Genuine Fractals Impressions #1

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I picked up Genuine Fractals by onOne software this weekend.  What does it do?  It allows you to upscale your digital images.    And just what is upscaling?  It comes down to adding pixels to your image to make it larger.  Whenever you add pixels you have a problem.  What color and intensity should the new pixels be?

Normally, we would use the built-in bicubic function in Photoshop or one of its variations – bicubic sharper or bicubic smoother.  The correct term in bicubic interpolation but we’ll just refer to it as bicubic.  When bicubic needs to add a pixel it samples the pixels that immediately surround it, reading their color and intensity.  Then it uses a complex mathematical algorithm to set the color and intensity of the new pixel.  The problem with bicubic is that it tends to soften edges, causing the photograph to loose its sharpness.

Genuine Fractals uses a different approach.  To quote from the user guide, “[Genuine Fractals 5] starts by analyzing ever-decreasing sizes of pixel blocks in your image looking for repeating natural patterns at different sizes.  These are known as fractals.”  For a more thorough definition of a fractal, refer to Wikipedia.  To continue with the user guide, “The great thing about fractal patterns is once you find them they can be scaled to any size without loss of detail.  This allows Genuine Fractals 5 to re-size your image over 1,000% without losing sharpness or edge detail,” or at least that’s the promise.

So, for the next few postings over the coming days I’ll let you know just how well it performs.  I must say the first thing I did out of the box was to prepare a 16X24″ print from a 6 M pixel RAW file.  The results were very pleasing.  Here’s the image.  There is a lot of texture in the rocks but the door wants to be smooth.  You can’t compare a small JPEG like this to the actual print but it will at least give you some idea.

Streets of Delphi – Portal

So stay tuned as we put Genuine Fractals through its paces.

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Author: doinlight

Ralph Nordstrom is an award-winning fine art landscape photographer and educator. He lives in Southern California and leads photography workshops throughout the Western United States. View all posts by doinlight