forensics image enhancement

[photosteve]

I know this is a long shot but does anyone access to any plug-ins for adobe. Have a court case and trying to extract words from a cell phone picture in the background. There night shots, so not very clear, I have tried all the tricks I know.

PhotoSteve

[Tom]

It doesn't work in real life like it does on CSI. I don't think there is a plugin that you can use to read a license plate from 100 feet away in the reflection of someone's glasses from a 1MP ATM camera.

[kenw]

ditto what Thomas said: if it were as simple as a plug-in, those guys in the lab would be out of work....it will take lots of time, patience and likely liberal use of the undo key.....

[MHampton]

I read somewhere once (even saw a new story on it) that the security guys at Target (yes, the big-box store Target) were the go-to guys for this type of stuff. Apparently they have spent big bucks on their security and have the top of the line imaging. Apparently real-life CSI departments even use them.

[sniperkittie]

You may want to do a google search on "forensic image enhancement" without the quotes of course.

[ggeen]

Just a quick note. Once you alter the photograph, it is no longer best evidence. You will now need to defend the method you used to extract the information so be sure to take explicite notes. Keep a forensically sounds copy of the image. NEVER, EVER work on the original copy. Make sure you create an MD5 hash of the original and all your work.

Once you create the extracted image, go through you notes and do it again. The process must be repeatable to be forensically sound.

You can do this. It just takes a lot of time and effort.

Mr. G D Geen, GCFA

Edit:

Just thought of someting. If you editing tool, like photoshop, allows you to record your changes and save that information to a file, that is optimum.