[glypticmax]

Hi All,

Here is a quote from the promo literature. Could be interesting......

Genuine Fractals delivers image enlargements of any size from smaller, medium to high resolution digital images. Create high quality, print-ready enlargements from digital image files of any size or resolution. Digital imaging professionals have made Genuine Fractals™ plug-ins the preferred software solution for creating high-quality image enlargements within Adobe® Photoshop®.

I'm wondering if anybody is using this and getting good results.
TIA for any insights.

[Miles]

I think all the different interpolation methods have strengths and weaknesses.

There are a few comparison sites out there, such as:
http://www.americaswonderlands.com/digi ... lation.htm

[glypticmax]

Thanks for that link Miles.
Very interesting.
I wonder if anybody has used these techniques with a Maxwell image.

[RonB]

Yes I have used both of their programs, Gen Fractals and Gen Fractals Pro, for years as part of my standard pipeline and they are great assets.

Cheers, Ron

[glypticmax]

Hi Ron,
That sounds like something close to an endorsement.
Its looking more interesting all the time.
1200 x whatever renders with Maxwell are relatively easy to do, and being able to blow them up a bit and maintain the quality could be an helpful.
Now I need to investigate making slides from Maxwell images.

[Miles]

glyptic,

The best thing is to try out different interpolation methods on the kind of images that you're creating.

G.F. isn't a magic bullet. I think its forte is in quite high enlargement factors.

None of them are really a substitute for rendering at the resolution that you need.

I use Qimage a lot for print sizing - there's not so much of a need for interpolating up these days, though..

[glypticmax]

Hi Miles,
Thanks for that further info.
If GP can handle significant increases in size that could be helpful.
If I have a render done for client approval purposes (600,800,1200 pixels in one dimension) and then they decide to print a blow up of for a POP display, it would be nice to do a few clicks to get it for them.
My 2 gigs of RAM seems to choke on really big Maxwell renders.
And they take quite a long time. 16-24 hours I can live with. Anything over that and it gets questionable.

[RonB]

glypticmax,

The higher res you can get it to the better for Gen Fractals. A 15 meg file is optimum but 1800 X 1800 at about 9 megs megs will do very nicely to res up in Gen Fractals for a large poster or 300 DPI off set press printed POP hand out sheet.
I use it all the time for a client of mine and they have had no complaints after these many years. I have been using the software since it first came out.

Cheers, Ron

[glypticmax]

Hi Ron and Miles,
Gee, thanks guys. I am printing your posts for my Maxwell File.
Really useful stuff.
I find myself moving from email jpgs to print and slides due to the quality Maxwell is offering my customers.
I don't even know what or where the dpi or pixel target is. Your tips have been very helpful.
And this evening's IM with Max was also an eye opener.
Thanks to you all.
cheers,
larry

[Miles]

Hi Larry,

Lots of useful stuff here:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutor ... tion.shtml

http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorn ... _2006.html

Miles

[glypticmax]

Thanks Miles. Interesting and useful stuff.
In reading the page by Mike Chaney, developer of Qimage, I noticed he went to school at Univ of Maryland, College Park. Which is about 5 min. from my house.
Small world.
I'm wondering what the max. range of upscaling would be for print and slides. Maybe something like 30% to 50% (this being questionable)? Something in that range could save a lot of hours off Maxwell render times. I'm running a 4096x2732 res image now, and it looks like it wants to cook for about 19 hours. A new dual core could cut that down, and then take off another 30% and thats quite workable.
Thanks again for all the information. It has saved me lots of hours of research and testing.

[Miles]

I'm wondering what the max. range of upscaling would be for print and slides. Maybe something like 30% to 50% (this being questionable)?

It's highly dependant on image content - the only way to find out is to experiment, I think.

[Julian]

GFractals is good although I know of pro photographers that swear by PhotoZoom Pro instead - also check out Blow Up from Alien Skin - looks good, havent tried it myself yet though

http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/index.html

[glypticmax]

Hi Julian,
Blow Up looks pretty interesting and got some good reviews as of August 2006.
And has a 30 day demo. I need to get some Maxwell images together and check it out.
It's twice the price of what I can get GFractals for. But, hey, what's money for if you can't spend it on good software.

[Mihai]

I tried the BlowUp demo but didn't find it too special. I only did 200% and 300% comparing to PS bicubic sharper. Difference is BlowUp looks a bit blurrier.

Perhaps it's better for really huge enlargements, but I doubt I would ever need something more than 300%.

BlowUp on the right.




edit: looking at the bottom, where the wood touches the floor, BlowUp does better there, no typical stairstepping.