybe not even using any normal sort of emulsion or pixels, but maybe something exotic. but I try not to think about it too hard, lest the cold light of logic wither the fragile bloom of artsy speculation. ---
**Author:** ![SmackFu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/53a042/32.png) [@SmackFu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SmackFu)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/csi-can-they-really-recover-that-amount-of-detail-from-a-photo/165417/23 "2003-04-01T15:58:32Z")
Two points: 1. You can do amazing things with sharpening if you’re just looking for specific detail. Photoshop’s Unsharp Mask is much better than the old-school sharpening algorithms. 2. You can do amazing things with video that you can’t do with still photos. You have many images from the same sensor over time and they can be merged into a single higher quality image. You can eliminate noise, camera shake, etc. But even so, you can’t get to CSI-like levels. ---
**Author:** ![Baldwin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baldwin/32/7264_2.png) [@Baldwin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baldwin)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2003, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/csi-can-they-really-recover-that-amount-of-detail-from-a-photo/165417/24 "2003-04-01T17:12:04Z")
I can’t help thinking of a scene in the Mel Brooks movie _High Anxiety_, in which a character is trying to make out a small detail (a man’s face) in a picture of a large hotel lobby. Instead of enlarging just that portion, he keeps enlarging the entire picture until he has a billboard-sized photo. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/csi-can-they-really-recover-that-amount-of-detail-from-a-photo/165417.md?page=1)