Flying swallows are among the most difficult subjects to photograph, with their erratic flight.
I saw and photographed this bird in April of this year, over a marshy area near the Salton Sea.
After looking at the photo I realized it was a Bank Swallow, a life-bird for me! (at least it's the first time I'd successful photographed one) This species migrates through southern California, but is not resident here.
What's also interesting is that the original photo was very, very blurry (an average photo of a flying swallow, at least with my current camera, lens, and skill level). Ordinarily I would have immediately discarded the photo, but it was the best of two photos I had of this bird.
I recently purchased the Photoshop plug-in Topaz Sharpen AI (the AI meaning artificial intelligence). The program promises to use artificial intelligence to take even a blurry picture and make it sharper. I have used the program for about a month now. For most well-focused and exposed pictures it provides a small, but perceptible increase in quality and decrease in noise.
So, I thought I'd try it on the above picture. It was so blurry I ran the program twice.
My jaw dropped seeing the result!
Some of the detail and sharpness might not represent reality with 100% fidelity, but it certainly transformed the blurry blob of a bird into a recognizable one!
The program runs slowly. It takes from three to five minutes on my fairly fast computer to process a file from my Nikon D850. But for most photos I have found it well worth the extra time. I will often skip other sharpening and noise-reduction steps, knowing the results of the new Topaz program are so good, and in this case, amazing!