Digital Home Thoughts: Asiva JPEG Deblocker Eliminates Pixel Blocks

"We should try to avoid using JPEG compressed files to perform enhancements, but create them only as an output file permutation for e-mail or WEB. However sometimes they are the only existing version to work with. The JPEG algorithm attempts to compress images in such a way that storage requirements are minimized while keeping the image perceptually undistorted as much as possible. This is accomplished by finding regions in the image that have a low amount of detail and lumping those pixels into 16 x 16 square pixel blocks that will have the same color information. The problem of JPEG blocks manifests itself and becomes quite visible when we attempt to manipulate the JPEG image based upon color information with some sort of Asiva Operation or Photoshop Filter. The Asiva JPEG Deblocker Plug-in prepares a JPEG file for subsequent image enhancement by smoothing out the blocks in low saturation high luminance areas while preserving detail in the rest of the image, so you should run this plug-in on a JPEG file before doing anything else. You may not notice any visible change after running the plug-in, but will upon performing additional color editing."



JPEG Deblocker supports 8- or 16-bit RGB or CMYK files and uses an algorithm that attempts to preserve as much detail as possible in a picture before the use of filters or other color corrections that may bring out previously hidden pixel blocks. It smooths out the pixel blocks in low saturation, brightly lit areas and preserves the color information everywhere else in the image, keeping those blocks from appearing during subsequent changes. JPEG Deblocker is available for Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows platforms and retails for $49 at asiva.com.