What's the "best" Interpolation Software?

youcanhaveyourpc

Anyone have any opinions on which is the best interpolation software for making high quality photo enlargments? I use PhotoshopCS and understand that there is a good plug-in from Lizardtech called Genuine Fractals PrintPro 4.0. Anyone have experience with it or there something better...and is it easy to use?



Thanks,

Reid





PowerBook G4

OS 10.4.2

PhotoshopCS



Nikon D70

Nikon F100

curiousuburb

PhotoShop alone does a decent job, provided you choose the right amount of interpolation... more than 120% tends to degrade, due to the bicubic sample size. Genuine Fractals claims to use a larger sample size to address this issue, but sooner or later you're limited by the original number of pixels, so you won't be increasing beyond a certain point without obvious degradation. GF 3.5 claims "up to 700%", but I'd guess that it depends on your source image content. Sky might scale fine, while fine lines or certain organic patterns might struggle due to lack of source data.



Genuine Fractals has a free, 'fully functional' 30-day trial. (Though some reviewers note it used to be limited in filesize capabilities while a trial version).



I would assume, like most Adobe products, it "marks" your system... so you'll only get one 30 day crack at ti (you can't just delete it and download another free month version).



If you need it for production, save your 30 day download until its window encompasses your task... that way you can get maximum benefit for your project.



I haven't used GF myself, but am familiar with the issues, and there have been fractal based tools (such as LivePicture) which did pull this trick off in the past. YMMV



There are some shootouts and reviews online, comparing it to PS and other techniques.

youcanhaveyourpc

Curious, Thanks for the good info!

fahlman

You could also consider pxl SmartScale, also by onOne Software. Here's a link to their FAQ that explains the difference between the two.