useful plug-in

[Rainer]

I didn't know where to put this but as it concernes the printing results it might has its place here.
We often having problems to get a good printsize for our pics and you certainly know that PS can calculate your image size to higher but we still stay limited. I found this plug-in, Genuine Fractals, which you can download from http://www.lizardtech.com and which alows you to make your pic, they say 600%, but I would keep it at about 300% bigger.
I made a really cool A4 print with a photo taken by my Nikon 2mp cam.
I made a quick example for you with a photograph of my son. I didn't take time to rework the new version in PS, so you can get your pics much better then this.
Hope that will be useful for some of you.
ClickForExample (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rainer.pawellek/kev.jpg)

[Fantasm]

Verrrrry nice, Rain. purrrrrr. Oh. You were talking about a program? :lol

That looks very useful. I am going to check it out. Thanks for the link.

[Rainer]

I'm happy that someone seems to be intrested. Funny, I often saw ppl asking us here to resolve those sort of problems and when you offer a solution noone seems to care.
Anyway, I'm happy with this plug-in.

[Stellor]

I've used Genuine Fractals of a couple of years now. When you bring it up you get no response, when I brought it up a long time ago I got a few negative comments. :lol
All you can do is put the information out there. You did a good thing but "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink". Don't let no response change your willingness to help.

Sam

[Rainer]

:) No negative thoughts here, Sam. I just was surprised. What do you, personaly think of this plug-in?
As said above, I had a try on a A4 print (My Carnac pic) and it really came out great.:)

[fotodog]

Thanks for the link Rainer!

I'll have to check it out.
I do get frustrated when I can't print what I see in variable sizes.

Thanks, man!
:)

I care, I care, I just get too busy some days.

[Stellor]

I didn't really think you would get negative I just wanted to reassure you. :lol
I like it. I don't use it a lot because I always try to design everything to size plus 20%, and I always work at 300 ppi because I print everything I do. That's why I have 1 GIG of memory and 200 GIG of storage + C.D.. I do use it whenever I use photos in my work because they are never the right size and Genuine Fractals gives me the freedom to not worry about that. I wouldn't like to be without it.

Sam

[Edited on 5/30/2003 by Stellor]

[Phil_The_Rodent]

I've heard of this, but your results look spotty? Like they were median or smart blurred after enlargement... I totally appreciate the post though, I kept reminding myself to look into it.

[Rainer]

:) as I said, I didn't rework the enlarged version. You should see the print I did. really good.
but that ain't no reason to get at least a 4mp cam:D
I know you care folks but look at the nicks here and you see what I meant;)

[Stellor]

Phil: If I only need 10 or 20% I let Photoshop handle it. Working at 300 ppi I don't lose much, but over that I use Genuine Fractals, but I very rarely need more then 100% and I've never been able to detect any loose of quality.

Sam

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Be that as it may, if the quality loss is the same as enlarging, using median or smart blur or unsharp and then "reworking" the enlarged image, then why use a second party filter in the first place?

[Stellor]

There is no quality loss with Genuine Fractals, the loss is with Photoshop.

Sam

[Rainer]

:) I think Phil based himself on my example. I have to admit that it's not really good (as an example) but the printresult I got (one more time) is just great. I think, once I get used to it, it's a really useful plug-in, but it already is, the print for proof

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Yeah, your sample is the only one I've seen Rainer. Maybe the spottedness was with the compression scheme you have going on in your camera settings?

Seriously, I'm not trying to argue against anyone's convictions here so please don't get too upset. I'd really like to have faith in this, but my faith is pretty hard to come by. And I don't believe that you can "make stuff up" mathematically or not without quality loss. You don't have to argue with me, just show me my error. :) Seriously, I've known a lot of designers who couldn't spot something even when I had my finger attatched to the error, so while I trust your judgement, I have faith only in my eyes; the only other person I give that faith to is my printer becuase he has caught things that I have missed. :)

[Rainer]

k Phil. there's no problem for me and you are probebly right about enlargen a pic without loss. at least to 600% as they say. It's a shame that you cant see my print. my scanner's dead and it's 2:30 in the morning here but I did a quick shot of a pic in the photomag which spoke about this plug-in. good magazine.
DOGGY (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rainer.pawellek/dog.jpg)

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Ok, I set up a test file to see if this thing can run. It's an RGB tiff file about 700k. If someone with this software can enlarge it and save it back as an RGB tiff, it would be appreciated. I'd like to have a looksee.

Thanks!

File is here (http://www.visualrevolution.com/~phil/images/fractaltest.tif).

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Hehe I guess we posted at almost exactly the same time Rainer. Thanks. I'd still like to put this thing through the ringer so I can identify its capabilities. Hopefully the file I set up will do that if someone will assist me. None of that file was ever compressed in any fashion so the channels are currently spotless, and we can look at what the software is doing. :)

[Rainer]

It wont let me download the pic

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Right click and "save as". It's a TIFF, so it's not browser compatible.

[Rainer]

I know how to do this, phil but it doesn't work, it just talkes about ouick time and has no usual "save as" option

[Phil_The_Rodent]

"save target as" isn't there?

[Cappy]

Go to "This Place" (www.vectorpoint.ws) and these people use Genuine Fractals exclusively.....Kirk told me if he had to give up all of his software and keep one, he stated that it would be Genuine Fractals that he would keep.... you could not possibly judge the worth of a program such as that when you are offering up only 215 colors, which is what your viewing Phil (Net Limitations) and tansported over the net.

However, one trick that you may want to think of when in the digi photo world is to learn to lock your AE/AF/Aperture/Shutter Speed>shoot in sequence>edit: create a PS collage with the correct size images that you shot which will = a large format pic >then output............ I hate things that are expected to perform when it is transmitted over the internet. Too many witchy tricks and compression, even when you don't know it. The only way to judge is scanner to computer to output or camera to computer to output............ then you still have the variables of the OPERATOR......... The Human Equation.
As to offering information and not finding appreciation or willingness to utilize........ human nature..... people like to think they know it all.......... therefore, by not acknowledging that you gave them an education they are showing their superiority over you by not recognizing you and offering up thanks. I try to give recognition when I can. I did not see your post Rain or I would have responded. Have been so damn bizzie.
BTW Phil; not to beat you up....... you are one of the most respected individuals on here and it stems from your honesty, integrity, willingness to share and you are one of the closest to knowing it all on here! Cuz if you don't, you find it and tear it apart and give it a fair crit! Just wanted to get that straight............:)
I would love to view that pic up close Rain, I am sure the monitor does it NO JUSTICE..................... keep on shootin' bro

[Edited on 0 by Cappy]

[Rainer]

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rainer.pawellek/screen.jpg

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Thanks for the kind words Cappy, but I really don't know as much as people here give me credit for. I'm learning everyday I come on, and give back as much as I can. In this specific instance, I really DO want to be shown. This is really important for me, because I *want* to believe this works. Honestly. But I'm just a doubting Thomas. And yeah, once you pull jpeg of gif compression into the mix, the whole thing goes to hell. That's why I was testing with a TIFF (lossless) that I have saved here at home and wanted the result as a tiff as well, so all nonsense can be put aside, and we can really check out what the software is doing to the image.

Thanks VERY much for the kind words. They mean a lot. :D

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Can't download it still Rainer? Don't kill yourself: I'll put up a zip tommorow, it may work better.

[Rainer]

nope phil, no way it still says the same when I right click (see screen shot).
@cappy, great input and I really appriciate your words even if I have to read it back now (god, my english):(
when I get a lil better after my self-online-photography-learning, I certainly will register at the dpreview forum:)

[Phil_The_Rodent]

k. 2 things you can do:
(a) right-click from my post on the forum and save target; or
(b) download this zipfile (http://www.visualrevolution.com/~phil/images/fractaltest.zip) :)

[Rainer]

k phil, I downloaded the zip file and'll go on it a lil later. right now I'm waiting for my batteries getting charged and am waiting to try out my new Minolta:)
holy crap, 1100 euros, well as we say here, "when you love, you don't count";)

[Rainer]

have done it. Size=300%. sorry for the file size
FRACTALzip (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/rainer.pawellek/fractaltest1.zip)

[Edited on 31-5-2003 by Rainer]

[Phil_The_Rodent]

Thanks Rainer. This is awesome. Playing with it now.

You know the result's not bad at all. Well, obviously you know :lol The spherical line is nice and clean, and the channels still look great. I think the treatment on the left is more revealiving though. I was half expecting banding on the gradient which I was happy to see did not appear, but the small details are lost in the leftmost boxes. Those would be tough do, starting out as pixel widths, so I'm not surprised that it has some rough spots. I find that it treated the bottom half of the checker box different from the top VERY interesting and there seems to be a grid now underlying the whole area(are there settings to use this, or do you just enter an enlargment size?). Bilinear seems to have worked the best on these areas. except the diagonal lines. Your software assumed these were lines, and actually STRAIGHTENED them out. That baffles me. :o

In comparison to the other enlargement techniques:
In the details area, Bicubic still looks great. There is some genereal blurring, but less greys than your software has created. The diagonals have become very choppy, and for some reason it seems to have added a shadow to the area where the whites meet the gradient. :o Picture portion came out clear, but with a small amount of pixellation.

As I said, Bilinear treated the detail areas GREAT. A small titch of blurring, and a bit of spacing in the diagonals, but otherwise it was clean sailing. Picture portion has a bit of pixellation. looks to me now that I look at this that Bilinear can pretty much be recreated with Nearest Neighbour and some blur.

Nearest Neighbour, of course, is pixellated to all heck.

The fact that your software treated the diagonals as lines baffles me still, but still it couldn't easily handle areas of a repeating pattern. That it added a naturalness rather than a blur though I think could work well in some situations (like enlarging photographs).

I am fairly impressed. :)

[Rainer]

:) yes the result I got was far better then with my jpg files but my Nikon only saves photos in this format. Now, with my new 5mp toy with tiff,raw or jpg extansion I think not to use this plug-in so much.
You did a great analyze and your technical skills are really useful here and in other cases. I think you do an awesome job as moderator. Colin made the good choise;)
Thanks Phil for existing:)