Genuine Fractals

This is a question for those of you who have used Genuine Fractals. Are their claims of being able to enlarge images by 1000 percent; with no loss of image quality; to be believed?

Thanks,
Ed

I have tried blowing my files up to 22,000 pixels wide with GF and Photoshop's Bicubic Smoother and PS will hands down. The reason why I say that is because GF creates blocky looking pixels that may give the impression of sharpness from twenty feet away but upon viewing at 100% it makes the files look extremely "digital" and actually distorts the pixels in ways that it doesn't look like the same details anymore. Bicubic smoother just makes the file look like you are blowing the image up too big. I personally would prefer the latter as I feel it is the lesser of two evils. With smaller amounts of interpolation there might be some benefits to using GF or Alien Skin Blow Up, but I don't think it's worth the money.

I share Richard's view. I haven't tried anything as extreme as Richard's experiment, but in enlargements up to 24 x 36 or so, the difference between GF and Bicubic Smoother were almost imperceptible, except with a 10X loupe, and even then, I really had to search to find a difference.

One thing to consider with GF. Start with it and you're stuck with it. I had issues with them years ago over their upgrade policy in the switch from Mac OS9 to OSX, but any files I'd saved in their proprietary format were unreadable without the OSX version of program. Then I faced the choice of reworking everything I'd done in their format or staying with the program. Not a happy choice for me, either way.

Good point, Hank. Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Sounds like I should stick with PS.

Ed

Ed, I use Qimage for resizing and find I get better results than with PS. It's much cheaper than GF also.