Plug-In: Genuine Fractals ENLARGEMENT QUESTION

[smiling dog]

I have seen several references to Genuine Fractals as the ultimate plugin for enlarging images. I purchased GF5 about a year ago and I don't seem to be getting the quality that I expected. I have read the manual and watched th tutorials and find any helpful information rather spotty at best - at least to me. Or am I just expecting too much from this software? To get a decent 24 x 36 print what quality image do I have to start with? Do I perform any resizing or sharpening to the image before sending to GF? I read somewhere to leave it all to GF. Once in the GF preview screen I boost the res to 300 and all looks great until I switch to the 1:1 view (which I understand to be the "true" representation of what the final print will look like).

However, there have been times when the 1:1 view looked really awful, but I printed it anyway and it turned out to be much better than the preview. I am a little confused.

Any insight would be much appreciated.

Thanks a bunch.

Rhonda

[Richard_Lynch]

Manufacturers or resizing plugins will lie to you to get your business. The fact is, EVERY type of resizing will interpolate, making up information to add to your image that is NOT actual detail and resolution. Some of it may sharpen or interpolate differently giving MINIMAL visible difference. Minimal.

What you need to print a 24 x 36 inch print and make it look stellar is a camera that shoots at least 5760 x 8640 pixels (240ppi). Though you may get away with 5200 x 7800 and 10% or so resizing.

I hope that byte of reality helps!

[smiling dog]

Thanks Richard - camera info helpful, although most of my projects are from images given to me from clients or images that I have purchased for reprinting. I have a Panasonic 10MP camera that I have no problems with enlargements, but it is the others that cause me grief - I was hoping that I was just doing something wrong.

thanks for your help.

[Swampy]

I find that often what I get from clients has already been resized or processed. That's when I really run into problems. I usually have to go back and ask for the original file off their camera card. Even at that, many times they will crop or resize the image for their specific use and save over the original. Many clients don't have a clue.

I've had good luck with GF. Managed to even take a 2x2 PDF of a line art logo and take it up to poster size 18x24 with excellent results. You can try boosing the PPI from 300 to 600 too. (mega file size and takes a while to compute, but this sometimes works best).

[Richard_Lynch]

Swampy,
Line art, even at .001x.001 inches should be able to be scaled to the size of the side of a building as vector art is infinitely scalable and will not require interpolation. It isn't GF that is doing the magic, it should be the vectors.

Dog,
Likely you aren't doing a thing wrong, especially if the files supplied are not yours in the first place. People will mishandle files all the time assuming the resolution never goes away...and it does -- then nothing can magically put it back.

[Swampy]

Sorry Richard... I wasn't clear the 2x2 PDF was a scan of line art, not the actual vector file itself. Wish it had been would have been a lot easier to open it in Illustrator and do the text modifications that needed to be done. :-)

[Richard_Lynch]

In that case it would have been better to convert the scan to vector and then scale. I have done that pretty frequently for that type of art.

[smiling dog]

OK, so thanks to both of you for your two very different opinions. I guess I will just learn not to expect too much .............

thanks.

[Nanls]

actually, the company I work for just did a brochure for CES. One of the images, for some reason, had been saved at a smaller size than captured/needed. I used
Alien Skin's "Blow up" to upsample the image and you cannot tell the difference in the one that was "Blown up" two times the size and the other 1/2 dozen images that were used. This utility has saved us more than once.
~Nancy

[mistermonday]

I have used Genuine Fractals for years. I haven't found anything else that does as good a job of upsizing as it. However, that being said, the following rule applies "Garbage in = Garbage out". You need a decent quality to start with. If the original image has less than 500K pixels you are wasting your time. If a larger image has been over processed, artifacted, or ortherwise distorted, your output won't look any better.
Regards, Murray