How to sharpen image to read license plate

[Guest]

I have a dashcam that records video at 1920x1080 quality. I want to be able to read the license plate of a car that passed me by tonight. When I play the video and freeze it, the plate is blurry. It was night but there was light from streetlights and my headlights. The quality I think is not bad... but I don't know. There are no discernable characters to me, but I've come across a few tutorials which make this seem possible.

My first question is how do I extract one frame at its highest quality? I can play the video and take a screencap while it is paused, but I don't think that gives me the best possible quality image to work with.

My second question is how do I enhance the image? I have access to Photoshop Elements on a Windows computer and a full version of Photoshop, I believe Photoshop 7, on an Apple computer. Would prefer to use the Elements one, but will do whatever is recommended.

Third, if I am unable to enhance the photo on my own, are there people out there who do this? For fun even? Someone I could send a snippet of the video to for then to work some magic on?

Thank you for your help.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

Good day!

You should be able to import the frames in Photoshop via

Import > Video Frames to Layers

But if your expectations are based on what one can sometimes see in (what I think is called) »procedural crime shows« you might be in for a disappointment, if the pertinent information was below the device resolution and/or is otherwise deteriorated it may simply not be able to be reconstructed.

Regards,

Pfaffenbichler

[Guest]

Thank you. I know it may not be possible, but I'd like to try. The tutorials that came up when I googled this make it seem possible. It just depends what information is hidden in the image and applying the right tools to extract it.

If I import the frames to layers, well it take every single frame from the video and make it a layer? The car is only visible for ten frames or so in the middle. Should I trim the video down first? And can Photoshop Elements do that? The video editing program I have can't trim a video without exporting it as a different file type and I think I'd lose quality there.

[c.pfaffenbichler]

One can limit the section of the video that is to be imported in Photoshop:

I had overlooked that you are talking about Photoshop 7 – I have to admit I do not know what the video related features were like then anymore and I have no installation of it available to test.

You could use the free 7-day-trial of the current version, though.

As for PSE I would recommend you ask on the appropriate Forum, I cannot help you with that.

http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshop_elements

[Nancy OShea]

You could download a 7 day trial of full-scale Photoshop CC and see if that gives you what you need.   But don't expect miracles. 

[Chuck Uebele · Accepted solution]

One of the better ways to do this, if you have a video clip is to average the frames, which I don't think you can do with either of the programs you have. What you basically do is extract the frames from the video, as you mentioned above, but then you take all those good frames and align them so the license plate is registered as close as possible. Best to crop the images to the plate. Then with a later version of PS, you can use statistics and get the median or mean of those frames. It's a process called, "Drizzle," and you can read about it here: http://www.stark-labs.com/craig/resources/Articles-&-Reviews/Drizzle_API.pdf