Picasa? - available as a .deb

I'm not talking about regular enhancement.
Lets say you take a picture of something and then later notice there is
someone standing off to the side of the picture. You want to "enhance"
that part of the picture. If you use just normal tools when you zoom in
the picture pixelates. What I need is to add and subtract (preferably
through adaptation) to clear up the picture.

Apologies - i'm just getting into using Gimp and no expert. I did
discover that Picasa is available for linux and that is why i
suggested it... my brother uses winblows and is big fan of Picasa.

I wondered if you knew that Picasa was available [if it would in fact
do what you wanted!]

You need a Photoshop Elements program but I do not know if there is a
Linux version

There is hardware that the Police departments use for this, but they
admit only so much can be done. Just look at the news media of ATM
footage and you will see what they can't do with a pic. I have found
gimp works well when enlarging a photo and recommend it (my only photo
program). Part of the problem when working with digital cameras is not
having the RAW data that is converted to compressed formats. If your
camera can supply RAW data then you have more chance of a quality
enlargement. If you rely on jpg format set your camera to least
compression. PNG is a better format, but if you will take your pics as
a very fine compression in jpg then you can convert to PNG in gimp
before zooming in. I have been able to view at 800% and understand
what I am looking at, but that is a far cry from zooming in on a face
and telling who it is. As was stated earlier, you can only work with
what is there. 8MP cameras are cheap now days so upgrade on that front.

I'm not talking about regular enhancement.
Lets say you take a picture of something and then later notice there is
someone standing off to the side of the picture. You want to "enhance"
that part of the picture. If you use just normal tools when you zoom in
the picture pixelates. What I need is to add and subtract (preferably
through adaptation) to clear up the picture.

http://picasa.google.com/linux/thanks-deb.html

Check it out.

I have Picasa on Windows and Ubuntu and its free.

It will trawl for pics on your computer and load them from files.
cameras and scanners, send email attachments and has some easy ans
useful editing tools.

wrt the enhancement soft ware you describe it sounds like too much tv.

Hugin is the most recommended panorama software and its in the
repositories.

Na, if you are thinking of the CSI stuff then your not understanding
what Im doing...

I tried hugin but Im looking for something else.

If you know of a program that runs on Windows that will do what you
want to do, this list of equivalent software for Linux should be
helpful:

<www.libervis.com/.../index.php

I wish you luck but there is only so much information in any file and the
"zoom and enhance image" that one sees on TV only exists there. Many things
can be enhanced: contrast, brightness, colour balance, gamma etc. but there
is no way to create more pixels when they aren't in the original.

I got it. There isnt something that can do "tv" stuff - which isnt what
Im (was) after. But, with some help from the Ubuntu list I was able to
do exactly what I needed. By adjusting the colors and unsharp mask and
then selectivily removing some of the blurred pixels, I was able to get
the data I needed.

Everyone needs to get off the tv-land stuff and think outside the box.
If there isnt software to do it then there is a person with an idea of
how it might be done - and that Im grateful for.

Oh... I just tried Hugin again --- its much more stable than when I used
it before. I think that'll work for my other stuff.