The conventional evaluation of photoluminescence (PL) images of inhomogeneous solar cells, which is based on the model of independent diodes, leads to systematic errors in the estimation of the local saturation current density J(01). The Laplacian-based image evaluation, which was proposed already in 2009, does not rely on this model and has the potential to image Jot correctly. However, first applications of this method to PL images also have failed. In this work it is shown that this failing was due to the blurring effect occurring in the luminescence detector. If PL images are deconvoluted with the correct point spread function, the resulting images lead to the correct J(01) distribution if evaluated by the Laplacian method. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.