What will optical astronomers be doing with deconvolution in the coming years, especially with HST? Algorithms and PSF characterization will only improve with experience, so that we will be able to do a better job on data already in the archive. The amount of data already taken insures a rich harvest for the taking as our understanding of the instruments and optics improves. Further, as we have heard here, the post-COSTAR images will still display residual aberrations that can be corrected by the techniques that were utterly necessary for handling the aberrations in the first place. Crudely put, there will be little excuse for seeing even diffraction rings in fully processed post-COSTAR images!
What have optical astronomers learned from handling HST imagery? Any experience that forces more of the community to understand the data-taking and data analysis processes more completely is to that extent a positive step, albeit in this case not one that any of us would have chosen. Many optical astronomers have now followed their colleagues in radio interferometry into regular and informed use of deconvolution algorithms. The HST optics have driven a significant amount of work in algorithm development and in understanding their theoretical underpinnings; comparison of the presentations here with the first image-restoration workshop shows how much these applications have matured. More astronomical results than ever before are benefiting from restoration, and we can look forward to seeing more complete analyses of hard-won data as a result. Finally, prospects for adaptive optics on the ground open new avenues for science through image restoration. Systems in the optical are likely to produce PSFs with a sharp core and significant diffuse halo; if the PSF can be determined locally, this reduces to something that is, in the mathematicians' terms, ``a problem previously solved.''