Forums | MacLife

I've never used it, but I've heard that Genuine Fractals is very nice.

http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=2

Here's a survey of software and plugins available for Win/Mac:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/increa … ftware.htm

Metacell wrote:

Here's a survey of software and plugins available for Win/Mac:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/increa … ftware.htm

That link nailed it: Extensis pxl SmartScale (Win/Mac)

Here's their commentary:  The Extensis pxl SmartScale plug-in does a better job of image upsizing than Photoshop alone and it's easier to use than its predecessor Genuine Fractals, but I'm still not sure its worth the price. Inkjet printed results of photos, when compared to Photoshop resampling, only showed a slight improvement. When used to upsample line art and logos, improved results were more apparent. I suggest using the $200 on a higher megapixel camera or higher optical zoom.

A bit of Google sleuthing suggests:

1. Extensis sold this product to onOne Software, who long longer sell it under that name.

2. onOne does, however, sell "Genuine Fractals 6." for $299.00

3. You can find SmartScale for sale on line for as little as $25, but my sense is that some of those "stores" are more than a bit shady.

This is right up there with "instant vector" software.

Seriously though- I use GF, sparingly.

From my experience:

Text is out of the question.

Vector art/solids that has been rasterized will become more and more blurry on the edges as the size increases. Depending on the client- a redraw would be in order on anything blown up over 20%.

Raster images. Tricky. Depending on how they "began life". I used GF to enlarge a 8.5" by 11" at 300 dpi RAW to 10 foot by 18 foot. It was a photo my boss took of his son in the Grand Canyon on a Canon D5. After the enlargement I did about a 10% Poster Edges filter, messed with the levels and selective color a bit and then printed it on a Scitex XL 1500. Printed remarkably well. Of course we weren't selling it- your mileage may vary.