How to Make Blurry Text in an Image Clear (Free)

A photo of a document, a receipt, a sign — and the text is too blurry to read. Here's how to make blurry text in an image clear, for free.

You snapped a photo of a document, a receipt, a whiteboard, or a sign — and now the text is too soft to actually read. Or someone forwarded a screenshot that got compressed into an unreadable blur. Text is unforgiving: even slight softness makes small letters illegible. Upscaling can sharpen the image enough to make that text readable again, for free.

Why text blurs so easily

Text is made of thin, high-contrast strokes, so it's the first thing to fall apart when an image is small, compressed, or slightly out of focus. Letters that were crisp turn into fuzzy grey shapes that run together. Because the strokes are so fine, ordinary enlargement just makes the fuzz bigger. AI upscaling reconstructs sharper edges, which is exactly what separates one letter from the next.

How to make text clear free

Upload the image to the upscaler and choose 4× for the most detail — text usually benefits from the higher level. The AI sharpens the letter edges as it enlarges, and often that's enough to tip blurry text back into readable. Download the clearer version. Free, no watermark, nothing to install.

What to expect

If the text is soft or lightly compressed, upscaling can make a real difference — legible where it wasn't. If it's a total smear (so blurred there's no letter shape left), there's a limit; the tool can enhance detail that's faintly present, but it can't invent characters that were fully destroyed. Always start from the highest-quality copy of the image you can get.

Make that text readable — free

Upload the image with blurry text to the free tool, upscale it, and see if the words come back. No watermark, no cost.